This top bar is upside down so you can see the bee-covered comb
Here is my post about why I’ve decided to use foundationless and top bar hives for my treatment-free style of beehive management.
Motivation:
I moved a 5 frame conventional (Langstroth) nucleus hive into a top bar hive so they would have space to grow. The bottom corners of each frame are cut off to make the rectangular frame fit into the trapezoid shape of the top bar hive. Since I’m running only top bar hives now, it makes sense for me to have a consistent setup.
There are several approaches:
1. Use the top of the old frame as the new top bar;
2. Use cotton string to tie all the comb onto a new top bar; or
3. Use screws to attach the old frame to the bottom of a new top bar.
I chose to use the first approach because it is a faster process, and it keeps the maximum amount of comb intact.
All frames from the “old hive” should be in the same sequence in the new hive
Step 1: Find & capture the queen.
Step 2: Shake off the bees from the frame and remove the bottom 3 edges of the frame.
Cut w/loping shears then break off the frame edge
Step 3: Use follower as template to cut off excess comb.
The remaining comb is now the right shape to fit
Step 4: Place the frames into the new top bar hive.
Be careful to leave the correct bee-space
Step 5: Keep the queen caged until the bees move into their new home.
Step 6: The bees will search around for their new home & eventually move in.
Foragers are clustering on and trying to enter the (now closed) bathroom window
Step 7: Observe & adjust as needed
Other resources:
video demonstration at http://vimeo.com/5614348
The observation window on the hive helps me to monitor progress
Small sticks keep the bees from getting stuck in the raw honey
I have a strong opinion the best food for bees is the honey and pollen they have collected themselves–I’m reluctant to feed my bees sugar.
The standard approach for feeding bees is to use sugar syrup, or high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and although these will keep the bees alive it’s a destructive practice. I think there are better options.
The best solution is to put in a spare frame of honey from another hive, but this is my only top bar hive and I don’t have any surplus frames of honey.
Several beekeepers talk about making honey syrup by adding water, but it quickly ferments and spoils. There is also some discussion about feeding liquid honey, but there are problems with bees getting stuck and drowning in the sticky liquid.
Fortunately there is still some empty space in front of the hive, and I could fit in a pint of honey covered with sticks. The twigs give the bees a place to stand without getting stuck, and I used the thickest, most crystalized honey I had to prevent the ”drowning” factor.
It will take a few days before the bees move all the honey into the comb themselves–the observation window is a very useful to monitor their progress. When its empty, I’ll refill the tub and repeat the process. This way they will store the honey in the comb, and I’ll be able to remove the feeder dish before it’s in the way.
Starving bees
The last 2 weeks have been cold & rainy, and I’ve been worried about the new package I installed on April 10th. When I last checked them 2 weeks ago, the weather was good, and they were bringing in lots of nectar and pollen. I was so confident that I stopped feeding them, and that was a mistake.
The weather on Wednesday, May 5th was horrible, and I think this was the day that was the worst on my hive. Most of the day had rain mixed with sleet, and the temperature was hovering around 35 F. Thursday was much better and bees from my other hives were out flying again, but I didn’t get home until late evening. Friday I was home and I checked on my top bar hive as soon as the sun was on it, and I immediately put in a jar of syrup–the bees were starving. At least half of the bees had died in the cold. The stores they had brought in were enough to bridge a length of bad weather, but 12 days was too long for them. I did find the queen and she is still alive, but was lethargic like the rest of the hive. By the afternoon, they were scurrying around on the comb, but not flying yet.
The main alpha hive is doing fine–I left them with enough honey frames to make it through the bad weather. I knocked on the front door of the bravo and charlie nucleus hives, and lots of guard bees came out to greet me. I didn’t open that box because the queens will be mating this week, and I did not want to disturb them.
The observation hive also is doing well, except for the top frame behind the glass. That frame gets easily chilled, and does not get the same service from returning foragers as the bottom 5 frames. That top frame also had about a hundred drones emerge last week, and they were stuck behind the queen excluder. Because I need drones this week, I removed the top, and shook them down into the main box so they could get outside. I was not able to find the virgin queen that I had watched emerge, but they often are able to squeeze through an excluder (so I’ve heard).
My disappointment has been tempered some by the success of the nucleus hives–they are going better than I expected. Unfortunately the major hit my top bar hive has taken is due to my own mistake of removing the feed too soon from them.
Here is what I found in today’s inspection:
Tango hive: (new top bar hive)
Humid inside! I need to drill some ventilation holes in the bottom, and maybe another entrance hole. There is comb drawn on 7 bars, 5 of which are completely drawn. Some capped honey is on the end, but otherwise it’s relatively light on nectar–the bees have been using it to generate wax. This is fine now, but it means that I’ll need to feed them through the bloom dearth that hits in late May. Capped brood is visible, with a lot of eggs. The queen has been busy. I did see her but I had not set out to find her.
I removed the empty syrup can which came with the package.
Oscar hive: (observation hive)
The frame behind the window has not been maintained by the nurse bees. A few come up to feed the brood, but not enough. Many of the cells have larva that are dry. Many eggs did not hatch because they got chilled for lack of nurse bees and were removed 4 days after the frames were put in. A host of drones had been stuck last week behind the queen excluder between the top window and the bottom 5 frame nuc box. I released them, and the kids caught many of them as pets. They are now inside the house in various tube & cardboard cages.
At least 7 capped queen cells were in the bottom 5 frames. Hooray! I moved one frame up to the top position, so I can see when she hatches out.
24 hour mite drop on Wednesday evening, 4/21 was 18 mites. Contact paper was not sticky enough to hold the mites, so the next day I used a plastic board coated with coconut oil, which seems to work better. A 30 window yielded 13 mites Friday morning, 4/23.
It was a little tricky getting the access tube re-attached to the hive when I finished because it was full of workers trying to get back “home”. No major problems, and only 3 bees were released inside the house. They were promptly squished.
Alpha hive: (The original queen & half the frames that I split from)
The bees have pulled comb and completely filled two of the empty frames I put in last Friday. Worker brood, drone brood, eggs, capped honey, nectar & pollen are there in abundance. I have them in 2 western boxes now, but they have not yet moved down into the bottom box. All looks great here.
Bravo hive: (one of the new nucleus hives; 5 frames of a western box with a separate entrance)
Well populated with young bees, and even many foragers coming and going. It is adjacent to the original alpha hive, and has benefited from “drift” from the returning foraging worker bees. 3-6 queen cells visible, some open and some capped. One was broken open because it was attached to adjacent frames–I’m glad there were spares! This also looks very good with stores of honey, nectar, pollen. There are a lot of capped drone brood.
Charlie hive: (the 2nd of the new nucleus hives)
Same as bravo hive above, except I didn’t inspect the last two frames which I could see had been waxed together by the bees. There were a couple of queen cells in frame #3, and I expect there are several others in the last two frames. I didn’t want to risk breaking them. All looks great on this one too.
Notes:
Overcast but fairly warm ~60F. Inspection done at 12:30 PM.
Packages of worker bees w/a queen; One of these is mine
The queens came in individual cages, and ran $20 each if you just wanted to re-queen your hive. The whole family was along with me when we got them, and we all got to see how they were delivered.
The queen that I bought was in a tiny wooden box like this, only it was hanging inside the box of worker bees.
Nurse bees tend the cages of single queens waiting for a hive
Nurse bees tend the cages of single queens waiting for a hive
I ordered a new package of honey bees this year through the Puget Sound Beekeepers Association. For $75, I got 3 lbs of bees (about 12,000 insects, but I didn’t count) along with a queen. I picked up my new bees on noon Sunday, which turned out to be a nice spring day.
After we got home, ate lunch, and had our usual afternoon Siesta, they were ready to go into their new home. I put the finishing touches on our new top bar hive (http://www.biobees.com/), and moved it out to a good sunny spot in our back pasture. Although I had aspirations to build one out of recycled pallets, I was pressed for time, and used the scrap plywood instead. (that still counts as recycled wood in my book) The biggest change to the construction plans was the addition of a viewing window to make it easy to follow what happens inside.
New top bar hive ready for bees
This hive is 15” wide at the top (inside dimension), 6” at the bottom, and 48” long. There are 34 bars are 17-½” long and 1-3/8” wide, one of which has a divider attached so I can adjust how much space the bees have. This is my first top bar hive, and I do not have bars with drawn comb. That means there is a risk that the bees may choose to draw comb in the wrong direction. To help them choose wisely, I’ve notched the bars so there is a bit of wood hanging down about 1/8” for the bees to hang onto.
These top bars have a bump so the bees hang straight comb
Installation was pretty simple. I just opened the box and dumped the bees in. Because packaged bees don’t have a hive to defend they are quite gentle. I’m wearing gloves in this picture because it keeps me relaxed when working with the bees, and a calm beekeeper makes for more docile bees.
The queen cage is in my pocket
I gave the bees 12 top bars of space to get started. As they increase, I will move the follower down the hive and give them more bars to hang comb on. Until they have enough stores built up, they need supplemental feed too. The can of syrup that came with the package is sitting inside the hive on a couple of short sticks as a feeder. I will remove it in a day or two and feed dry sugar after the syrup is gone.
A towel keeps the queen from flying away when I open her cage
These bees have spent the last 3 days in a box together with their new queen, so they will accept her without more delay. That means that I was able to do a “direct release” of the queen into the mass of worker bees. She could still fly away if she wanted to, so I draped a towel over me to prevent her from escaping. Once that job was done, the last of the top bars went back in place, the roof went over them, and I left them to their new home.