| III. MANAGEMENT AND MANIPULATIONS OF TOP BAR HIVES 1. Where should tbh's be placed? This, of course, depends on your location with respect to latitude, amount of precipitation, prevailing winds, etc. If it's extremely hot, shade is desirable. Overheating in the sun can result in the combs sagging or falling. Remember, there are no wires or plastic reinforcing the comb midrib. Within a season or two, the brood combs will become quite strong and remarkably durable. Some Egyptian beekeepers visiting a friend of mine in the Atlanta, GA USA area said that our hives need to be in the sun more...that shade made diseases more of a problem. I place my hives on a stand so that I can work them without bending over. Paul Magnuson said that in South Africa, some hives were placed on stacks of old tires which worked well, though the hives sagged a bit in hot weather. In cases where the hives are plagued by ants or other crawling insects, the hives have been suspended by wires. 2. How can damage to tbh's by bears, badgers, or other animals be prevented? Black bears have raided three of my tbh's at Ellijay, GA USA, about 80 miles N of Atlanta. The bears ate the brood, pollen, wax, and most of the honey. I gathered the scrap wax for my solar melter, picked up the bars and the rest of the hive items. All were usable. There were no broken frames to replace as would have been the case in conventional hives. The bees were recovered and merged with another hive in one case, but I don't know about the other two hives that were taken by the bears. The bees left or merged with the remaining hives. It hasn't been worth my time or expense to try an electric fence or chain link fence enclosures. Paul Magnuson tells of a friend in South Africa who digs pits under his tbh's which are suspended by wires. The ratels or "honey badgers" attempt to get to the hives, but repeatedly fall into the pits and eventually stop. Paul and I concluded that the pits would need to be too large for this to work with my bears. :) [Gerry Visel] If they are suspended rather than supported on the ground,they could be hoisted up high enough to be impervious to bears. 3. Do bees kept in tbh's get diseases and mites? Yes. As far as I can tell, bees in tbh's have no special protection against mites and diseases. I use extender patties and Apistan as directed. A U-shaped piece of hardware cloth (sandscreen) attached to a tb makes a good "feeder bar" if extender patties or patties of pollen substitute are placed inside the U. It's easy to put Apistan strips into a tbh. Just use the hive tool to open a small slit between the bars in the area where the brood should be, and insert the strip. Since I have a notch on one side of the tb at the center of the bar, it is especially easy to insert the strip. The colony isn't disturbed; no super or brood chamber has been lifted. It's just as easy to pull the strip out though sometimes it's necessary to use a thin hive tool to free the top of the strip from propolis on both sides. 4. How does management of tbh's differ from conventional hives? Most of the general principles with respect to tbh management are the same as for conventional hives. The beekeeper needs to manage for a good population of foraging bees timed with the honeyflow. Tbh's can have poor queens that need to be replaced. Principles of requeening, making splits, evaluating stores for winter, etc. are all the same as for conventional beekeeping. But there are differences. With an end ("front") entrance, the brood nest will naturally be found on the first several combs, and the surplus honey will naturally be stored toward the rear (away from the entrance). Since the bees must expand laterally, it may be desirable to pay more attention to spreading the brood to get good population buildup, and it may require that you watch for the colony becoming honeybound. You may find it necessary to regularly remove capped surplus combs and to shift bars that are being drawn more toward the brood area. While some vertical queen excluders have been used, it is feasible to place a fully capped comb between your surplus bars and the brood area so that a honey barrier is present to help confine the queen. [Tim Haarmann] Might be worth mentioning how much of the hive should be used as the brood part and how much for honey. I like to use 30 TBs. The 10-12 closest to the entrance become my brood chamber, and the remaining 18-20 are used to store honey. If I give a new beekeeper this formula, they seem to be able to deal with keeping their bees from getting honey bound fairly easily. I think that using combs with honey as a barrier against the queen moving works perfect. With a TBH she is forced to actually walk around a comb of honey to get to the rest of the hive. In a Lang. she can move to any of 10 frames if she wants to move up to another area of the hive. For this fact, I think using queen excluders in a TBH isn't worth the trouble. Again, this whole fact is the reason bees get honey bound so easily in a TBH. 5. How are tbh's worked? If the entrance holes are at one end, I puff a small amount of smoke at the entrance, and wait perhaps a minute. If a good honeyflow is on and the weather is good, smoke probably would not be necessary with my Italian bees but I use a little anyhow. Some smoke is puffed underneath the arching top covers in case paper wasps have started a nest under the tin. Next I remove the covers and the strip that covers the rear half of the notches in my tb's which lets me see how far the bees have drawn out comb. If the bees seemed to be alarmed because of inclement conditions in which I might need to work or some other factor, most of the notches can be kept covered . Starting at the rear of the hive, I remove the first bar which will probably not be drawn out completely, and place that bar in a holder. I have made a cradle to hold bars as I work on them, but I also use 5-bar nuc boxes or 5-bar "supers" to hold the bars that are removed. Moreover, the stands on which I have placed my hives have supports that are spaced far enough apart that they can be used to hold tb's. I remove a couple of bars, then work forward toward the brood area, shifting the inspected bar to the rear. Only a small gap of a couple of bars is necessary to give plenty of room to remove bars. Often there is a small amount of comb attachment to the sides at the upper two inches of the comb, but the attachments are easily freed with a hive tool. If the bar is then place on a cradle, the rough sides where the attachments were can be trimmed smooth with scissors after which the bees are less inclined to reattach the comb to the sides. This is especially true if the wax is scraped from the sides also. Rarely there may be a few places where a comb is attached to the bottom of the hive in which case the hive tool will free it also. All of the wax scraps go into the solar wax melter. Proceeding on to the brood area, I make my assessment of the hive conditions in the same way as with conventional hives. If a comb needs replacing for any reason, I'll move it to the back of the hive for the bees to clear it after which the comb and bar go to my solar wax melter. I will place a new bar with a starter strip of foundation between two straight combs so that I get a good comb drawn, especially during a good honeyflow. After finishing the inspection, I shift the bars forward and replace the one or two bars I originally removed. If the hive has holes down both sides, I start at either end, work to the center, then replace the bars. After that the other side can be examined or additional work postponed until the next visit. After I finish inspecting a hive, I make notes about what was found by writing in pencil on a 4 x 6 index card. The card is kept in a ziplock plastic bag held by a clothes pin nailed to the back of the hive body. If the hive needs some additional work, I'll turn one of the bricks on top on its side to get my attention. When I go back to the hive, a quick glance at the record card shows immediately what needs to be done. [Tim Haarmann] The plain fact is the TBHs are a little more trouble to work than Langs. There is always a bit of comb to cut or straighten out, etc. No big deal, but sometimes people are freaked out how hands on a TBH must be. You really need to get in there and do a little cutting, moving, slicing and dicing. I am continually training my bees by removing curved or misplaced comb. I use a Maxant brand hive tool. It is flat and long and easily cuts the comb off the sides of the hive. I think it might be the same as the Italian one you describe. [Tim Haarmann] TBHs work excellent for Africanized Honey Bees because when one is working the hive, there is only a small opening (created by removing a couple of TBs) for the bees to come rushing out. Try a Lang, and bees from all 10 frames come out as soon as you take the cover off. This is useful information for those of us planning on using AHBs as soon as they stop causing such an outcry (wishful thinking). I don't care what folks say, those bees work hard and make excellent amounts of honey. 6. What tools are commonly required to work tbh's? The same tools that are used with conventional hives: hat, veil, smoker, hive tool, are helpful. I occasionally use gloves and a long sleeved shirt. I prefer a hive tool that is about a foot long. Mine is made from a 12 inch shelf bracket, but the Italian hive tools being sold by some suppliers in the USA are about the same size. Many kitchen utensils...spatulas, knives, etc. would serve well in working a tbh. Sometimes a spray bottle with water or sugar syrup or sugar syrup with some mixture of "essential oils" comes in handy... I enjoy the odor of peppermint. :) 7. Is it necessary to use any foundation in tbh's? Unless some type of starter strip is used to establish a point for the bees to build comb, the combs may be oriented across multiple bars with the result that they are not movable. A starter strip may be nothing more than a 2cm strip of paper that has been dipped in melted beeswax. Paul Magnuson describes gluing a hardwood strip about 10mm wide to the bottom of a tb so that the strip, projecting downward, gives a point for the bees to begin building. He also has used two tb's to form a mold channel on the bottom of a third tb. Melted beeswax is poured into the channel and, after a few moments of cooling, the resulting ridge of beeswax can shaped further by the fingers to give a foundation strip. Purchased foundation can be cut into 2cm strips and waxed into grooves along the center bottom of the tb. Joel Govostes said that he had read of twine being dipped in molten beeswax and applied centrally along the underside of each top-bar to make a starting ridge for comb construction. Thin sheets of wax can be made by soaking a smooth, thin board in cold water, then dipping the board into melted beeswax. The temperature of the wax, number of dips, speed of dipping, all will determine the thickness of the sheet. The dipped board is plunged back into cold water, then I cut around the edge of the board with a knife. This results in two sheets of wax which can be cut into strips. Scissors heated in boiling water work well for cutting strips. I have made my own foundation using a press foundation mold that my brother made for me from rubber stamp polymer of a high durometer value. Since the bees start building at the edge of the strip, I'm not certain that it's worthwhile to try to mold any type of foundation imprint. I have noted that if I have a strip of beeswax on a tb and it is beside a tb that has a waxed paper strip, the bees will work the beeswax strip first. Using a starter strip that is wider than about 2cm, or even 1cm, appears to be of little value. I tried using strips that were about 10cm wide, found that the bees could build large combs downward from the edge of the strip before the combs were built up and attached well to the tb. This resulted in a comb breaking off the bar during the heat of the summer with the newly built comb heavy from honey, brood, and the weight of the attending bees. I suggest that narrow starter strips be used. Some tbh beekeepers have tried using triangular bars with one point of the triangle pointing downward, the base of the triangle forming the roof surface of the tbh. The downward point was dipped in melted beeswax to give the surface for the bees to begin building. In the case of using tree branches or bamboo of appropriate diameter, beeswax can be rubbed on the "bottom" of the tb's to give an appropriate surface for the bees to begin building comb. [Tim Haarmann] Some people have placed foundation on their TBs in the shape they want the final comb to be. The bees quickly draw it out and it seems to make straight comb every time. I personally don't bother, because I would rather just give them starter strips and let them do the rest. I did have one colony in S. America that built their combs perfectly perpendicular to the top bars. I have kept Caucasians, Buckfast, Italians, Africanized, a couple of those Howard Weaver hybrids and have found no difference in their ability to build straight or crooked comb. Some bees get it, and some don't. 8. How can bees in tbh's be encouraged to build straight combs? If a new bar with a starter strip of some type of foundation is placed between two bars with straight combs, then the comb that is drawn should be straight if a good honeyflow is on and the hive population is good. I have one colony that has a propensity for building combs which cross from one bar to another even though foundation strips are present. Why this occurs isn't clear unless it is a genetic trait of the queen. I have no evidence that this is the case, but if it happens next year, I'm going to try another queen. 9. What can be done if the bees in tbh's make crooked combs? I would remove the crooked combs and put the combs and bars in the solar wax melter. They can be replaced with a few straight combs taken from other colonies or new bars with foundation strips. I seek to accumulate good, straight brood combs over the years. This is a good, practical goal, and is not difficult. Some of the older, dark combs may gradually be replaced if the size of the worker cells gets very small or if a good portion of the cells become plugged with old wax. 10. Is the lack of 100% worker cells a problem in tbh's since no full sheets of foundation are used? During the spring buildup with a good honeyflow, mostly worker cells will be drawn on combs built in the brood area. Toward the outside of those combs, more drone brood appears. I don't worry about the proportions...the bees know what they need. Drone brood can be cut out to aid in Varroa control. Again, that comb would go into the solar wax melter. I don't care what the makeup of the comb is in the surplus area, nor if the combs are straight or interconnected somewhat. They will be removed eventually, the honey pressed out, then those combs go (yep!) to the solar wax melter. 11. What can be done if a comb is stuck in a tbh? The only comb that can ever gives me any trouble is the first comb that is in the tbh, especially if it is in a 5-bar nuc. There may be some attachments at the ends and also to the side of the box. In this case, I take a long, thin "knife" that I made by sharpening a hacksaw blade, and slide the knife along between the comb and the side. This frees the comb from the side. What about the ends of the comb? I use a simple solution devised by Wyatt Mangum: take a piece of stiff wire and bend it into a Z shape. Make the wire long enough to extend down to the bottom of the hive, with the near end above the level of the top-bars. Pry the bar away enough to insert the wire at one end of the bar. Push the wire all of the way to the bottom. Pivot the wire to bring the bottom of the Z beneath the edge of the comb, then pull upward which breaks the comb loose. Repeat at the other end of the tb. If the bar is stuck in an area of honey surplus bars, I simply tear the bar off then free the comb with the hive tool, lift it out, and deposit it in my collection tub. It will eventually be pressed, so I don't care if it is broken into several pieces. Bees clean up any honey that has dripped. 12. What can be done if a tb comb breaks? If the comb is a valuable brood comb, I would tie the comb back to the tb and replace it in the hive for the bees to reattach. It would be necessary to use something like paper, window screen, or perhaps leaves for the tying twine to pull against; otherwise, the twine will cut into the comb, and the comb will drop down from the tb or even break off and fall into the bottom of the hive. If the comb is not to be salvaged, move it to the rear of the hive to let the bees clean it out after which you can melt it down for wax. [Tim Haarmann] After about 50 transfers into TBHs, I think the easiest, fastest and very effective method of attaching the comb is simply using dental floss. I cut the comb straight, have someone hold it next to TB, and I use a needle to sew on the top bar. Care must be taken to sew low down on the comb because as you know, the floss tears the comb a bit. I simply go up over the TB and down low through the comb. Do this 4-5 times, tie the two loose ends of the dental floss and put it in the hive. By the time the bees chew the dental floss, they have almost always attached the comb. This method doesn't work as well in really hot weather when you give the colony too many combs to attach, so be careful. [Joel Govostes] Better yet, make it a habit to manipulate the combs *very carefully*, making sure any side attachments are separated before lifting. Don't try to "turn over" the comb to view the other side, "frame-style." Keep the comb right-side-up at all times, and always hold it vertically. The natural combs, being only supported at the top, cannot take the stress of inversion. 13. How can the combs be easily ridden of adhering bees? I use a brush to remove the bees. Large goose feathers also work reasonably well or a handful of grass might do the job. I haven't tried using a blower. I usually brush the bees downward, very quickly into the gap in the hive where the comb was removed. The bees crawl rapidly back toward the darkness of the undisturbed sections of the tbh. Allen Dick suggests that brushing the bees upward works better. Haven't had a chance to make a good comparison yet, but maybe this year I'll see how it works for me. Shaking of combs should of course be avoided. Natural honey-combs are quite heavy and *will break* if handled roughly (making quite a mess!). 14. Is swarming a problem with tbh beekeeping? I don't have enough experience with tbh's to give an assessment of this. Since swarming is a natural phenomenon, there is no reason to think that it should occur less in a tbh than in a conventional hive. Several of my tbh's swarmed this last year, and it didn't always seem to be related to huge populations in the hive. One of my colonies was from a package that had a young queen. That colony threw a massive swarm when the hive was half filled with combs. I thought it unusual for a first year package to swarm, but others who used packages from the same supplier had swarms also from conventional hives. Was it just a peculiar "swarming season?" I look forward to this year for some sort of comparison. Presumably the same techniques of managing swarming that are applied to conventional hives should apply to tbh, except for adding supers. Unless, of course, you do put supers on tbh's. On a tbh, I'd spread the brood, remove surplus combs that are capped, make splits if desirable, and keep a young, vigorous queen in the hive. One could go though the hive and inspect the combs for queen cells, but I've never taken the time nor had the inclination to do that. I simply let them swarm and try to capture the swarm to unite with a weak hive if possible. Some swarms are lost, but that's just the facts of life of beekeeping. :) [Joe Govostes] The removal of 2-4 combs of mostly sealed brood, with adhering bees (omitting queen), around the time of normal swarming preparations is a good way to avert swarming. The combs can be replaced with empty combs or new bars with comb-guides, whichever are available. The combs and bees thus obtained from 1 or more colonies can be transferred to a vacant hive, or a weak colony in need of a boost. [Joel Govostes] If transferred to an empty hive, they can be allowed to develop into another producing colony, or the brood combs and bees can be returned to the original hives after danger of swarming is past. If this is desired, the temporary "split" colony should be placed close by the parent. The bees in the "split" will likely rear a new queen in the meantime, but upon re-uniting the bees will let one queen remain (oftentimes the younger one). 15. How are swarms hived in a tbh? Hive the swarm in the same way as in a conventional hive. Dump the swarm into the hive and replace the tb's, or put a board and/or sheet up to the hive entrance, dump the bees out, get some started inside, then sit back and watch in awe as the colony flows inside. Realize that the colony has no surface area of frames with wired foundation on which to disperse. They will "festoon", or hang, in bunches from the top-bars in order to begin building combs. It is best not to disturb or break their clusters at this point, until the combs have been at least partially completed. It is best to have some drawn combs in place, and it's particularly good to have a comb with brood underway. I feel that the bees are better disposed to stay in that case. You may wish to feed the new colony at first to enable it to draw combs rapidly. If a strong honeyflow is on, the sugar syrup may be ignored at first. 16. How do you best divide a tbh? I personally like to take at least three combs with bees, pollen, honey, and brood and place them in a 5-bar nuc box. The old queen is removed with the combs, or I introduce a new queen in a cage. Feeding this nuc helps it become established before it is put into a full-size tbh. My 5-bar nucs have only two entrance holes, but I still need to watch for robbing to get started, especially if I have put a feeder jar on top of the nuc. 17. How can a package of bees be installed in a tbh? Handle them much the same way as for conventional hives. Remove a few of the tb's and dump the bees out into the hive. If you've placed any drawn comb in the hives up toward the front, there may be room in the hive to put the opened package on its side inside the hive. The container of sugar syrup that came in the package can be supported by a couple of pieces of wood, some stones, or twigs placed inside the hive. The bees can feed on the remaining sugar syrup. I remove the plug from the queen cage, and suspend the cage between two bars or over at the side of the hive. I really prefer to use thin, hardware cloth queen cages that Wyatt Mangum has designed. Those cages are described under a "requeening" question a little farther on in this faq file. 18. Can bees and combs in a conventional hive be converted to a tbh? Sure. Just shake and brush the bees off the frames and cut the combs out of the frames. Lay the combs down on a surface that has four or five pieces of twine oriented at right angles to the length of the comb. Place paper, screen wire, leaves, or something at the bottom of the comb to prevent the twine from cutting into the comb. Place the top bar at the top of the comb, bring the twine up to the top and tie securely. Lift the comb and tbh up and adjust the position of the comb. Put it in the hive, and the bees will firmly attach it to the tb in a few days. This method works well for utilizing combs that are taken from feral colonies in trees or combs removed from a dwelling. Paul Magnuson suggests that the comb can be wrapped in a U shaped piece of chicken wire that has about a 1 inch mesh, the wire being stapled to both sides of the top bar. All of this takes time. I prefer to switch from a conventional to a tbh by turning the conventional hive body upside down so that the frames aren't down in the rabbet but are resting on the edge at a level where tb's can be interspersed and drawn. Move the tb's to the tbh, put the frames toward the rear of the tbh and let the bees clear them out, then salvage the wax. Cover the gaps on the conventional frames with cardboard, duct tape, or large leaves until tb combs are drawn or the the frames are cleaned out. 19. Can queen excluders or queen barriers be used in tbh's? Some beekeepers have cut queen excluders to fit vertically in the tbh's and attached them to tb's. It should be easy enough to do if the hive body is rectangular, but I've seen excluders that Wyatt Mangum has made for his Kenya tbh's with sloping sides. I think that he has used plastic or metal slotted material, cut it to size and shape, then put a wood frame around it. A filled, capped comb forms a good honey barrier for the queen, but mostly I just don't worry. If the queen has gotten into the surplus area combs, I'll simply cut out the area where brood was found, press the honey, and...into the wax melter with the rest. If the comb is nice and has brood in it, I'll shift it to the brood area or use it for a nuc if desirable. I also use queen excluder tb's which are made by cutting a wire queen excluder into sections of 5 or 6 wires if I remember correctly. Blocks, thin pieces of wood, and a shorten bar are assemble to a tb so that the queen excluder section is at the bottom level of the tb, with the shortened tb below it. A starter strip on the shortened bar enables comb to be drawn out and good spacing preserved. I have used one of these excluder bars in the first hive that I made which has only 15 bars. A 10-bar shallow super worked well with the excluder bar. The excluder bar has also been used with 5-bar deep "supers" to grow queen cells. I plan to use excluder bars on 5-bar nucs this spring to get combs drawn in 5-bar supers. 20. How are tbh's overwintered? The same basic principles of overwintering that apply to conventional hives should apply to tbh's: adequate food reserves, provide good ventilation, insulate hives if necessary, provides entrances for flight on warm winter days, perhaps medicating for nosema if advisable. There are some other things that can be done with tbh's. A plywood or other type of partition can attached to a tb to make a "division bar" similar to "follower boards" used in conventional hives. This bar can be placed in the hive to reduce the volume. Paul Magnuson has suggested using sheets of newspaper to drape over the bars and down inside the hive to reduce the volume. This has the advantage of being removable by the bees as they need more space during spring buildup. He also suggested using pesticide-free old sacking to put on the top of the hive for insulation. I have used sheets of 1/2 inch foam insulation sheathing to make insulation boards for the tops of my hives. Leaving two or three of the tb notches uncovered in the cluster area provides ventilation holes. In some initial tests, I found that a colony to which I did nothing survived our north Georgia winter weather as well as those that were insulated and in which the internal volume was reduced. What you might need to do will, of course, depend on your location and colonies. Allen Dick has commented that in Western Canada many singles are wintered indoors, stacked up with only bottom entrances. It "seems (that tbh's are) a natural for indoor wintering." 21. How are tbh's fed? This is the joy of tbh's. Combs of honey and pollen can be switched from one hive to another very easily, but if sugar syrup is needed it's easy to put feeder jars or baggies *inside* the hive. I also use a "feeder bar" made by attaching a U shaped channel of 1/2 inch hardware cloth (sand screen) to a tb. Candy, extender patties,or pollen substitute patties can be placed in the channel of the U. Joel Govostes has fed dry sugar by placing it on top of conventional hive bars. I'm going to try a frame, perhaps 8 x 10 inches, made from 1/2 or 3/4 inch square stock, for feeding dry sugar this winter. A sheet of newspaper will be placed on top of the bars, an opening torn at the ventilation holes, the frame laid on, a cup of sugar poured around the hole, all covered with a sheet of newspaper, the insulation sheet and tin cover replaced, then...let's see what happens. I enjoy experimenting. Wyatt Mangum has made feeders out of plastic jugs and pvc pipe. His feeders plug into an entrance hole on his Kenya tbh's and function much like Boardman feeders. They seem to work very well. 22. Can quality queen cells be produced in tbh's? Certainly. Most of the procedures used to produce queens in conven- tional hives work as well in tbh's. There are also some advantage to using tbh's as well. I have made up bars with downward extensions and pivoting cross bars to which queen cell cups are fixed for grafting. I raised the queen cells in 5-bar queenless confined nucs. A 5-bar nuc above free-flying queenless colonies work well for me for queen rearing in which case I use the queen excluder bar described in a previous question. The best way for me to get queen cells is to use the method described by Marty Hardison in "Developmental Beekeeping", No.33, December 1994. He took a brood comb from a colony in which the queen had desirable qualities, cut strips with eggs from the comb, then tied the strips to bars with monofilament fishing line. It's easy to use a low wattage soldering iron to melt beeswax onto a bar, then wax the comb strips to the bar... or queen cell cups to a bar if I'm grafting. This method of using strips is very much like the "Miller Method" described in Laidlaw's book on queen rearing. The usual result is six or so queen cells formed per bar. Not all of them will be of good quality. The largest and best formed cells are cut out, waxed to a bar with the soldering iron, then a cage is waxed around the cell to confine the virgin queen when she emerges. I introduce virgin queens into mating nucs, or simply use the "ripe" cells directly. I have tried using the 4.5 inch flower pot nucs which Dean Breaux and others have described, but I had limited success in mid-summer due to heat primarily. In the cool of the coming spring, I'll try them again. Three tb's, each half the length (about 25cm) of my full-size bars, are used with each flower pot. A 5-bar mating nuc either made by dividing a 5-bar nuc in half and making entrance holes at both ends, or simply making up a small nuc half the size of the regular 5-bar nuc, gives me better results. It's possible to stock the nucs with a cup of bees gathered by brushing bees off brood combs, but what I like to do is to take a brood comb with bees, larvae, and pupae at different stages, cut a section out of the center of the comb, then saw the bar in half. I end up with two functioning combs for my queen nucs. Try that with a conventional frame. :) A dollop of queen candy can help the nuc get a good start. Small feeder bars are useful for holding the queen candy or marshmallows and other commercial candies which seem to work well. I give the nuc a ripe queen cell or introduce a caged virgin queen, then check back in a couple of weeks. [Tim Haarmann] It might be worth mentioning to people to standardize the dimensions their hives and top bars. That way when you start moving brood and honey around between hives, or queen rearing, everything is much easier. With some of my friends who use different dimensions than I do, when exchanging stuff, we have had to cut too many combs and bars to make it worth it. Seems like a simple recommendation, but one worth mentioning. 23. How are tbh's requeened? Well, I have found that if I leave mine alone with their endeavors, they will requeen themselves. :) But if one wishes to put in some specific queens that were ordered or were raised, then most of the procedures that you may have read about will probably work. I really prefer to introduce a queen by having that queen "at work" in a 5-bar nuc box, and then transferring at least 3 bars of brood and workers along with the queen into the colony from which the old queen has been removed. Guess I could not worry about removing the queen and just let the two of them fight it out, but such outcomes aren't certain. If I am introducing a queen only into a colony, or a virgin queen into a mating nuc, the queen cage designed by Wyatt Mangum works better for me than the conventional wooden cage. Wyatt uses 1/8 inch hardware cloth (sand screen) and shapes it into a U. He staples or nails the screen to some 3/8" square stock, puts some of the stock down the sides...stapling one piece and leaving the other for a "door". If the door piece is made about 3/8 inch short, a plug of candy or a minature marshmallow can be used to confine the queen until the hive workers eat it away. Wyatt wraps some small wire around the top of the cage and uses the wire to suspend the cage between two bars. Since the cage is about "bee space" in thickness, it goes between the combs very nicely. You can make the cage whatever size you wish, but about the size of a conventional queen cage is certainly large enough. This last year I tried raising queens in nucs around the periphery of my beeyard at Canton where I have 16 tbh's. I think I did a good bit of requeening when virgins on mating flights returned to working hives rather than to their nucs. Didn't plan it that way, and the bees didn't consult me. :( 24. Can tbh's be supered? Yes, if you're willing to lift supers. I have tried supering by removing a tb at the front of the hive to allow the bees to go up to the super. They will do it, but they'll also draw out the comb below and make it difficult to put a comb back. It's no big deal. That comb can be removed and "extracted", and two bars put back. The queen excluder bar which I described earlier works very well. It helps to have a drawn or partially drawn comb in the super to bait the bees below and to give them a good path to move up. Sometimes they may start building comb from the bottom up if you don't do this. When the super is filled, there may be a little comb attachment to the tb's on the tbh. If so, a piece of fine music wire or nylon twine can be pulled and "sawed" along between the tb's and the bottom of the super. This frees the super nicely. You can tilt the super on end, use the hive tool to quickly free any comb attachments at the ends of the combs, put the super back down, lift the bars out, brush the bees off, and put the comb into a collection tub. Leave a half inch of comb on the tb's, set the super back on the hive, and you've finished with that. [Dave MacFawn] I am in the process of modifying a Kenya Top Bar hive so I can install standard supers over the bars toward the rear of the Kenya hive (the bees have their brood chamber toward the front of the hive and the honey is stored toward the rear of the hive). The beauty of using the Kenya hive is that I will be able to pull individual brood comb out and not have to disturb the honey supers since the standard honey supers will be located over the rear honey combs. I have to date made the Kenya hive top bars the standard 19 inch length and made them installable in a standard hive body if desired (transfer brood, eggs, honey between hives). [Joel Govostes] I have used top bar hives before, which were supered like regular hives. The brood top bars were about 1" wide, but spaced to 1 3/8" center-to-center with small nails. [Joel Govostes] Here is a simple and fairly reliable method of preventing the attachment of comb between the stories, if you add supers: Lay a sheet of thin plastic (as used in weatherproofing or on plastic-sheet greenhouses) over the top bars, leaving about 1.5 inches clearance around the perimeter (or a central hole) to allow the bees access from the lower part of the hive to the super. The bees usually will not attach the combs much to this sheet, if at all. Double sheets might be even better. That way, if the lower sheet is propolized to the bars, and the upper sheet to the bottoms of the combs above, the sheets willl just separate when you lift the super off. Plastic can also be used between each additional super (i.e., if you're using honey supers with top-bars only, and not full frames.). There is an added benefit, too, in that the plastic will normally prevent the queen from going up into the supers. A simple "frameless" super can be made by constructing a box about 6" deep or so, and fixing top-bars or dowels across the top inside. Set the bars in about 3/8" down from the top to provide a bee-space, and space them 1.5" center to center for the proper honey-comb spacing. The bars can be coated with beeswax on the underside, or set up with comb-guides as previously described. If the bees build cross-combs it is not such a problem , as the combs do not require removal for inspection. When ready to harvest the super can be freed of bees, taken inside, flipped over, and the combs cut out. No need to remove the supporting bars. [end of JG's suggestions] 25. What species or strains of bees have been found best for use in top bar hives? I can't be of much help with this question yet. Of course, the hives are excellent for dealing with strains or species that are naturally very defensive since the hive is disturbed less as harvesting of combs, or inspections of brood areas, is done. The Italian bees that I keep seem to do well in the tbh's, but I have heard that Caucasians have a propensity to spread the brood horizontally better than Italians. This next year I'm going to try a couple of colonies headed by Caucasian queens for comparison. Tim Haarmann remarked earlier that he has seen no difference in the ability of the several different strains of bees in building straight combs. "Some bees get it, and some don't." -end- | |
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