Aye you'll not find someone who has less time for TBHs than me. A hard lesson learned there. Although I believe Madasafish uses them with some success - good luck to him.
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Aye you'll not find someone who has less time for TBHs than me. A hard lesson learned there. Although I believe Madasafish uses them with some success - good luck to him.
We tried up to six tbh and two tbh nucs for three years here. And don't any more. Even sheltered & insulated, fed the same if needed and monitored/treated for varroa (bit of a palaver) the colonies fared much worse than the Commercials - same apiary, sister queens. And the mice adored them...climb the nice angled legs and nip under the roof into the cuddly wuddly insulation. But at least not in the hive, eh...perhaps not but they could chew the corks.
Top Bar hives are fine:
IF
1. You ignore the rubbish posted by the Natural Beekeepers of this world: mostly they live in places where any fool can overwinter bees in a hive that has holes in it and expect them to survive. I did my research and amended the designs. and insulated.
2. You don't want much honey.
3. You like lots of hard work to get a little honey.
I am converting to Langstroth
I would be interested in the history of these maud bees if anyone has a bit of background on them
pigeon nest moved again by high wind both out of nest but this time one has been eaten by something
put the other little chap back and added a few stabilising branches he/she seems ok
I would be as well as I can't get those images of French AMM arriving in Craibstone in the 1930s out of my head!
Look to be nice quiet bees.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7F5u7Uqt1U
Scroll to 1.05 for the package of 'abeilles vivantes'
Good little video must have been before sound though
I though that was the old camera noise like chaplain films :)
This is a modern mini cine camera
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mobius-Pocke...+action+camera
Aren't the Maud bees a strain of AMM that was developed by Bernard Mobus? And if so they post-date that video by some decades? I'd like to know more about their history as well.