Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[SamH]

Hi All.

I'm sure this may have come up many times before but I'm not having much luck with the search feature. I have a TBH which uses coffee stirrers glued on edge into a groove as a comb guide. This has worked well but is mighty fiddly to construct. I'm currently building a second hive and have my bars ready with grooves. Would the groove alone work successfully, or should I persevere with the coffee stirrers? I'm all for keeping this as simple as possible so long as the bees don't mind.

Thanks for any thoughts or experience.

Sam

[madasafish]

In my experience,Triangles are simple and best.

[Barbara]

Hi Sam

The saw cut alone or even with melted beeswax in it is not sufficiently reliable. If the coffee stirrers are working for you, stick with it as it's a lot less trouble that fixing cross comb. If you want to be slightly less sustainable you could buy triangular profile or half dowel mouldings from your local DIY store and pin them to the underside of the top bars.... obviously a saw cut is not necessary if you are using those, or I have used bamboo BBQ skewers stuck onto the underside of the bars.... again no saw cut needed, or if you have access to a bit of beeswax foundation you can cut it into inch strips and put your top bars in the oven for 15 mins and then take them out and hold the foundation strip into the saw cut until it melts beds in and sets again, leaving you a half inch or so strip protruding. Some people have concerns about using foundation but my view is that this small amount is not going to cause a problem but I wouldn't go out and buy some to do the job if I didn't have a few sheets lying around.

[SamH]

OK thanks Barbara. I'd read somewhere that the groove alone would work, but wasn't convinced. I've also heard of people simply pouring bees wax into the groove, but like you say the coffee stirrers are already proven successful.