Change of direction lol

[wightbees]

Thanks for the link :
ummm but i'm not a colour bee i,m a Wightbee lol
Sorry lol

Dare i ask how about melting the wax on to the wires that way diy frames could be made alot easier. no groves needed and only 1 bottom bar the same thickness as 2 onthose frames shown.
would that work, as i can't see why not.

 

[Onge]

I use a car/bike battery charger set at 6 volts for about 3 seconds per wire.

Solid bottom bar same thickness no groves. Yes this works.

 

[wightbees]

Thanks Onge
I'm going to try and find some wood then and see what i come up with.

 

[MuswellMetro]

VECTISBEES..let be roman today

l top bar yes you remove the semi cut out bar and clean up then replace and nail to secure the wax

the spacer i sent your are narrows for use on non Hoffman straight brood frames and wides for supers ( being a totoal nutter using 14x12 hoffmans at 35mm..i add the 37mm narrow spacers, i dont lke 35mm spacing ..but thats me..mad as a hatter... )

i often use narrows on supers to draw out then go to wides once drawn or more normally use staggered wides (11 frames) then goes to wides touching (8 frames) for honey

Manley yes, 41mm spacing touching, no spacers, poly Hive uses hoffman between manley in order to get them drawn out


Do you need frames at all !!!!, you could just go for a top bar hive..straight bar rubbed in bee wax. i live in muswell hill and my house in close to Tegetmeier first apiary of 1860, that he and charles Darwin had some of the first top bar hives so honey comb could be removed without damamging the brood ( how do i know that, theres blue plaque on the his house..william Tegetmeier and C Dawrin had hive here)

 

[wightbees]

So why do people bother with frames if you can just use top bar hives, after all it would save alot of money ?

 

[Poly Hive]

Deep breath here.

Because the TBH pepple think they are on to a winner on various counts. They profess that they keep bees in a more natural way and so on and so forth.

Good luck to them.

The rest of us, the vast majority keep our bees in "normal" hives.

If cost is a major consideration and you are not interested in having honey or doing organised queen rearing then TBH is for you. Otherwise it is not.

PH

 

[wightbees]

so you can't take the honey with out frames , is that what you mean.
Or is the comb all over the place ??? bit confused here, not come across this method before . Although there must be a reason everyone uses frames lol

 

[Hawklord]

How are the poly hives cleaned? I don't suppose the can be scorched with a blow torch.

 

[MuswellMetro]

so you can't take the honey with out frames , is that what you mean.
Or is the comb all over the place ??? bit confused here, not come across this method before . Although there must be a reason everyone uses frames lol

without frames yuo press the comb and destroy it to remove the honey, so a lot of the bees effort goes into making new wax and the inspection of brodd comb on a top bar is more difficult as it is floppy and can get easly damaged

it is used in Africa in long hive ,see photo and Dawin & Tegetmeier early hiveswhich was a square box with waxed bars, you left the brood in the middle and only extracted the outer stores...super and swarm control was not done

 

[Brosville]

same reason they used to send children up chimneys "because we've always done it this way" (or in the case of beekeeping for the whole of history -all 150 years of it!)
As a top bar user I'd sum up the difference as being one of "priorities" - for me, a harvest of honey and wax will be a pleasant "bonus" - I'm not in beekeeping to make money, so I'm happy to try to put the bees' needs above my own - they can build what comb they choose of whatever size, the queen can go wherever she likes within the hive, I leave them all their honeystocks to survive the winter on (rather than nicking it all, and replacing with sugar solution) - it's an attempt to reproduce a "hollow tree" in which they can "do their own thing". I don't use "foundation" of any sort (too much is contaminated with a mixture of pesticides from old comb used to make it), and I bend over backwards not to use any synthetic chemicals (or natural ones either, if at all possible - icing sugar is often used for mite control for instance)
For years "battery eggs" were (and largely still are) the "industry norm", and for it to work they indulge in barbarisms like beak trimming, a constant dosing of a cocktail of antibiotics, synthetic colours to mimic "grass induced" yolk colours etc - without them there would be major disease problems because of the inherent failings in a deeply unnatural system...........

 

[wightbees]

Brosville
Do you find your bees are in better condition for you efforts?
Musswellmetro have you kept any this way before?
Another thought if left like in the photo and they are healthy would this not be a better way to keep stock and add to modern hives as needed.

 

[wightbees]

Also if i was wanting to make honey comb would topbar hive be suitable for this?

 

[Brosville]

I'm still in my first season, and put my bees' health down to "beginner's luck" - the top bar hive , populated with a swarm relatively early in the season last year, who built to nearly filling a 4' top bar hive are already flying strongly on sunny days, and appear to be revoltingly healthy - but my biggest surprise has been a late and small swarm in the Warre which I really wasn't expecting to survive - signs of healthy bees flying from there too!
So far "medication" has been one "precautionary" icing sugar dusting in the TBH.......
There's all sorts of myths put out about TBHs - you can do swarm control, rear queens, do splits etc, but even their greatest fans wouldn't claim them to be top of the list for honey production - that's not "what they're about".
Ideal for honey "comb" production,and the whole thing is delightfully "low-tech" -
I have a jar of my own honey here - (from a comb I broke last autumn) - swift bashing with a wooden spoon, bunged in a sieve over a saucepan standing on a sunny windowsill - natural raw honey which has all sorts of "extras" included, and a taste to die for - a wine snob would be lost for words in describing the different wonderful nuances contained therein.........
It's not for everyone, but suits ME! (which is what it's about!)

 

[MuswellMetro]

Brosville
Do you find your bees are in better condition for you efforts?
Musswellmetro have you kept any this way before?
Another thought if left like in the photo and they are healthy would this not be a better way to keep stock and add to modern hives as needed.

No not my self, but a very nice lady beek who live near me does and it does work , as Bros says it priotites or as i would say lifestyle, if i had been into bees in the 70s when my life style was IOW festivals etc, then i would have gone that way...but now i am a grumpy grey haired git and stick to what i know

http://topbarbees.wordpress.com/about/design/

They seem happy bees, but she does not disturb them much and they do swarm more and i think have more varroa ( as found one of her swarms i caught)

 

[wightbees]

Well thats sound great
I going to have a bash at one of thoughs.
Do you any plans for the one you use , it looks simple .
I'm goign to use a few modern hives but i have to give that type of hive a go.
It look's so natural.
The Comb is round as well , looks yummy lol

 

[Brosville]

free plans download - http://www.lulu.com/content/815182
I'm no woodworker, and found that following the plans to the letter worked for me -

and here they are about 10 days after populating the hive..

ps, "Norm" who posts here from time to time has written an article on "how to make a TBH for a dollar" (using reclaimed timber)

 

[wightbees]

Ahh the IOW festival, of the great 70's i was here then .
Umm only a few months old but i remember it lol,,, seen the photos and that !
It's back and it great and this year it's the 40th , so they got Paul Mac headlining it.
The Old grumpy council tried the IOW act for years to stop it from coming back.But they manage it . google it and have a look . based in Newport small compared to the 70's
Only about 70,000 peeps there. But it's classed as the best in England
No trouble real Hippy feel ,Musswellmetro you would fit in real good....... lol
Had some great acts playing there in the past. one of my top acts was The Who
Blo*dy fantastic. And bowy , the rolling stones . for that one there was about another
5,000 watching from the other side of the river Medina, i was there lol full views free.
Couldn't get tickets to many fakes for that one .

 

[wightbees]

Brosville
Thanks for that, looks real good.

 

[MuswellMetro]

Ahh the IOW festival, of the great 70's i was here then .
Umm only a few months old but i remember it lol,,, .

i hope your mother isnt about 60, tall , red head and lived in LaKe, near shankilin

 

[MuswellMetro]

The lady Beek who has a TBH near me was talking about a making a verticle Queen Excluder to extract a bit more honey, i think the beehaus has one, and ther hedgcoe hive does as well

she has a triagular sugar syrup feeder frame to repalce the honey taken

i assume one could be made from a plastic Qex shaped to the size of the hive with holding strips in the inside of the hive

Umm , not is bros's domain as he does use chemicals but if i tried it would use thinner bars with 10mm starter foundation strips and 37mm spacers, so i could treat the seams with oxalic...but that the fun of beekeeping, we all disagree