A BEE thread....for those interested in beekeeping.

[Beekissed]

Happy New Year!

Does anyone have advice on transferring a regular four-frame nuc into a top bar hive? All ideas welcome.

This guy has a great site for all things bees and also TBH....I'll quote him on that practice:

Quote: http://www.bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm

This guy is the first one I talked with when contemplating TBHs and he has sound, practical advice, so you may want to bookmark his site. He does talks all around the state and I think they even have a YT channel on his talks.


Here's a YT vid on doing something of what you need to know...seems a little complicated....

These folks make it look pretty easy!

 

[CherMoz]

Thank you Bee!

 

[Beekissed]

YW! Keep us updated on your TBH this season? I always love to hear about folks using these. They've come a long, long way in the beek community since I first inquired about them on beek forums....those guys would just bite your head off and laugh about the TBHs. All except Mike Bush, of course...he was sort of instrumental in crossing those two worlds between the old die hard Lang guys and the new TBH crowd and even stood up to them about using all natural means to combat the varroa mite. I like Mike...will probably buy a one of his books this season.

 

[CherMoz]

The latest book (a Christmas gift) I received on honeybees is "Song of Increase" by Jacqueline Freeman. I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet.

 

[Leahs Mom]

@CherMoz

Have you considered just changing over to foundationless continuing to use your Langstroth boxes? You can have the same benefits of the top bar but use your standard equipment. You can make the transition by inserting foundationless Langstroth size frames in between your current frames and continuing to replace them over time until you are totally transitioned over.

Michael Bush also comments on how to do that as well.

We are currently building a "long Langstroth" that holds the equivalent of 3 Langstroth boxes. I have a TB, but have decided to try foundationless in a long hive so that I can use the standard frames. You can get "F-Style" frames from Kelley Bee that are the foundationless.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Duplicated for some reason. Please disregard

 

[Beekissed]

@CherMoz

Have you considered just changing over to foundationless continuing to use your Langstroth boxes? You can have the same benefits of the top bar but use your standard equipment. You can make the transition by inserting foundationless Langstroth size frames in between your current frames and continuing to replace them over time until you are totally transitioned over.

Michael Bush also comments on how to do that as well.

We are currently building a "long Langstroth" that holds the equivalent of 3 Langstroth boxes. I have a TB, but have decided to try foundationless in a long hive so that I can use the standard frames. You can get "F-Style" frames from Kelley Bee that are the foundationless.

I've built a TBH using a box style hive as well, using the foundationless Lang frames that I just left the bottoms off of. I'm hoping to obtain some old drawn comb in the spring to see if I can lure a wild swarm in, if possible. I'm not interested in any bees except feral ones at the moment.

I converted this nightstand into a long Lang TBH, though it's not as long as some. Only about two boxes worth.





My entrance is at the bottom of the bottom "drawer" of the hive...it's blocked out just enough for good bee traffic there. I'm going to use a "quilt" on top of my bars in this and have arranged the same sort of ventilation under the roof as a Warre, so I guess you could say this is some kind of Lang/Warre/TBH hybrid experiment.

 

[Leahs Mom]

@Beekissed
I'm keeping my eye on here to see if you catch a swarm in there. I really like that little hive box.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

I'm moving over to all medium boxes. Here it is mid winter and am starting to wonder if there is a limit to how far North this system will work. Having reacurring thoughts of bees starving with food just one box above them but weather is too cold to move up.

If you use all mediums how far North are you?

 

[Lapeerian]

I'm moving over to all medium boxes. Here it is mid winter and am starting to wonder if there is a limit to how far North this system will work. Having reacurring thoughts of bees starving with food just one box above them but weather is too cold to move up.

If you use all mediums how far North are you? 

The problem usually isn't moving up, but over. Because they have to move the whole cluster over frames, rather than up like a chimney. This is why bees will starve during a long cold winter with frames of honey next to them. During a warm spell they can move over a frame.