Bee Space

Bees maintain a working space between combs called a bee space. Do small cell bees use a smaller bee space?

Bee space is the distance bees reserve for their movement between combs. When bees encounter wider gaps, they use beeswax and build comb in that space. When smaller gaps are encountered, they fill them up with propolis. This bee space concept has made modern bee equipment possible. Before bee space was integrated in equipment design, all hive, with frames, became hopelessly glued and combed together if not worked frequently.

So, how wide is a bee space? Historically, it was placed somewhere between 1/4" and 3/8". Modern equipment is constructed with a bee space within that range. Modern equipment still gets glued together, although not hopelessly so.

While watching small cell bees through a plex cover, I noticed they would sometimes reduce the distance between the top bars above the broodnest. Apparently, the conventional bee space incorporated between the top bars wasn't what the bees preferred.

Notice the single bee between the two wax projections. That's a single bee space. So, how wide is it?

I measured the gap between the top bars at 3/8 of an inch which is about 9.3mm. I super-imposed a ruler, from another bee shot on this photo And I proportionally scaled it to the 3/8" gap. The distance between the two wax projects measured 4.3mm or about 5/32ths of an inch. That's about one bee space for these small cell bees.