How to make frames fit into a top bar hive?

[Tom Bick]

What I was trying to put across and not in any way as eloquent as your good self is that perhaps and I may be wrong is the comfortable lifestyle you experience today and I guess again on the back of hard work was gained from big business something today you seem to despise.

You may well have held a belief to do things differently and our way of life was not sustainable but then again I assume continued on your career that has put you in the position you are at today and now expecting others behind you to now to do as you say when perhaps they are on the same journey you were on.

I don’t know but you just may be a big part of the problem and not the savour as you put across.

 

[The Apprentices]

I'm not quite sure what Tom's asking/saying...... are you suggesting that I'm biting the hand that fed me pointing out the total lack of morals in much of big business, and the fact that unbridled consumerism is the engine driving our hurtle towards eco-armageddon? (Mankind's epitaph will probably be "because you thought you were worth it")

Taking the current drift of this thread - growing food - I've had a lifelong interest in what is now known as "organics", and know full well that the days of growing food based on fossil fuel and "chemical" inputs are numbered - it's just plain unsustainable, and it's killing the land's natural fertility.
There are already in existence such techniques as permaculture that can return fertility to the land, and feed people well and sustainably into the future - the only thing that's stopping the widespread adoption of it is that there is no profit to be made by the multinationals who are keen to maintain their position by any means....

Good post and to back up what you said but in a simpler way.
One barrel 42 Us gallon of crude holds the equivalent energy to 12 grown adults working manually for 12 months solid.

If the ready energy was to be witheld in some way like a major war we would be in real trouble today, allotment would not suffice.

My granfather used to say the money men will simply continue until there is only two of them left, see them standing in the road with a gun in one hand and a bag of souls in the other, taking aim.

 

[Brosville]

Actually Tom, "how wrong can you be?" on almost everything except the fact I'm retired (unwillingly and early due to ill-health) - I grew up on what would be deemed an organic nursery, and remember my father booting reps out trying to flog him DDT, and have done all sorts of things in a very chequered career, none of them for, or benefitting from "big business", and have left jobs "on a point of principle" on more than one occasion - you don't get rich that way, but you sleep at night!
As for "comfortable lifestyle" - we are all rich beyond belief in the context of the poor in third world countries - we all have a roof and food on the table - if you have health as well, you are rich indeed... My holiday this year was three days at the Natural Beekeeping Conference - lift-share there and back, tents, compost loos, all powered by renewable energy - I make no claims to sainthood, but do try to "do my bit".......

 

[madasafish]

Please could ypu tell us what size of comb cells the bees are building in your Warres, the reason I ask this is because after reading a researching about cell regression and possible less Varroa problems in Warres and smaller/finer comb, is this true with your hives.

Also Davy Cushman,s views are intetesting when he mentioned that larger cell sizes are interconnected to the rapid rise in Varroa cases and or spreading of them.

I have also just been looking through the latest Thorne cat and it mentions that the smaller cell size foundation might help with Varroa control, a selling ploy maybe or is there something in this.

Sorry for all the questions.

Ps.

If anyone want to measure cell sizes properly and don't know how to, there are items called small bore gauges which I have here that do it perfectly.

Search for Mitutoyo small bore gauge.

I'll do that next week by the counting method.. eg measure a distance and count number of cells. Easy and simple for stupids like me...

 

[TBRNoTB]

What I was trying to put across and not in any way as eloquent as your good self is that perhaps and I may be wrong is the comfortable lifestyle you experience today and I guess again on the back of hard work was gained from big business something today you seem to despise.

You may well have held a belief to do things differently and our way of life was not sustainable but then again I assume continued on your career that has put you in the position you are at today and now expecting others behind you to now to do as you say when perhaps they are on the same journey you were on.

I don’t know but you just may be a big part of the problem and not the savour as you put across.

Tom
Don't get him going on windmills!

 

[rog]

Back to the origin of this thread. I did a move from a nuc into a Ktbh last year and covered with a cloth as in Phil Chandlers video. I was helped by a national beekeeper who thought it looked a "bit brutal" when he watched the video but when he helped(he also sold me the nuc) he realised that we cut no brood out at all and it went very well.

One thing I would comment on is that with frames you have gaps which the wasps are very good at finding. Make sure the gaps are all closed somehow. Once they start getting in they are very difficult to stop.
My second hive was a swarm caught in a bait hive and they have gone very well.

 

[adrian wilford]

i bought the timber put a grove in the middle of each one, cant remember the width get it correct and its a bee space, the problem is when checking them as the comb is only fastened to the top, i placed some strips of foundation in the groves, the bees just built up from the foundation, it was so easy. It should be very good wax without contaminents!

 

[tonybloke]

It should be very good wax without contaminents!

why would you think this?

 

[The Apprentices]

Hi everyone, i need some advice setting up a top bar hive with bees.
I don't know how i can make the frames from an ordinary hive fit into a top bar when i buy a new colony of bees. Any ideas and advice will be much appreciated, thank you.

Fraser

Hi Fraser

I came across these wired apline type frames and I reccon you could add these to either Warre or flat TBH's without much problems.

 

[drstitson]

"It should be very good wax without contaminents!

why would you think this?"

because one of the many arguments for Top Bar or other forms of "natural" beekeeping is that one wants to work towards "organic" principles, even if one cannot control what bees forage on.

A US study showed that pesticide residues accumulate in wax and survive the foundation making process. So those queues of beeks at stoneleigh may well be contributing to the decline of bees.

Ron Hoskins apparently keeps a TBH at his apiary which is used solely for harvesting virgin wax.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Ron Hoskins apparently keeps a TBH at his apiary which is used solely for harvesting virgin wax.

Which in turn would also be contaminated by bees bringing in pesticides from the countryside,so it would also need to come from a completely pesticide free area.

 

[The Apprentices]

"It should be very good wax without contaminents!

why would you think this?"

because one of the many arguments for Top Bar or other forms of "natural" beekeeping is that one wants to work towards "organic" principles, even if one cannot control what bees forage on.

A US study showed that pesticide residues accumulate in wax and survive the foundation making process. So those queues of beeks at stoneleigh may well be contributing to the decline of bees.

Ron Hoskins apparently keeps a TBH at his apiary which is used solely for harvesting virgin wax.

Quite.

There are so many different chemicals being released into our atmosphere and or immediate enviornment today that will linger there until the end of time or until they are locked away like our oil and coal was.

If one has ever read the book called "Silent Spring" by Rachael Carson they would realise the thoughts behind the corporate minds leading the profit and setting the Allotted PPM against health and profits have all taken natures as it was to the brink, if one takes stock of all the species today that are being lost, you could say the modern revolution has set in motion the next extinction period which we are currently at the midway point of right now.

Since the second world war which on paper has only really ceased and still continues in other parts, the onslought upon the natural world and its biodivercity has been paramount, the wild genuses and their beneficial and or antibacterial contents used for millenia by all of nature have all but dissapeared from our locality and only protected in places to stop them from completely being destroyed.

These antibacterials are a vital part of the bees diet which are also passed onto us.

If you go back to the giant orchard days of natural honies on old growth orchards you can see certain patterns emmerging as to the Varroa problem starting to spread throughout, as the older herbage was knocked back by sprays and chemical fertilisers the Varroa spreads too.

Our farm was completely free of all chemicals right through the green revolution and still is, the 20 or so colonies that grandfather kept stayed Varroa free like many other place in the higher dales and isolated farming vallies free from this revolution, long after the rest of the country was decimated so to speak, talk to older beeks from such areas and they can confirm what is being said here.

In the case of the bees its not really possible for all to return to the kind of natural enviornment like we by and large still have here and the next couple of seasons doing the regression and other trials will be very intetesting for myself and a sellcted few at least.

 

[drstitson]

yes virgin wax will have pesticide residues - can't be avoided unless you keep hives in isolated valleys away from agriculture

BUT

the point is recycled wax was shown to accumulate residues so each cycle of use led to increased residues which survived processing.

SO answer is to either buy certified organic foundation OR make foundation using 1st generation wax and then don't recycle it for bee use.

 

[The Apprentices]

Many of these residues are comming from the many different plastics in use today.

Take your cheap electric kettle for instance, which are not made of the best food grade plastics, every time these are heated a small amount of PCB's and many other chemicals are released and as the plastic ages it gets worse, ours went the way many years ago after reading an American report on such matters which is no longer available, I haven't been able to find it since, maybe there somewhere in cyberspace.

Chemicals are everywhere in our drinking water to food, since we moved away from tap water to RO and binned all but a very few high quality plasics and now grow a large percentage of our own food in our daily routine our health has increased dramatically.

As for the bees we are fighting a loosing battle as long as we continue supporting the viruses that are ignoring the problems they are causing, I would never ever dream of eating OSR honey today, I can litterally taste the chemicals in the stuff, its disgusting.

 

[Hivemaker.]

I would never ever dream of eating OSR honey today, I can litterally taste the chemicals in the stuff, its disgusting.

Thats interesting,what chemicals in particular can you actually taste in OSR honey then,one's i assume should not be in the honey.

 

[oliver90owner]

In addition to Hivemaker's question, of which I am looking forward to a sensible response, I note you say :our health has increased dramatically.

I am wondering whether this might also be partly down to all the cultivation and weeding(exercise) - presumably you don't use any powered mechanical cultivators nor herbicides?

BTW, I just checked carefully and could not taste any nasty chemicals in a jar of OSR honey.

 

[The Apprentices]

Thats interesting,what chemicals in particular can you actually taste in OSR honey then,one's i assume should not be in the honey.

Most tastes are also a series of smells via our olfactory scences and never actually smoked, I can both smell and taste these chemicals that have been used, of course I cannot name them but I can taste them.

If you study plants and farming techniques like we have as farmers since the early 1500's, family tree back to 1508 to be exact, you would know that the residuses in beeswax come from a long line before they ever got there.

First they enter the soil and accumulate there, then move on into the plants and pollen and then the wax and honey, today there isn't one part of the chain that is not contaminated or without residues, which also accumulate in ours as well as the bees bodies creating modern problems.

Pray tell me Dr. where would one go to get away from modern Big Pharma and Big Chema? So we are not eating some of it in our honey.

Sandringham apple honey perhaps.

 

[drstitson]

best bet would be an isolated alpine meadow.

 

[Hivemaker.]

I can both smell and taste these chemicals that have been used, of course I cannot name them but I can taste them.

So what do they taste and smell like...would you not need to know what these chemicals/pesticides/fungicides tasted or smell like in the first place, to know it is them, and not something else.

 

[The Apprentices]

So what do they taste and smell like...would you not need to know what these chemicals/pesticides/fungicides tasted or smell like in the first place, to know it is them, and not something else.

This is true, having worked with farmers and neighbours sons on CC, I have in the past done my fair share of crop rotation, spraying and harvest and can say I know what these chemicals smell/taste like when I have been mixing them in the earlier days without any protection unfortunately.

The very thought of it and the illnesses some of my school freinds and farmers have had to put up with makes me shudder at the thought of touching them today.

OSR honey makes me feel ill if I even taste it, the smell for me is there in concrete, I know believe me.

The further away from the golden triangle the better.