Product Description
Honeybees build their brood combs to a very specific width, and they leave a hallway between combs of 3/8” - the famous "bee space” dimension.
Honey combs, on the other hand, are built solely for the storage of honey.
When your bees are satisfied with the size of their brood nest, their efforts turn to gathering nectar to make honey. When this happens, the beekeeper wants to keep a close eye on the size of the combs they are building. Your bees will build the comb in the honey stores part of their hive considerably wider than their brood comb.
Adding spacers provides for this additional comb width by expanding the area between top bars. As they become fat, yummy honey combs, spacers should be placed between the top bars to prevent cross combing, or attachments between top bars. Add only as needed! You do not want to add spacers until you see that the bees are building wider combs and the honey combs warrant the additional space!
Why would you want spare spacers? Good question. Our Deluxe kits and our DIY#2 kits each come with a full set of 10 spacers - but there are good reasons to want a few spare spacers around... What if you lose one? What if the dog decides it's a great chew toy? Always good to have some spares on hand.
Note: Gold Star spacers are compatible with a Bee Thinking top bar hive as well as Backyard Hive's Golden Mean hive.