Been a couple weeks since I put the second brood box on, and I wanted to check the progress on it. You can see in the video below that the girls are busy working on the frames, but I was a little concerned to see the uneven comb that's being built. Look at the blob of comb creeping up between the second & third frames. That shouldn't really be happening with the types of frames I'm using. They should be drawing out comb from the frame instead of building free form.
My concern turned to a bit of panic when I tried to lift the top box off in order to inspect the bottom box. The bees had attached comb between the frames in the two boxes, and as I lifted the top box, frames from the bottom box started to pull up with it. A little sample of what I'm talking about in the video below.
This isn't a situation I was prepared for; nor was it one that I had even heard about. Placed a call to a bee keeper in the area, and he was able to talk me off the cliff.
My basic issue was one of frame spacing. The ten frames in the box need to be packed tightly together. I had inadvertently left some space, and the bees did what bees do when confronted with open space: they filled it.
The remedy was fairly involved, and unfortunately was very much a two person job that didn't allow for photos & video. Basically, Grace tilted the second hive box slightly so I could get a hive tool in to push the frame in the bottom box down, breaking the comb as I did so. Once I negotiated that over each of the affected frames, the top box lifted easily off of the hive. Then while Grace applied copious amounts of smoke to both me & the bees, I scraped the broken comb from the top of the frames in the bottom box to dissuade the bees from recreating that situation.
Once the bottom box was cleaned up, I worked on breaking up the free form comb in the top box to the extent where it allowed me to pack the frames closer together. Now wholly sure that part worked, but I'll do another check in a couple weeks and report back on the progress.