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Erichalfbee

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Could I ask all new members to put their location in their profile please. It helps anybody answering your questions to know where you are. We may be a small island but conditions and climate vary enormously
Thanks
 
Hi I'm Nick from West Dorset. I've kept bees for a few years and now just have one hive. It's big and busy. I have a top bar hive ready that my son built for me and I would like to try and split my hive to inhabit it too - or possibly start afresh with a nuc. Does anyone have any experience of attaching brood to top bar hives. Most nucs come in standard framed and my other hive is national. Be good to know if anyone has any tips. Is chopping up frames and tying them on an option? Also I'm always keen to hear how much stores you would normally leave over winter and how much fondant . thanks in anticipation
 
I have never used a TBH but I imagine if you split your national next year you could shake a split in.
I brood box full of stores should see you through winter. Fondant should be considered from January onwards depending on the weather, insulation etc.
Welcome to the forum, can be lively but loads of info and help
E
 
Hi I'm Nick from West Dorset. I've kept bees for a few years and now just have one hive. It's big and busy. I have a top bar hive ready that my son built for me and I would like to try and split my hive to inhabit it too - or possibly start afresh with a nuc. Does anyone have any experience of attaching brood to top bar hives. Most nucs come in standard framed and my other hive is national. Be good to know if anyone has any tips. Is chopping up frames and tying them on an option? Also I'm always keen to hear how much stores you would normally leave over winter and how much fondant . thanks in anticipation
I wouldn't consider moving them into the TBH now - too late really to make a split now that would come to any good.
Yes, if needs be you can take away the side and bottom bars and cable tie the top bars and comb onto the new top bars of the TBH but an 'easier' way would be to wait until swarming season, catch a swarm and dump that into your topbar.
 
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Hi I'm Nick from West Dorset. I've kept bees for a few years and now just have one hive. It's big and busy. I have a top bar hive ready that my son built for me and I would like to try and split my hive to inhabit it too - or possibly start afresh with a nuc. Does anyone have any experience of attaching brood to top bar hives. Most nucs come in standard framed and my other hive is national. Be good to know if anyone has any tips. Is chopping up frames and tying them on an option? Also I'm always keen to hear how much stores you would normally leave over winter and how much fondant . thanks in anticipation
Hi, most of my hives are single brood. I leave the bees a super of their own honey. Given all the work they’ve put in, it’s fair to share the harvest. Better for them too - minerals, vitamins, pollen in honey etc. I then top up mid sept with syrup and give fondant as insurance depending on how mild it’s been - usually Jan.
 
Hi, most of my hives are single brood. I leave the bees a super of their own honey. Given all the work they’ve put in, it’s fair to share the harvest. Better for them too - minerals, vitamins, pollen in honey etc. I then top up mid sept with syrup and give fondant as insurance depending on how mild it’s been - usually Jan.
Ps any excess stores not used eg in brood box is useful for making up Nucs the following season.
 
Hi I'm Nick from West Dorset. I've kept bees for a few years and now just have one hive. It's big and busy. I have a top bar hive ready that my son built for me and I would like to try and split my hive to inhabit it too - or possibly start afresh with a nuc. Does anyone have any experience of attaching brood to top bar hives. Most nucs come in standard framed and my other hive is national. Be good to know if anyone has any tips. Is chopping up frames and tying them on an option? Also I'm always keen to hear how much stores you would normally leave over winter and how much fondant . thanks in anticipation


My first hive was a TBH 10 years ago..I chopped and cut each National frame so the topbar plus foundation would fit into TBH,

Bought a 5 frame National nuc and assembled the following tools beside the TBH
A workmate or similar to hold frames.

A simple frame stand (or some wood to stick in workmate which will act as one.
A woodsaw. (just in case)
A wood lopper. (used to crush and cut the national frames with bees and brood. The sharper the better,
Cable ties.
A pair of wire cutters - your frames will be wired and you will need to cut them if the lopper does not.
A stanley knife with a sharp blade.
A small steel ruler to cut.
Cable ties
small drill or screwdriver
Pliars to tighten cable ties.

Firstly you want to measure your top bars.
Then superimpose a National top bar on top - this can be a paper exercise.

Work out what length to cut off the top bars.

Then make a card triangle with a flat bottom which fits inside the TBH so the top of the triangle is horizontal and fits under the underside of your tbh topbar.Trial fit under a topbar to ensure it fits.

Then cut the Triangle sides so they are as deep as the National brood foundation and they are approx 10mm away from each sloping wall of the TBH. This gives you a template for cutting the brood foundation with bees. (You need a template: you don't want to take any time to measure with bees around you. Check it under a topbar in the TBH so it all fits.)

Find frame with Queen leave till last.

A.
Shake bees from one National frame into TBH


Place each frame flat on workmate and carefully cut with knife foundation from side and bottom bars = leaving wire to prevent it all collapsing when you lift it up.
Hold frame vertical - or place in a frame stand or get someone to hold it.
With loppers cut off side bars from bottom bar. Cut off side bars from top bar
Remove side and bottom bars cutting wires with wire cutter.
You may need to shorten end of National topbar so it will fit under your TBH topbar inside the TBH...(Check before you start )
Place under TBH top bar - in middle leaving gaps at either side (pre marked with your card triangle) and attach topbar National (now with a triangle of comb with flat bottom) to TBH bar with cable ties through holes in foundation (drill or cut) - 3 - one middle and one each side about 3 cms along from end of foundation.
Remove surplus cable tie with wire cutters
Place in TBH.

Repeat from A.

When you get to frame with Queen, either shake her CAREFULLY in TBH or lift her out and place on frame in TBH .As you are a beginner, shake unless you are used to handling Qs.

Rehearse in mind every step.

I wrote out a ToDo list with every step itemised so I had everything I needed and knew what I was doing before I started. It took me 30 minutes to do the actual cutting etc once I was ready to begin.
I was on my own.

No plan? It may be a mess.
 
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Howdy, Folks! I am in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Oklahoma.

We are called Okies and we say Oklahoma is OK because we just don't know how to spell "mediocre." I am a nut believing in No Treatment beekeeping and I have been doing that longer than twenty years. Why? because most kept bees die when left alone in nature. Which tells me we ain't doing it right. I have been rescuing bees from all kinds of situations, for they are feral survivors. From them I then graft to perpetuate their progenies. So help me nature.

Not an advertisement, but should you want to learn more about my beekeeping you can search Dr. Kim's Honey Farm, LLC. about my bee research, education, community involvement, the whole nine yards.

Thank you for your hospitality. There are two Brits I admire most: one guy published his seminal book in 1859; another published his Age of Reason a while back. i love them and their ideas very much. Two excellent thinkers from a small isle are just a wonderful gift to humanity at large. If I must choose a third Brit, it got to be the guy who wrote the first English dictionary, in which he defined second marriage as "Triumph of hope over experience"!

I am thinking about the fourth. Oh yah, that guy wrote something like "Thy eyen twyyne slay me soddenly." (sp?) Beautiful. Awesome. Can't beat line like that. Sexpear [sic] bores me with his ultrarefined sophisticated foppery. But not this guy. Anyway, thank you for putting up with my odious presence. I will take a hot bath as soon as I get out of my bee work.
 
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Howdy, Folks! I am in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Oklahoma.

We are called Okies and we say Oklahoma is OK because we just don't know how to spell "mediocre." I am a nut believing in No Treatment beekeeping and I have been doing that longer than twenty years. Why? because most kept bees die when left alone in nature. Which tells me we ain't doing it right. I have been rescuing bees from all kinds of situations, for they are feral survivors. From them I then graft to perpetuate their progenies. So help me nature.

Not an advertisement, but should you want to learn more about my beekeeping you can search Dr. Kim's Honey Farm, LLC. about my bee research, education, community involvement, the whole nine yards.

Thank you for your hospitality. There are two Brits I admire most: one guy published his seminal book in 1859; another published his Age of Reason a while back. i love them and their ideas very much. Two excellent thinkers from a small isle are just a wonderful gift to humanity at large. If I must choose a third Brit, it got to be the guy who wrote the first English dictionary, in which he defined second marriage as "Triumph of hope over experience"!

I am thinking about the fourth. Oh yah, that guy wrote something like "Thy eyen twyyne slay me soddenly." (sp?) Beautiful. Awesome. Can't beat line like that. Sexpear [sic] bores me with his ultrarefined sophisticated foppery. But not this guy. Anyway, thank you for putting up with my odious presence. I will take a hot bath as soon as I get out of my bee work.
Hi
I’d be interested in what sort of bee scientist you are. I’ve had a look at your very interesting site and you mention saving honeybees as your main goal.
Honeybees do not need saving here in the U.K. unless it’s from the beekeeper. We don’t have the huge applications of pesticides you do in The States and we certainly don’t have the wholesale destruction of almond pollinating colonies that you seem to have.
Wild solitary bees are the ones that need help and much of their plight is due to habitat loss. Every one of us has a role no matter how major or minor in that but honeybees are ok.
 
Hi,
I’d be interested in what sort of bee scientist you are. I’ve had a look at your very interesting site and you mention saving honeybees as your main goal.
Honeybees do not need saving here in the U.K. unless it’s from the beekeeper. We don’t have the huge applications of pesticides you do in The States and we certainly don’t have the wholesale destruction of almond pollinating colonies that you seem to have.
Wild solitary bees are the ones that need help and much of their plight is due to habitat loss. Every one of us has a role no matter how major or minor in that but honeybees are ok.
Good Morning, Dani.

Thank you for your thoughtful, measured reply to my paltry intro. As to what sort of bee scientist I am, I am going to let you guess based on my intro. But basically what I have been doing for the past two decades has been collecting feral bees as they have survived the onslaught of v. mites. I was hit big time by v. mites around year 2000. All studies suggest that it takes about a decade or so for bees to learn to cope with, or develop resistance against v. mites. That's when I stopped treating bees, for the external treatment, I believed, was weaker than the internal innate resistance solution. Occam's razor comes to mind on the elegance of simplicity in that approach. As you saw on my FB, I have been saving, rescuing bees, for they have survived in nature without human intervention whatever: they have not been inside the bubble of ICU, being taken care of by all knowing beekeeper's 24/7 IPM. My "science" is simple:

All the kept, treated bees die once left alone in nature. Why is that? is there something wrong for the bees to thrive in the wild as they have done for eons? The treated "healthy" bees were not healthy at all--if they cannot survive on their own untreated in nature. So, dumb as a door knob and stubborn as a mule, I have been pursuing Treatment Free beekeeping for a long term, sustainable bee survival, for I love to live in an environment where honeybees in nature thrive--without human intervention--in the web of life so that people of the next generations can enjoy them, as I do now. You hit the nail on the head: "Honeybees do not need saving here in the U.K. unless it’s from the beekeeper." Also, did you also know honeybees will make honey in spite of the beekeeper?

As I said elsewhere, I started beekeeping to get lost--only to find myself there later. Thank you for reading.

Respectfully,

Earthboy
 
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My mortality rate was rather high not due to v. mites but to small hive beetles, a ubiquitous presence of evil in the south. Sometimes I lost 20 nucs, for instance, since I was teaching away from home and could come home only over the weekends. This spring I will be experimenting with new Carni stock from California to see if SHB chasing is inherited or learned.
 
Occasionally, I want to infuse other gene pool from another genetic stock; for instance, I would use Michael Palmer's northern stock in the south to improve the overall vigor in my survival stock. Occasional infusion, I believe, is necessary to avoid any insular, potentially incestuous, inbreeding.
 
My mortality rate was rather high not due to v. mites but to small hive beetles, a ubiquitous presence of evil in the south. Sometimes I lost 20 nucs, for instance, since I was teaching away from home and could come home only over the weekends. This spring I will be experimenting with new Carni stock from California to see if SHB chasing is inherited or learned.
Thanks for sharing the numerator, if you tell us the denominator it will mean something.
 
Don't private message me please mods I don't read them. It's a forum, if you have something to say, say it publicly
 

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