Top Bar Hive - Progress

I'm loving my top bar hive. The bees seem to be loving at too. After my initial attempts to populate the hive failed I was a bit discouraged but its all go now. I've discovered a few design flaws (or design opportunities?) which I'll details a bit later.

There are two main features of the hive that increase the enjoyment for me. The first is the bees are so much calmer. I'm fairly careful about managing my queens so my bees are very calm normally anyway but being able to remove one comb at a time seems to agree with them. I assume that when a Langstroth hive is opened there is quite a draft that cools the entire hive, from bottom to top. This is not the case with the top bar. The second is no heavy lift while bending over the hive. I sit on a stool (upside down flower pot) for the duration of the inspection and can take all the time I like.

Progress

Bar 8, 24 October

Bar 8, 16 October

 These two photos were taken a week apart. The first shows the bees just starting to build on a new bar. In the second they have stopped building and start using it for pollen storage.

Bar 7, 16 October

Bar 7 also shows significant expansion. An inspection of the second photo reveals a small amount of capped honey and some freshly capped brood. These photos were taken four weeks apart. It is interesting to note how the comb shape has changed from round to matching the shape of the hive.

Bar 7, 7 November

 

Bar 9, 16 October

Bar 9, 7 November

The progress on bar 9 is more dramatic. This bar was moved from the far end of the hive to directly above the entrance on the 16th. The bees seem to have taken to the bars very readily.

Bar 9, 24 October

Design Flaws

Bowed Comb

There are two issues I have discovered so far. The first is a simple fix. The bars are grooved down the center then the groove is filled with wax. When I manufactured the bars I thought a patch of wax in the middle would be sufficient to encourage the bees to build in the correct place. This proved to be the case but once the comb was bigger than the patch of wax the bees avoided the groove, resulting in bowed combs. This has a knock on effect for the next few bars and some of the combs are overlapping bars because of this bow. This can be easily remedied by making the patch of wax larger but I don't want to encourage them to attach the combs to the side wall by making the patch too big.

The second issue is the installation of the viewing window. This is a CD case glued to the outside of the hive. This leaves a large recess in the wall, which the bees have expanded the combs into. The combs are not attached to the wall but they will not fit elsewhere in the hive. This makes it difficult to arrange the frames as I'd like, to encourage the growth of the hive. The next version will have to have another piece of window installed on the inside. I'm sure they won't complain about having double glazing installed.

Nuc and a swarm

It appears that when I made up my latest nuc I didn't select the brood frame very well. Around midday Saturday I noticed a lot of bee activity around a Kowhai tree in the natives corner. Closer inspection revealed a small swarm. I'd be surprised if this swarm lasted very long unaided especially given the cold nights we are having in Christchurch at present I set about collecting it.

A full inspected of the top bar hive yesterday had revealed no queen cells so the swarm can't have originated from there. The swarm looked too big to have originated from the nuc but that was the only option left. It seemed unlikely that some else's swarm had settled near my hives.

I'm always amazed at the bees ability to communicate. The Queen Substance must be a very strong smell for them. Whenever a swarm is knocked from its perch there is a lot of confusion, bees flying everywhere, but within a few minutes things calm down and the bees collect around the queen again. I placed a nuc box under the swarm, knocked them off and waited. It no time at all order replaced confusion and the majority of the bees were heading in the same direction, into the nuc box.

A queen, seconds after hatching

The nuc was well populated, prior to the swarm, to I took this to mean they wanted more space. I replaced the nuc box with a full depth super and transferred the remaining population, which was still significant, across. It didn't take long to confirm where the swarm had come from. The photo on the left clearly shows several supcedure cells. Most were ripped open but one was in tact. I cut it off and help the queen hatch. She then flew away so I don't know whether she survived or not.

A sheet of newspaper, then a half height box prepared the new hive more merger with the swarm. After dumping the swarm into the half height I slipped the lid on and left them to it. The queens will fight it out I suppose and since they are both new I have no opinion on which one would be better - may the best queen win.

Top Bar Hive Populated, 3rd time lucky

Populating my top bar hive proved to be a bit of a challenge. A standard Langstroth frame wont fit so how to convince a large handful of bees to stay put was the question.

I seemed to have achieved it as part of the move of my main hive but it was a journey. My first few attempts failed but I've learned a few things.

My first attempt was doomed to fail and I knew it when I did it but I was interested to see how the bees reacted and they, as they often do, amazed me with their ability to communicate. I had a 4 frame nuc that had lost its queen. I'm guessing she didn't come back from a mating flight. I emptied all the bees out of the nuc into the top bar hive and blocked the entrance. Half a litre of syrup was provided to make them feel welcome and they seem to appreciate it. After a day I unblocked the entrance to see what would happen. I should point out at this point that I had left the nuc where it was and the top bar was sitting next to it.

Shortly after unblocking the entrance I thought there was a swarm starting (even though they had no queen...) but it appears they held a family meeting, decided they didn't like their new house and all together took off for their old house. In the less than five minutes the top bar hive was empty and nuc was full again. How they communicated the idea to everyone all at once I don't know but it was amazing to watch.

These of photos show the sequence of events.

Confusion	Found the wax
Clustering	Gone...

Once they had all arrived back in the nuc box I left them alone for a few weeks. I then prepared the main hive for merging the nuc and was about to move the frames across when I noticed some brood. I have no idea where the queen came from as this was several months after I had placed a queen cell into the nuc and there was definitely no brood previously. One old hand suggested I had struck it lucky by receiving a queen who got lost on her mating flight.

On my next attempt I took a couple of frames and cut a block out of them. I then heated some wax and used it to stick the cut outs to the top bar. The bees seemed quite happy with this arrangement and stayed put (queen and all). They would probably still be there now if I hadn't neglected them over winter. It appears they ran out of feed and so died out. They had made one small comb on a top bar, in the perfect position, so it's a shame they didn't survive.

My third attempt follows the plan I talked about before which seems to have worked. Brushing one brood frame of bees, the one with the queen on, looks to have been sufficient. I took this photo just a few minutes ago by removing some of the top bars at the far end of the hive and poking the camera in. You can see the container if syrup (which I keep topping up) sitting on the mesh at the bottom. The top bars are covered with some rubber carpet underlay and I could feel the heat rising out of the hive when I lifted it. I'm hoping that when I inspect them this weekend there is some brood or eggs and they have started some new comb.

Hive Two - Second Inspection and some plans

Hive two now consists of 2 full depth, one .75 and a queen excluder. Its too big for my small yard now and I now have two young boys running around in the garden so the chances of bees getting squashed by them is increasing. They don't like being stung either...

I still want to try my hand at breeding a quantity of queens but I plan to use the top bar hive for that. The top bar hive still isn't populated. I did have it populated but they died out over winter. More on this in a later post...

There is a community garden just a few blocks away from where I live. They sound keen to have a hive there so I plan to move hive two onto their land. Because it is so close normally I'd have to move the bees twice. Once to a temporary location more than 5km away and then move them to their final location a few weeks later. This is because the bees are extremely good at navigating but forget to check where home is when they leave so if I move the hive a short distance the bees will take off in the morning, recognise the area they are in and so return to the old site.

To overcome this I plan to do the following

1. Breed a new queen in hive two
2. When the queen is almost ready to hatch move the current queen and some workers into the Top Bar Hive. If I do a graft today they should be almost capped next weekend (7.5 days) so next Sunday might be the time to make the move. Taking that into account, I won't do the graft today.
3. At the same time move Hive two aside and place the Top Bar Hive in its place
4. Move Hive two to its new location, about 1km away.

This should mean that any of Hive two's field bees that return to the old location will find their way into the Top Bar Hive, boosting its population. Any new field bees, heading out on their first flight, will orientate themselves based on the new location and return there.

In preparation for this I have located Hive two's queen and isolated her to the bottom box. I've also placed my queen rearing frame into the hive so that the bees can prepare it for a graft.

The hive is brimming with bees, every frame was reasonably well covered in bees, right out to the side walls. I weighed the top box (the .75) as I thought it would be interesting to see how quickly its weight increases. It is currently 16kg. This includes all the bees in the box at the time, 9 frames, a couple of frames of almost capped nectar and the remainder brood.

I've yet to see any significant varroa activity this season. I inserted a drone frame during the last inpection and it is almost all drawn out now. There was some brood in it but its not capped yet. Drone take about 14 days from capping to emerge so I want to remove the frame some time in the next two weeks. I spotted one worker with a mite on its back but otherwise all seems good. I still have put a sticky board in the mesh to see what the mite drop is, I really should get on to that.

First Inspection of the Season - Hive Two

Hive Two is my original hive and has always been very strong. They came through winter very well, considering I haven't touched them for at least 4 months (maybe thats why they come through so well...?)

There was very little dross on the base board and only 6 frames that had any significant rouge comb on. While inspecting the bottom box I came across brood on the 3rd frame in (from the sunny side) but no evidence of recent queen activity down there. There were also a couple of frames that looked like they were almost ready to be capped which is also very impressive for this time of year.

I inserted a drone frame as part of my varroa control strategy. This is earlier than I though I'd be able to but as there were plenty of drones around already I decided to give it a go. In my next inspection I'll try to move the queen into the bottom box and place a queen excluder on to keep her there. This will keep the brood contained and limit the mites options.

Brood, lots of it

The second box, which is full depth as is is the first), also had good honey and pollen stores. There were several frames with significant numbers of eggs so the queen is obviously healthy and active. There were also two sides fully covered by brood.

The third box is a three quarter and had some nectar but nothing else of interest.

Removing center of base board

Varroa seems to be non existent in this hive at present, which is very encouraging. I had expected to have to treat. I've only visually inspected for varroa by breaking open drone brood and eyeballing the workers so there could still be a significant population.

The finished baseboard

My local hardware store sells 3mm galvinised mesh so I bought a piece, but the center out of my bottom board and replaced it with the mesh. This will make monitoring the varroa population much simpler as I won't have to disturb the bees to do it. It also means that any mites that fall of the bees (or are groomed off) will fall out of the hive and not be able to climb onto another bee.

Top Bar Hive - Reasons Why

Top Bar Hives seem to be surfacing as a good alternative to the Langstroth hive, more so for the hobbyist than for commercial operations. This post details some of the reasons why and takes a look at my initial attempt at building.

Some of the advantages of a top bar hive (TBH) that I have seen in various publications are

1. Simple to build, as opposed to the complex frames of the Langstroth
   True, although the design is very well understood now and pre-made parts of readily available
2. Much less disturbance of the colony
   This is the feature I am most interested in. The hive can be opened without creating a chimney that quickly cools the hive. It is also theoretically possible to inspect the brood nest without disturbing the storage and vice versa. I'm not sure yet, as I have only just populated my hive, whether this is practical as I can visualise the top bars being fairly well stuck together after a long period of with no inspections
3. Harvesting honey is simpler, though more destructive
   I picture harvesting the honey with a bucket and a brush. Simply brush the bees off, then cut the comb off the top bar and drop it into the bucket. It should be possible to make an escape board to fit a top bar hive but I'll wait and see if its needed.
4. The combs and cells are the size the bees want, not the size of the manufactured foundation
5. Very little off season storage required
   No supers to store, closing a hive for winter should just involve sliding a separator into the hive, at the end of the brood area.
6. Less chance of transferring diseases like AFB
   As no frames are removed and stored then redistributed there should be very little transfer of materials between hives. It is still possible to boost the population of one TBH with a comb of brood from another hive, but that is easily kept track of.

There are many designs of TBH, I chose to base mine on the design at www.biobees.com because it detailed the dimensions and provided a simple method. Much of the material I read suggested that the dimensions are quite critical and vary from species to species so using existing research made sense.

I bought some native timber tongue and groove from a demolition firm (for the body of the hive) and some untreated boxing timber for the top bars. The base is some fibreglass fly screen and the lid is just a frame made with some tongue and groove and black plastic. I intend to bend some galvanised iron on to it at some point but the plastic will do for now. I've also but some carpet underlay between the roof and top bars to provide some insulation.

This is the finished product with a house warming gift for the new occupants. The black square on the side is a CD case that is glued in place and can be opened to peer inside (more on this in a later post). On the right you can see the landing area and the hive with no top bars. I'm not sure that putting the entry perpendicular to the combs is a good idea but I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

You can see the fly screen secured to the bottom of the hive in this upside down photo. The intention is to cut a board that will cover the fly screen material in winter to reduce drafts.

The top bars are untreated boxing timber ripped down to the correct width (see the plans at biobees) and then a groove is sawn to a depth of 2mm up the center. I've then melted some wax and pored a patch in the middle to encourage the bees to build their combs in the 'correct' place. The correct place being where I want them to build the combs.

In a later post I'll cover the trials I had getting the bees to stay, but I think I've solved that problem now. All that remains to be seen is whether they will survive the winter.

Home made escape board - sort of

Having extracted a couple of supers of honey I had a few frames that needed drying off. I placed these on my home hive and tried to improvise an escape board. The theory was that if the bees movement between the hive and the wet supers was restricted they would 'rob' them and then leave them with almost no bees. Unfortunately I didn't put enough thought into it. It was fairly apparent it hadn't worked as soon as I cracked the supers away from the board.


Since I was using a flat piece of board there was no bee space on the bottom. The holes I drilled were up against the frames of the lower super and therefore blocked. I'm guessing it was very hot in the supers the next day because when I checked on them that evening there was a large number of dead bees.



A quick rethink and a much larger drill bit might have done the trick, I'll have to check on them tomorrow.

Queen Bee Graft Progress

There has been some progress on growing the new queens. Cells 1, 4 and 5 have been accepted by the bees. 2 and 3 have been cleaned out. Initially it appeared the bees had accepted all five, which would have been a record for me. The photo on the right was taken on the 1st of Feburary, one day after the graft.
There are bees clustered around all five cells. The photo on the left was taken on the 3rd, cells 2 and three being ignore. Looking back at the images of each graft I'd guess that #2 was rejected because it was quite dry and probably died while it was out of the hive and #3 was part way up the cell wall. The three that were accepted are all in plenty of royal jelly, something to look out for next time I suppose.

In this image the 4 - 5 day old grub can be seen, well surrounded in royal jelly and quite a lot larger than a worker.

Grafting Queens

As I previously mentioned I'm trying my hand at breeding queens. I'm also aware that the queens in my second apiary are nearing the end of their productive life and I need to replace the queen I sent north, which has arrived and is in good health.

I spoke to the beekeeper I sent the queen and he said they were quite loud when they arrived and to calm them down he wet his finger and let a little water run down the inside of the cage. This calmed them immediately. I hadn't thought about water for them before, but the candy is quite dry. The queen is now in the destination hive so hopefully all is well and the candy has been removed.

Today I grafted 5 grubs into Bozi queen cups. These are plastic cups that make it very easy to transport the queen cells to the nucs or an incubator for hatching. The cups cost about $NZ0.10 each and can be reused. My supplier sells them in bags of 100 so I haven't had to reuse any yet.

This photo shows the top bar of my grafting frame. The white spot marks position #1.

The Bozi cells are secured to the frame by being pressed onto plastic feet. I bought the feet from a plastics supply company and then used short screws to fix them to the frame. Once the cells are capped a gentle twist will remove it from the frame. This also makes it a lot easier to do the graft as the cup can be held in a comfortable position into the grub is place it in.

I use a 'Chinese' grafting tool because that works for me. There are many other tools that people use ranging from a small paintbrush to a flattened bike spoke or coat hanger. It doesn't really matter as long as you can pick up and release the grub. The chinese grating tool has a flexible tounge which is used to pick the grub up and a push button, much like a Bic pen, on its top that is used to push the grub into the cup.

A well fed, healthy hive is much easier to graft from because there will be a large about of royal jelly in the cells with the grubs. This lubricates the pick up and release process so that it becomes a very smooth action. The grubs on the right side of the bee are well fed are ideal for grafting.

Below are photos of each graft I did. Number 3 looks like a bad one but the others seem fine. It will be interesting to see which ones the bees accept.

1	2
3	4
	5

Honey, but no brood

I visited my second apiary today but forget to take the camera, which was disappointing because there were a few photos I would have liked to have taken.

Before I even opened hive three I knew I was in for some back breaking work. Just tapping on the hive mat (the ceiling) told be it was well sealed and full of honey. Hive one was the same.

The population in hive three seems to be down and it was completely broodless, which is very odd. They have plenty of honey (or had...) and there was also a reasonable amount of pollen in the brood chamber. Even though most of the space was taken up by honey there were still a few frames with mostly empty cells. The weather has been very mixed but the bees have obviously been getting out as evidenced by the amount of stores they have. I sighted the queen and she looked very healthy and large enough to be laying. I removed a full super of honey, including a couple of fully capped frames from the brood chamber, and filled the gaps with some drawn comb. I'll have to pay them another visit in a few weeks and see if the queen has started laying yet.

Hive one was boiling over with bees. I took a three quarter depth super off them and gave them an empty, but drawn, full depth super. They were also broodless, I didn't sight the queen so it could be that the queen in hive three is failing and the queen in hive one is dead but it seems very coincidental that both queens would stop laying at the same time.

As far as food sources go, I know we have the following natives in the foraging area and they will be flowering now, or have just stopped flowering

• kotukutuku
• makomako
• mahoe (lots of)
• kanuka, manuka
• ti kouka

There are also hundreds of eucalyptus trees that the land owner has planted for firewood.

I'm wondering if the queens have stopped laying because there has been a sudden drop off in available food. October, November and December are the main flowering times for New Zealand natives and we're now entering  fruiting time, which is not much help to the bees. Both the queens are at the end of their second season so its probably time to replace them anyway.

The supers I took off weigh 39.1Kg (for the full depth) and 27.2Kg for the ¾ depth, which is about right for 10 fully drawn and capped frames. About a third of this weight is the wood and plastic frame and another third for the wax leaving about one third honey. If this estimation is correct I should have about 25-30Kg of honey after extraction.


There is definitely some manuka or eucalyptus honey in this batch. I haven't tasted it yet but the photo on the right shows what I'm used to seeing, very white wax cappings. The photo to the left shows what several of the frames in the ¾ height super look like, very dark and not white at all. There are ridges running along the surface, instead of the mostly smooth surface of 'multi-flora' honey. It will be interesting to compare the flavors once I've extracted it, if I can extract it. Manuka honey is difficult to extract and used to be an unwanted crop, not many years ago, but now, with the discovery of 'active' manuka honey it is a significant earner for some bee keepers.


I've also heard that the queen I sent north has arrived and seems to be in good condition, despite being in the national mail system for the better part of 5 days.

Varroa Infestation

I've previously treated one of my hives for varroa with Apistan because I found a couple of varroa in the hive after doing a 24 hour survey. It probably wasn't strictly needed but I did it anyway.

I now have a full infestation that will need treating as soon as I have taken my honey supers off. This photo is the result of opening 3 drone cells. There are at least 6 mites in this photo. I had shivers down my spine as I watched one mite climb onto the back of a bee. The bee could obviously feel it as it desperately scratched at its back, trying to knock the mite off. The mite disappear into the gap between the abdomen and thorax. To make matters worse I had heard that a bee having a mite on its back is comparable to a human having a large rat attached to them and sucking their blood. Makes me feel for the bees as they seem to be completely unable to do anything about it and the mites can move very fast. To get an idea of the scale have a look at the photo on the right. The worker bee to the right of the queen has a mite just under her right wing.

Spotting the mites is quite easy. I found, once I knew what I was looking for, that I could pick a mite on the back of a bee, on a frame will of bees, with no problem at all. I suppose that once you 'have your eye in' for what is normal, the abnormallity of the mite sticks out like a sore thumb.

One of the most common techniques is to open a drone cell and have a look for the mites there. The mites prefer drones as they take a few days longer than the workers to mature. These few extra days give the mites a little longer to breed, resulting in one or two extra mites per brood cell.

Many people use a capping scratcher but I've found just busting up the drone cells with my hive tool to be sufficient. A healthy pupae is quite white so the mites are obvious. This drone pupae has two mites clearly visible on it. You can see that I have just removed a patch of drone cells.

Next month, as funds allow, I plan to buy some drone frames and use the technique described in this study (and this one) to see if I can knock the mite population back to a managable level. I suspect I'll still have to resort to Apistan, or something similar, to ensure the colonies health throughout winter.

The most encouraging part of this study is stated in the abstract.
"These data demonstrate that drone brood removal can
serve as a valuable component in an integrated pest management program for V. destructor and may
reduce the need for other treatments on a colony-by-colony basis."

Queen Bee Health

As mentioned previously I'm trying my hand at queen rearing so I'm interested in what a healthly queen looks like and her behaviour. The queen bee is an egg laying machine. All members of the colony are her children so the temperament of the hive is very significantly affected by the queens health.

These two photos show queens from separate colonies. The larger one, on the left, is the queen from my hive. The smaller once, on the right, is a queen I grafted and is currently being raised in a nuc. She is not laying yet, which may explain why she is smaller. I'll take another photo of her before I send her away to see if she is any bigger.

These two queens are mother and daughter. The mother, on the left, has a much longer abdomen than her daughter. This may be to do with the age of the grub I grafted, the hive conditions when the bees were growing here or just the fact that show is not laying yet.

Both queens have clean, golden bodies. I believe this can indicate their age, they darken as they grow older. If you look closely at the mother (left) you'll notice she is missing a wing. I'm not sure when she lost this but it was obviously after her mating flight as she is laying well. You might also have noticed the varroa mite on the body of the bee directly to the right of the daughter queen.

Laying pattern and habits can also tell you a lot about the health of the queen. This photo shows brood as various stages of development. The white, rice shaped objects, are eggs. They will stay like this for 3 days before hatching into grubs. The grubs are the wet spots at the bottom of the cells. These grubs will grow until they are ready to be capped, like the grub at the top right of the photo.
This queen is laying well as every cell has an egg. Older, failing queens and drone layers often lay multiple eggs in one cell.


There are many signs of queen and colony health, these are a couple I saw on my last inspection.

My Apiary

As I live on a 400 square meter section, including a 90 square meter house, there isn't a huge amount of space. The bees don't seem to mind being squished in on one side of garden so no problem.


I currently have one hive and two nucs at home and another two hives further out of town. The first photo shows the setup with the screen to force the bees above head height so they don't bother us in the garden . The second photo shows the small, 4 frame, nuc box I built to house a queen. I'm trying my hand at queen rearing so this is the first of many, hopefully. Under the nuc box is a small hive I am populating for a friend. He wants to grow blueberries and use bees to pollinate them so I'm helping him learn about bees.