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Thread: Top bar hive seduction!

  1. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by susbees View Post
    How do you know bees like to go up, perhaps it's just that trees tend to grow that way? And they like to be high up, but I don't see that many hives off the ground very far (and office blocks don't count) ...
    Watching them for the past 4 years or so, in standard hives, various long hive adaptations including a fair few Top Bar Hives and speaking to others who've tried long hive variations. I'm not entirely unconvinced that the WBC might not have the right idea with only 10 frames in the brood boxes.

    If you stick a super on a brood box, especially a 14x12 that only has 8-9 frames drawn out they'll tend to ignore the outside frames in favour of playing in the super instead.

    As for height, I'm not convinced that it has much of a bearing. They tend to nest high up in the wild because, most likely, that's where the majority of suitable sites are to be found. Tell the bees that quite happily settled in an empty nuc I'd forgotten to close up that they should be looking for sites 10+ feet, rather than 10 centimetres up in the air.

  2. #52
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by susbees View Post
    and the bees are often significantly calmer than in the big boxes.
    I have never seen any evidence for that other than wishful thinking. Small colonies or nucs are sometimes well behaved until they grow to fill the box and temper can become worse. In my opinion, bad bees are bad in any container and good bees will be calm in any container. the shape of the box is unlikely to change the behaviour too much. I keep 15-20 colonies in nationals and use little or no smoke. If I have a colony that is lively I find that it stays that way on almost every inspection until it gets requeened. Good genetics trumps box shape every time!

    The bad back argument is often mentioned, but you can remove frames one at a time from any super if you donīt want to remove the whole thing at once.
    I am with Calum re the moveable frames - very useful discovery.
    i still think the only unique selling point of the TBH is the low cost of getting into beekeeping.
    Last edited by Jon; 03-02-2012 at 03:04 AM.

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    Thymol treatment in TBHs?

    Easy: I make up a mix with wax and essential oils.. Use string instead of oasis: http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1840

    and stick strings between combs with brood.

    Mites drop as normal and the bees get right peed off and drag strings out of hive about 3-4 weeks later.. And it's cheaper than buying Apiguard etc..



    Pallets treated? I use only ones with white wood: only untreated/unpainted: builders merchants use them for deliveries of tiles, sand, cement etc... Euro pallets are recyclable and all treated.. so worth something and US for bees.

  4. #54
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    Where I think perhaps the calmer bit comes from is the top bars are flush so you're only exposing at most two frames of bees at any one time.

    Inspection cloths on a standard hive should achieve similar I'd have thought. I've not used the so far but will be giving them a go this year.

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    Senior Member Mellifera Crofter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nellie View Post
    Where I think perhaps the calmer bit comes from is the top bars are flush so you're only exposing at most two frames of bees at any one time.

    Inspection cloths on a standard hive should achieve similar I'd have thought. I've not used the so far but will be giving them a go this year.
    ... and potentially carry disease from one colony to another?

    Perhaps I'm just being neurotic. Most people don't change or disinfect their gloves between hives.

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    Unless I've got cause to suspect there's something wrong I tend not to within Apiaries to be perfectly honest unless I've got myself covered in propolis in which case the hive tool goes in the soda and a new pair of gloves go on. I do try to remember to change or at least scrub the hive tool between inspections but I'd be a liar if I said I always remembered. No kit that comes in contact with a hive goes between apiaries without going through a soda solution bucket though.

    I think there's taking reasonable precautions to prevent the spread of disease and then there's taking it to extremes. Techncally I should remove swarms and quarantine them somewhere, but in the end I settle for dosing them with OA and keeping a close eye on them for a few months. From a practical point of view there is nowhere I could take them around this part of the world that would place them in effective quarantine.

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    Hi,
    if I wanted to save my back, I'd get one of these.
    Getting the entire crop as comb honey would be a bit tricky here, 40kg is my average harvest per hive - and the spring harvest has to be stored untill its all been tested... Not really practical.
    Yes you are right, it is no problem to keep bees in a tbh whats the htbh? I have 21 colonies + a full time job and a daughter, love the time with my bees, but have to keep it efficient. Or I'd prefer to keep mine in a carved tree stump like this one - way cooler.

  8. #58
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    What an interesting place to direct the bee traffic. That even beats Jon's attempt. Is it really designed for bees and not letters or car park donations?

    Once again the differences between beekeeping here and in Germany are surprising. You have to have your crop tested - for what?

    As for cover cloths I don't like them. As long as it is a reasonably warm day, the ventilation calms the bees. Don't know if it is light, or the dispersal of alarm pheromone, but I think it is better without. Not that I've done rigorous scientific tests of course.

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    I'm intrigued as to why you don't like inspection cloths. With regards to alarm pheromone, surely the fewer bees exposed to it the better? If you have bees that aren't "alarmed" to begin with, especially a few frames down from where your attention is, the more relaxed the inspection will be?

  10. #60
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I nearly always use 2 cover cloths aka tea towels.
    Bees like to be in the dark and exposing a bigger area tends to put more bees in the air.
    Each to their own. I hardly use smoke either and some like to smoke the colony heavily a few minutes before opening.

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