Almost every beekeeper will find a need to draw some new comb at one time or another. I thought that I would take a few moments to set down on paper a few of the things and principles that I have either read about or have experienced myself. I have noticed that the bees will draw comb the best when they do it quickly and they seem to make fewer mistakes. Here are some of the principles that I have used to draw comb out.
Bees need to be warm to draw comb. I have read that a bee has to be at about 85 degrees to produce wax. The beekeeper can take advantage of this by trying to do the wax thing later in the season if at all possible. Spring packages of bees placed on foundation have a particularly tough time drawing comb partly because of this. The center of the cluster of bees that is in your new super of foundation is very likely to be above this temperature but the bees that are on the outside edges are non productive in this process. Insulated supers will help out temperature conservation as well as entrance reduction to keep the heat in place. I use Styrofoam over the super in place or in addition to the inner cover to add some insulation to the hive.
Young bees produce wax better than older bees. Wax glands in bees are the most productive in bees that are about two weeks old. They remain productive for a short while (in human perspectives) and as the bee moves from house duties to foraging the glands become non-productive altogether. They can be restimulated to produce wax if the needs of the hive require it. Such times would be during a nectar flow when there may be a need to construct and cap comb for storage of honey.
Wax is produced by the honeybee at the expense of sugars that would normally be used for storage in the form of honey or used in the hive for the production of brood. Therefore it is necessary to have a good supply of either nectar coming into the hive or it is necessary to feed the bees during the time when wax is being produced. Small hive feeders are not very efficient in delivering the quantities of food that the bees need to have to do a good job in drawing comb. Multiple feeders or other feeding methods than your normal feeders may be necessary to use to accomplish the task.
Unlike humans who need a fair bit of space to work in whenever we try to build something bees seem to do their best construction when they are packed together fairly tightly. I am not sure if it is a factor of the increased heat that is present in a large tightly packed cluster or the ability of the bees to do whatever measuring that they seem to need to do to decide where to draw their comb.
Bees have a particular spacing that they have built into their house plans. Combs must be positioned to take advantage of this pre-arranged design. Place 10 frames in a box tightly together or the bees will draw comb in the wrong direction or they may draw comb parallel to the foundation between the frames. If this happens it is necessary to remove the comb that is not right and have the bees do it again, be sure to remove more than the minimum necessary because if you leave the beginnings of the malformation the bees will generally do the same thing again. You will be time and energy ahead to take more than necessary in your corrections than to allow the bees to repeat the same mistakes.