Need Top-Bar Beehive Advice!

[neiltina]

I made the top bar beehive from the article on BWH a couple of years ago. After a couple of false starts with bad queens, it's finally doing well, at least it was last fall. I'm planning on making a couple more like it now, since I'll hopefully have enough bees for a nuc this spring. A bee-keeper who was giving us advice, but who had never seen a top-bar hive, suggested that we remove the spline, and put in solid foundation. This worked fine, and helped the bees get going a little faster,but we weren't smart enough to make the bars wider, so when we take them out we crush a few bees, then start getting stung. Where we put in bars with just splines, we don't have this problem, but sometimes the entire comb falls off the top-bar, and then we crush a few bees while cleaning comb and honey off the bottom of the hive. The first time this happened, we thought the bees would be able to clean up and re-use the wax and honey, but it was too much for them, and we lost hundreds of bees. So what do you all think? If we use all splines, will we be OK? Have any of you lost comb that way? Should we just make the bar wider and use foundation? Thanks for you thoughts! Tina

[bee_pipes]

I would like to hear more detail about your experiences. We had a top-bar last year and the package installed died out - they were robbed to death by two near-by langstroths. The mistake was ours - we didn't put in a partition to reduce the amount of real-estate they had to protect - I thought the entrance would be small enough. That wouldn't seem to be the case. We fed them by putting a container on the floor of the hive, with hardware cloth to allow the bees to climb in and out, and wood chips to provide floats. This year we're going to try an entrance feeder. For the top bars, I have found that store-bought 2x2 is the right dimension for a top bar. We used a table saw to cut a kerf into the bottom of the top-bar, then shaved spline from some old lumber. The spline was glued and tapped in place with a hammer (it was a tight fit). I toyed with the idea of foundation to jump-start the process - don't know if I would use a sheet, but a short strip as a start, glued to the spline with melted wax, might be something to consider.

The only person I talked to on this forum that has experience with them is Martin, who goes by the nic AlchemyAcres. He said he tried them back in the 80's or so. They were not the most productive of hives, in Northern Pa. Since we are doing this to add bees to the area and get honey for our own use, any surplus is welcomed but we don't have to get the hives to produce as an income.

I too, saw the article in BHM and it got me started. I'm not much of a carpenter, so the thought of buiulding a langstroth was daunting. The top bar was quite simple to build. While there is information on the web about building them and managing them, there doesn't seem to be a lot about installing packages, feeding, etc. It's out there, it just doesn't seem to be in the volumes you see devoted to langstroths. One author suggested using wire to hold brood comb in place until the bees could reattach the comb, when starting with a nuc - the method he preferred for installing bees in the hive.

The comb is fragile, because of the single attachment at the top, and is not good for moving. I could see production being low because comb has to be constantly redrawn. Doing without the spline - I don't know. I have toyed with the idea of drilling small holes through the spline to provide additional anchorage. I know warm spline soaks up the wax better than cold spline - the wax never seems to penetrate the surface of cold spline and may be weak enough to pull off.

These are sites I found about tp-bar hives. For practical, hands-on experience I would have to defer to Martin, and would be as interested as you to hear his experience (with a season of mistakes under my belt). How 'bout it, Martin?

http://www2.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/main.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm
http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/index.htm

Our first attempt at building a top-bar:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/forum/yabb/forum2.pl?board=fau-livestock;action=display;num=1175029206

Regards,
Pat

[neiltina]

Pat,
Thanks for your thoughts. Some of the advice we got from the bee-keeper was great, and you might want to appply it before you try installing a new package of bees. First, as you said, was the entrance reducer, and we made a removeable "wall" to reduce their interior space. In fact, we cut an additional entrance on the other end, and put two nucs in, one one each end. This worked great. One end did great, and drew out comb quickly, multiplying and making honey. The other end lost it's queen, and after our replacement queen failed to lay eggs, we got another queen, and moved comb from the successful side to the other. This helped the weaker colony greatly, and they seemed to succeed for a while, but we eventually lost them. By then, the good side was strong enough to defend and fill the whole hive. If both sides had been successful, we planned to either move one hive or combine them for a faster full strength colony. We did try wiring comb with eggs onto our top bars, but when the bees built onto it, it wasn't strong enough, and broke into the bottom. If we had more time, something we wanted to try, and I think this might work, was to drive little nails into the ends of the top bars to lengthen them, and install them in a strong langstroth hive, wait for the bees to draw it out and fill it with eggs or honey, then move it into our top bar hive for a little boost.
Everything I have read says that a top bar hive should be more productive than a langstroth, and our bee-keeper friend thought this would be because the bees want to lay comb in this shape, so you're not fighting against their nature, nor wasting space that they still have to heat or cool and defend.
After reading what you wrote, it makes me want to use the foundation. Where we did that, it made the bees work seem easier and faster. We just cut the spline out, and made the saw kerf in the top bar wider to accept plastic foundation. We drilled three little holes through top bar and foundation, and put brads in to hold the foundation up. We then scraped comb off the plastic foudation into a bucket, and stained it for the honey. I wonder if it would work to stand the whole thing on the top bar upside down, and uncap. Would the honey run out? We couldn't apply centrifugal force, since comb etxtends beyond foundation, though I guess we could cut just that part off, then spin it. It seems difficult, though. I don''t think it would fit in a standard extractor. We'd have to build or own. Too much work. But less work for the bees, I guess.
One more thing that was suggested, and seemed great, was to drill three holes on each side of the hive up high for ventilation. We put corks in them when our colony was young, then opened them at the same time that we took the entrance reducer out. Now, the bees cover them from the inside with propolis for winter, and they just opened them a little last week. There's moreto write, but enogh for now. Gotta get to work! Thanks! And Martin, I'd also love to hear from you! Tina

[neiltina]

My dad is thinking of supplying pollen to our bees. The book says it will stimulate them to build brood. They are beginning to fly most days now, but our local "real" bee-keeper doesn't do much with his hives til May. Is it too early? or would it be OK to get them started early?

[bee_pipes]

I see you are in Southern Colorado. That's a bit different from the climate here. Do you have any bee-keeper organizations nearby? I don't, but have been included on a newsletter mailing list for the group at Lake Barkley, Ky. They suggested feeding pollen last month. If you don't have pollen, a substitute can be fed, sonsisting of soy flour, brewer's yeast and 2:1 sugar syrup. It makes a tackey dough that is pressed between two sheets of wax paper. One side is slit with a razore and placed slit side down to give the bees access to it. Of course, that's langstroth hives - a frame feeder arrangement would be needed for a top-bar. Maybe 1/2 hardware cloth envelope hanging from a top bar with gobs of the dough dropped inside? How do you normally feed your top-bar for extender patties, etc.?

There is a fellow named Busby (sp?) who is an active proponent of organic beekeeping. Don't know that I agree with all his methods, but I believe he may be out your way. He is in a yahoo group "Organic Beekeeping"

Regards,
Pat

[AlchemyAcres]

I used foundation for the Kenyan hives I built.

Are you familiar with wedged top bars for Langstroth hives?

I made the top bars for the Kenyan hive the same way...the wedge pops off the side and is stapled or nailed back into place to secure the foundation.

I used Dadant's DuraComb foundation cut into strips with a razor blade...I don't think that Dadant offers that foundation any more, but It's basically the same as the DuraGilt that they still sell, (has a flexible plastic sheet in the center for support), minus the metal strips on the DuraGilt.
With the wedge removed from the side of the frame...the strips of DuraComb could be tacked or stapled directly to the top bar and then further secured with the wedge.....this technique made for some fairly strong frames.

The dividers to keep the colony consolidated is a great idea...once they get some nice wide frames of brood going...frames with foundation can be set between the frames of brood/honey when there's a good nectar flow and they'll draw those out nice and wide in short order.

Here's a site with some pics of wedge top Langstroth frames...
In pic 4...when the foundation is set in place, that's when I tacked the foundation directly to the frame so it's super secure, then on to securing the wedge itself.

http://saulcreekapiary.com/Wax%20Foundation%20Installation.htm

Hope this info helps....

~Martin :)