top bar hives why top bar hives? by michael bush copyright 2005-2012
TRANSCRIPT
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Top Bar Hives
Why Top Bar Hives?
By Michael Bush Copyright 2005-2012
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Why Top Bar Hives?
• Horizontal—no lifting boxes
• Natural comb—no contaminates and natural sized cells
• Can easily do natural spacing—1 ¼” bars will result in smaller cells
• Easy to work—minimal area of the colony is exposed
• Cheap to construct—no critical dimensions other than the width of the top bar
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Horizontal
• You can get this with a long box that takes Langstroth frames.
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Horizontal Hives
• Can use deep frames without cutting down
• Can reduce or eliminate the amount of honey supers lifted on and off to get to a brood chamber to inspect
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Natural Comb
• No Contaminates
• Natural Cell Size
• Can do Natural Spacing
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Wax is a sponge for many chemicals• Many of the acaracides used are lipophilic
(love oil) and they absorb into the wax.
• Many of them are already contaminating the foundation we use
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Clean Wax• Natural comb is really the only way to get
clean wax in your hives
• The beeswax supply is contaminated and foundation, right out of the box, is contaminated with fluvalinate, coumaphos, amitraz and other lipophilic pesticides
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Contaminated Wax• Causes infertile queens
• Causes infertile drones
• Causes frequent supersedures
• Causes
weakened
bees
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Natural Cell Size
• The only way to get natural cell size is to let the bees build their own cells without laying out the pattern for them—in other words “foundationless” beekeeping
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Using Natural Cell Size Against Varroa?Either cell size helps with Varroa or it does not
• If it does, you have helped the Varroa problem
• If it does not,
you have
not hurt the
Varroa problem
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Cell Size and Bee Size• Standard foundation has been upsized
• That upsizing has caused a bee that is 150% of it’s natural size
• The fact that upsizing foundation makes a bigger bee and that we now have upsized is well documented by Baudoux, Pinchot, Gontarski, McMullan and Brown.
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A couple of References
• Recent: The influence of small-cell brood combs on the morphometry of honeybees (Apis mellifera)--John B. McMullan and Mark J.F. Brown
• Historic references are listed here: see www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm near the bottom of the page (including a link to the above paper)
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What is natural cell size?Reasonable Assumptions
• Can we assume that the bees know the answer to this question?
• Can we assume if we let them they will answer the question?
• Can we assume that doing what is natural for them is the most likely correct size for cells?
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You can get natural comb without a Top Bar Hive
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Foundationless Frame
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Foundationless Frame
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Natural Comb Spacing
• Natural comb spacing contributes to natural cell size
• Bees naturally space brood 1 ¼”
• Spacing combs further apart leads to larger cells
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Easy to Work
• Less exposed bees
• Don’t overestimate this—a Langstroth is not difficult to work but with very hot bees a top bar hive may become less defensive.
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Cheap and Easy to Construct
• No Critical dimensions except the width of the top bar
• Langstroths require more precision to build
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Kinds of top bar hives
•Kenya top bar hive (KTBH)–Sloped sides for less stress on the comb
•Tanzanian top bar hive (TTBH)–Square sides for ease of manufacture
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Misconceptions/Fallicies
• Myth: Top Bar Hives are more natural– They can be, but you could make a Langstroth
be just as natural
• Myth: The shape is more natural– Bees seem perfectly happy in anything from an
old dry car gas tank to the soffit of a house
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Reasons you might not want a Top Bar Hive
• Limited space requires the space be managed more carefully which requires more frequent interventions
• If your only reason for wanting a TBH is natural comb, you can do foundationless in a Langstroth
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Reasons you might not want a Top Bar Hive
• If your only reason for a TBH is to get a horizontal hive and less lifting, you can just build a long Langstroth.
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Typical Mistakes
• Buying a deep Langstroth nuc to install in a Top Bar Hive that does not take Langstroth frames (they probably heard or read that nucs are better)
• They hang the queen cage, to “be safe” rather than direct release and that messes up the first comb. One bad comb leads to another…
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Typical Mistakes
• Once a come is messed up they do not set things right
• They build it too small and they swarm constantly
• They harvest too much honey and get a fall failure and there is no comb for the bees to store syrup and it’s too cold to draw comb
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Typical Mistakes
• Blaming failures on the hive type– Bees colds starve sometimes in any equipment
• They won’t feed at all because it’s “unnatural”– Feed for the right reasons– Have a plan for how to feed them if you need to
• They won’t smoke the bees and think smoke upsets the bees
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Contact Info:
For more info, questions, or to discuss this further:
www.bushfarms.com
bees at bushfarms com
Book: The Practical Beekeeper