Recently, I saw a thread on a Facebook group I am a member of relating to how to organize the frames in your hive bodies. One commenter said that the extra space is there so you can put the queen cage in, which totally makes sense because it would be a pain in the butt otherwise. Many of the commenters answers aligned with what I thought when I was a first-year beekeeper: when you have space left over, split the difference on the two ends. At least one person said to evenly distribute the extra space among all the frames, which is a completely terrible idea as I will explain below. The extra space issue seems like a pretty easy issue to address, but it is not as simple as one might assume.

Whenever you put the full complement of ten frames into a standard sized hive box, there is always room left over.  I’m not entirely sure why they do this as it always causes some deformation of the comb in the frames which have extra space around them.  The bees will build bridging comb between the frame and the wall of the hive body, they will make the frame slightly larger one the side that has extra room, or they will leave it alone.  The problem is that any deviation from standard sized filled frames causes issues during an inspection, removal, and harvesting.  The issues are pretty obvious when you go to perform maintenance on your hive.  You have to cut any bridge comb away, the frame is heavier than normal, and it may have protruding comb that cuts into neighboring frames. These are all issues we would rather not mess with. After all, we would rather just go out there and get our work done as quickly as possible with as little disruption to the hive as possible.  This is why I have stopped splitting the difference between the ends of the frame stack.

The first year I split the space, I ended up getting a lot of burr comb on the ends.  The frames that had a side next to the hive body were big, uneven, connected to the hive body, and when I pulled out the frame I couldn’t keep it steady enough to not cut into the comb and let honey back into the hive.  This seemed really messy and inefficient to me. Furthermore, it ended up causing other issues.  The space between the frames is designed to be exactly right.  If there is extra space between them, the bees will try to fill it up.  They may build comb which protrudes into a nearby frame, which makes getting it out without ruining the comb in that nearby frame almost impossible.  That being said, squeezing the frame stack together becomes very important.  Unfortunately, I am one of those people who is a little OCD and I want that split space to be exactly even.  I would concentrate more on the end spacing than the spacing between the frames and would almost always leave a little too much room somewhere.  Once they start to protrude the comb, you either have to cut it out and make them start over or deal with leaving it as it is.  In the years following that first year I completely changed how I handled the extra space.

I decided that I would rather deal with one side of one frame being wonky than deal with at least two sides of two frames (and probably more because of my forgetfulness).  That being the case, I pushed the frame stack tightly against the hive body on one side and left all of the extra space on the other end.  What this has done is slightly different.  The bees will most often, as we have six hives to observe the results in, build a frame side that is slightly larger than the rest.  The rest of the time, the bees fill the end frame normally but build a completely different piece of comb attached to the inner cover.  In both cases, we have to modify how we handle things. If they start building that extra piece of comb, it is the best situation because you can just scrape it off and all ten of your frames will be normal.  If the bees build one side of one frame larger than normal, you can just make a modification to your harvesting practices to handle that one frame.  Both of those situations were, for me, the easiest and least hassle way to handle extra space in the hives. It is, however, a personal preference issue.  I would not, under any circumstances, suggest that anyone distribute the space among all the frames. You will end up struggling with every hive inspection and harvest season as the frames will be abnormally filled with comb, will be heavier than normal frames, and will have bridging comb all over the place making it difficult to remove the frames without cutting into the adjacent comb.