UGH!!!  I inadvertently "harvested" some honey today... what a complete cluster (expletive deleted) I did... Michael Bush's words ringing in my virtual ears "Straighten things out. The sooner the better. Crooked comb leads to more crooked comb. Make frames if you have to and tie all the existing combs into them so they are all in line." I didn't.  In my defense I was "dealing" with a lot of life crap... now I will be dealing with BEE life crap!  Today was a total disaster...  I remained calm, got to smoker going for the first time... but worked the hive at 1 ish p.m. and it was actually very warm... mistake 1 for what I was trying to do...

The "front" of the hive's combs are much, much crookeder (more crooked?) than the combs in the back.  It's obvious which end I tried to get straighter - the front combs cover 3 to 5 (ish) bars each.  I tried to work from the front back and straighten the comb - cutting and tying as needed.  Well, I didn't give myself anything as a working surface and ended up with chunks of comb, honey and sticky bees all over the place.  The pictures say it all - and I didn't take as many as I wanted because I was almost literally up to my elbows in honey.  My poor girls!  All their hard work on 5 or 6 frames ended up collapsing to the bottom of the hive.  I had buried bees and destroyed comb all over.

My last inspection was just a few days ago on the 24th and I swear they had put up several more bars since then! All but one of the "destroyed" comb was honey and pollen - much of it uncapped.  The last comb that broke off was brood and it just killed me to see all my baby bees not gonna' make it because I am having a very traumatic but thoroughly effective educational experience.  I tried tying much of it on a bar, so we'll see in a few days what they do with it. 

Here is what I've learned.... Listen to Michael even when you don't want to "disturb" your brand new bees in your first hive.  They will recover and it won't be nearly so traumatic to them or you!!!  (Me).    Don't work the hive in the heat of the day... hmmm... maybe that's why everything you read says that?  Yeah... probably!  Have a clean bucket or bowl with you for "accidental harvests" and think things through.  :-)

Anyhoo - here is the first part of my "Here's what happens when you don't straighten the comb early" educational series so other may learn from my mistakes.  I hope my girls will forgive me!  I wanted to look at splitting the hive since they've filled almost the entire 4' long hive... but I'm just going to try to clean up my mess... after giving the ladies several days to decide what they want to do... 
 

Firing up the smoker for the first time

Front of Hive #1.  The girls prefer the clean out door for entrance

#2 bar and comb closest to the entrance

With two bars removed you can start to see the heavier honey filled combs that ended up breaking off. 

Here are bars that broke (numbers 3-7) and I tried to salvage by straightening comb and tying pieces back on... but I pretty much gave up after a while. I used Hive #2 as a work area to try to do this.

The big comb from bars 6 & 7 were heavy with honey.  You can see how heavy it looks and shortly after I took this the comb gave way and fell into the bottom of the hive.  I should have left this bar alone, but I pulled it intending to tie comb back on.  Doing that caused part of the next comb to fall and it was full of brood.

Leading edges were much easier to tie on.  You can see the chunks with brood on them by the scissors and thread.  They are darker and have nurse bees still stuck to them.  It just killed me to see larvae that weren't going to survive because of my intrusion and inexperience. 

Large chunks of comb including capped, uncapped and empty honey cells as well as a few pollen cells... and sticky bees.  These were chunks that broke off and fell into the hive that I pulled out and placed on the bars on Hive #1 because I couldn't rescue everything.

I moved them over to where I was working on Hive #2.

Here's one of the first pieces I put in the bowl.  A lot of it was uncapped and I'm going to give it back to the bees. 

I would have taken a lot more pictures... but I was covered in Honey and, while the camera I used to take these is waterproof, I don't think it's honeyproof and I was a gooey mess.  I took these when I'd remove my gloves.  I did learn something else... that there is little in this world as frustrating as having your hands covered in fresh honey and NOT being able to lick them off!!!  This was definitely the best tasting of any mistake I've ever made.  :-)