Hi - only just seen this thread, so will reply even though it's a few months old. My experiences my be very different than yours - we have 4-5 TBHs in northern Argentina - we have warm winters, African bees, forest--fed bees. I left my hive for nearly two yers before even opening it to look inside, then we were amazed - we harvested 24 kg of honey without even taking out half the bars. We gave the bees a lot of room from the start - Kenyan box 120cm long - and were also very surprised and pleased that the bees had made comb long the centre of our bars with no crosscombing. The bars had grooves cut into them with a little beeswax to encourage straight middle of bar comb-building.
So, based on my limited experience, I'd say, give your bees lots of space, then leave them alone as long as you can and you may be as pleasantly surprised as we were! Plus, with TBHs, you get lots of wax for candle-making, etc.
