I messed up. How big I messed up is for you all to tell me.
I've got 2 hives going and growing right now. They both started from 2 3# packages this last April.
When I was getting the hives together, I saw that Dadant had hive frame spacers that would allow 9 frames in a 10 frame hive. That sounded like a good idea to me as I'd heard that the more space in the hive bees have to fill, the harder it is on them. So I installed the spacers in both hives.
I've been checking them weekly and noted that they were making all sorts of burr comb and that they were putting layers on one side of frames and stuff like that. I attempted to correct their errors, but when they started to have brood, I didn't want to tear that comb off.
Well, I opened them up yesterday and both hives are ready for a 2nd hive body, but the original bodies on both of them are so jacked-up that I couldn't remove any of the frames without killing my girls.
I now know that the 2nd body on each hive needs to be 10 frames tightly fitted, but is there anything I can do about the original body?
Should I put the new one under the original one and try to get them to move down?
Any tips, tricks, or advice?
Thanks,
-B.