How to deal with comb on the roof?

[Mohan Raj]

A couple of weeks ago I went down to Rainier to inspect the hives of a novice beekeeper.  I believe the story is that they had been her father's bees and he had recently died unexpectedly, so her neighbor reached out to OBA for help on her behalf.  Anyway, the inspection went pretty well, outside of my being stung on the thigh right through my suit.  In one of the hives, there were a couple of frames missing, so the bees did what they usually do in this situation, which is that they built out comb in the space, hanging from the lid.  The colony was on the small side, but the hanging comb had plenty of brood and pollen.  My question to the community is, how would you handle this situation?  At this point in the year, would you cut it off, install the missing frames and make the bees build it out again, or would you leave it and deal with it early next spring?  I was somewhat inclined to leave it for now, given the size of the colony, but could be persuaded to remove it if that is the consensus of the community.  What do you think?

Mohan

[Kristina T]

That’s kind of you to help them.

It is going to be a huge mess if you leave the comb. I’ve never done this, but I’ve heard to can rubber band bridge comb to empty frames.

Here’s a video: 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2-JjchvjQg&t=84

Kristina 

On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 10:16 AM Mohan Raj <conver...@olympiabeekeepers.org> wrote:

A couple of weeks ago I went down to Rainier to inspect the hives of a novice beekeeper.  I believe the story is that they had been her father's bees and he had recently died unexpectedly, so her neighbor reached out to OBA for help on her behalf.  Anyway, the inspection went pretty well, outside of my being stung on the thigh right through my suit.  In one of the hives, there were a couple of frames missing, so the bees did what they usually do in this situation, which is that they built out comb in the space, hanging from the lid.  The colony was on the small side, but the hanging comb had plenty of brood and pollen.  My question to the community is, how would you handle this situation?  At this point in the year, would you cut it off, install the missing frames and make the bees build it out again, or would you leave it and deal with it early next spring?  I was somewhat inclined to leave it for now, given the size of the colony, but could be persuaded to remove it if that is the consensus of the community.  What do you think?

Mohan

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