To Queen or not to Queen, that is the question.

[Beardy Weirdy]

(Originally posted in Queens wanted section)

Hi All,

I have had a Top Bar Hive for just over a year, but I soon ran into difficulties with cross combing. So much so that I decided to leave the bees to get on with it and start again this year with national hives and once I had enough experience, I would move the TBH bees into a national.

The Top Bar Hive has produced three swarms, two of which I have safely in Maisemore Poly Nucs and they are doing great. The third swarm I put in a national and although initially, they had a beautiful almost black queen, she has now absconded. The queenless colony wasn't doing anything at all, so I added a bar of comb from the TBH. The bees cleaned this out and began filling it with nectar. They haven't however drawn any comb out on the brood and super frames that they have in the national hive.

These bees seem happy enough in the national, they guard the hive and at one point even started to draw out a little comb on the frame from the TBH. However, without a queen, they look a sorry state.

I decided to inspect, as best I could the TBH, and look for brood comb and a possible queen cell that I could put into the national hive. This was frustrating and messy business. Of my TBH inspection, I found masses of capped honey, no queen, masses of worker bees and drones. I also found four old queen cells that queens had emerged from, but no new queen cells and only a few capped brood cells running in a single horizontal line midway across a number of bars filled with capped honey.

So I have no brood, brood comb or queen cells to transfer over to my queenless national hive. I have a messy TBH with pounds and pounds of honey and masses of worker bees.

I was thinking of re-queening the national colony. Or transferring one of the nucs into the national and combing both colonies.

As for the top bar hive, I think that I will keep an eye on the bees, maybe I missed the queen or she has not yet emerged. When I disturbed the bees they settled around one end of the TBH, so maybe the queen was there?

Not a great start to beekeeping, I hold my hands up. It seems that all the book reading and video watching in the world will not prepare you for the unexpected when it comes to bees.

So, any help would be very much appreciated. I want to do the best for my bees, Thank you.

 

[pargyle]

As has been said many times on here .. TBH are great hives - once you know what you are doing.. they are not easy for a new beekeeper as you have found out.

I think, in your current circumstances .. cut your losses

I'd be tempted to do the best you can to make one decent colony out of what you have ..

Combine all of them into one full national hive, you may need a super on depending on how many bees you have .. with your developing nucleus as the basis as you have a laying queen in there. As you have three colonies you should not have a problem putting them all together - transfer the good nuc and frames into your national, shake in the bees from the TBH (if you can do it through a queen excluder if you have any worries there is still a queen in there). You can also put a squirt of air freshener in as you do it as this will help the combine.

Make sure that they have frames to draw and some frames of stores (or a feeder with some of the honey you have spare).

Remove all the boxes except your 'new' colony from the area as any other bees will then find their way into the box.

Once they get sorted out you have a good strong viable colony with a laying queen and you have options to split or take a Nuc off and buy in a queen.

Crush and strain whatever honey filled comb you then have spare - you can eat it or if you want keep it and feed it back to your colonies at the end of the year in readiness for winter.

Plan for the future and what you want from your beekeeping.

 

[Beardy Weirdy]

Brilliant! Thanks for the advice Pargyle. I've just come in from watching the bees and the two nucs are storming away. I'll need a new super for the national, but that's not a problem. Yes, I agree, TBH's are fun, but lack of time and knowledge has come back to haunt me. I'm loving the Nucs and National, so I will build my colonies in them and empty out the TBH. Although after some TLC and a season or two of experience, I might put it back into action.

I think that one of the problems with TBH's is that they are still a relatively new concept and the so-called experts state one thing only then in the next season to express the opposite opinion, as they themselves are still learning.

I'm a happier chap, knowing that this forum has so many good-hearted beekeepers that are ready to help and advise rather than deride and scold.

 

[mdotb]

If the TBH has swarmed 3 times, and has a number of emerged queen cells the it probably has a virgin queen. If the full National is anything other than the prime (first, and with original queen) swarm then it too likely has a virgin queen, and if it was only one week ago is unlikely to have yet mated and started laying.

The description is a little unclear around the comb added, and “cleaned out”, whether this was eggs and young brood (from which a queen could be raised if queenless) since the OP goes on to say that they have no brood in the donor TBH either, and bees usually go on to raise and cap brood on donor test frames irrespective of whether they rear a queen. However if they have a virgin queen in a swarm, they probably won’t try to rear another from a test frame anyway.

My advice would be to leave them all well alone for another 2 weeks or so, and then have a look for eggs and brood when they’ve had a chance to mate and get laying.

 

[Beardy Weirdy]

Thanks, mdotb,

Sorry, what I meant to say was that the bees appear to have removed any capped honey and nectar from the tbh bar and are now in the process of re-filling it with nectar. I think that you are correct about the virgin queens in both the TBH and National as the bees remain defensive of their hives and appear to crowd together to protect possibly a queen. Which for the life of me I cannot identify. However, I have been looking for the large black queen I mentioned rather than a smaller virgin queen. It certainly was a messy affair when the queens emerged from the TBH. The black queen and a small number of bees were on the ground in front of the tbh, so I picked her up and placed her in front of the national. I suppose then that the bees already having a queen rejected her. Thanks for your help, I wish I had started beekeeping along time ago, nothing worse than being an old dog learning new tricks.