Management and manipulations of top bar hives. Part 2.(4)

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.

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."