Starter Strips Made Easy

Comb Guide Made Easy

Keep in mind all things man made added to the hive cause the colony stress. Stress in the form of extra work needed to make the man made object useable. Bee keepers use foundation or starter strips to try to influence straight comb building. Starter strips have been proven to work, but constructing them and placing them right on the top bar can prove a bit time consuming and messy. If you have ever scraped comb off a surface or seen it attached to Plexiglas somewhere on the web no doubt you have seen the part called the mid rib, the center between the two sides. Ideally foundation or a starter strip should be no thicker than this.

I had an idea I wanted to try while reading about candle making, so here is my first attempt at recreating a raised mid rib as a comb guide.

First melt some wax in a fry pan.

Take your top bar and make a slit on each end at the center on the comb side.

Take a peice of thread and horizontally dip it in the wax several times or until you have the desired thickness. In this case the same as a mid rib.

Lay the thread along the bar and pull the ends of the thread into the slits you made. I secured the comb guide to the bar with a heat gun just to insure adherence.

Once the wax was melted one bar took under 5 min.

NO mess, NO waste Easy clean up!!!!!!

Top Bar Beekeeping at Hirschbach Apiary

A biological approach to beekeeping using top bar beehives