Total Expansion!

The bees are on bars 1-8 with drawn comb. Some of this comb is already about 6 inches deep and at full thickness. I've also seen plenty of eggs, pollen, larvae and now, capped brood. They're also drawing it perfectly center on the bar, making for management almost as easy as with a conventional frame hive.

Here's a picture of the sixth comb (1=front 32=back). You can see the very palmettos I was talking about earlier. If you look carefully, you can see BEES, pollen, necar ripening and capped brood.

What is a KTBH?

Here is a look at the cluster (intact) in the KTBH. (I've added the K for accuracy, there are really two types of top bar hives, and this tells which one.) As you can see, the swarms was clearly good sized given, the other half of the bees is out foraging. They are still covering bars 1-9. Just to give you an idea of the mesurements, the walls are 13 inches tall, the top is 22 inches wide and the bottom is 8 inches wide. That's a good sized cluster!


Here you can see the front of the KTBH (120º). The slope makes it easier to remove the fragile comb and, the bees confuse the sides for the bottom and attach less comb to the sides. The holes plugged with twigs are used for additional space in the entrance. There is a small gap on the top between the top bars and the side which, the bees are now using as an entrance. This photo was taken on a different location, before the bees were installed.


This is a bar holder used to hold the top bar and comb so that I can make corrections such as cutting comb. It is also used to hold the bar when the comb is cut for harvest. I usually leave it sitting under the hive and, wouldn't you know it, it fits just perfectly.

Running Smoothly

I checked on the bees today (in the Top Bar Hive) and everything apears to be running smoothly. They're building comb on Bars 1-7 and have drawn all the foundation on 1-4. The queen appears to have been unharmed despite the rough handleing 4 days ago and every cell that I looked at had an egg in it. The bees were a little flighty but, no stings in the gloves or skin. I moved them up onto the cinderblocks and now the hive is around waist hight and given I won't be doing any supering, that's just about perfect. The bees seem to be foraging just fine and the palmetto blooms will be opening up by next week and some have already opened. The Russian hive (on the same location but, in standard langstroth boxes) appears to need supering, just by the activety at the enterence. I'll have some photos of the TBH this weekend.

MY FIRST SWARM CAPTURE

On Friday, the same people who's hive I removed over a month ago, called in a panic about the thousands of bees in the air. The thrusday before, they called me about a hive that they found in their decorative roof tiles. It turns out, that the hive is based in the walls; a much bigger problem. The thousands of bees flying through the air were part of a swarm, showing that the bees had been there longer than they thought. I came over as fast as I could and, there was a swarm (probably about 7 pounds) hanging around 15 feet up an oak tree on a limb maybe 1 1/2 inch in diameter. I had been hesitant to capture it, given the possibility that the bees would be africanized. However, today I finally decided that I would take a chance and collect the swarm.
Around 1:00, I headed over to collect the swarm. Trembling with fear, I made my way up the ladder and began brushing the bees into a box. The first brush was the worst. I poorly manuvered the box so, the bulk of the bees fell right onto my veil and chest. It was almost like a bee beard, except, with more fear. At that point, I just about fell off the ladder but, I regained my ballance and got the box under the entire swarm. I sprayed them with about a quart of water and began brusing them into the box, again. When the bulk of them fell in, they felt to be about thet weight of 2 bricks. Now came one of my largest problems, how to manuver the bees and myself down the ladder. In an act of ballancing, I carried the box in the palm of my right hand(just about spilling the bees all over the bushes) and threw the brush down to the grass. Once I had the box on the ground, and in the shade, bees began flying everywhere. In a period of about 20 minutes, all the bees flew strait into the box and, from the some thousand or so that were flying/still on the branch, there were probably 20 bees still flying. I began on my walk home but, the woman who's swarm I was removing offered me a ride home.
When I arived home, the bees were starting to chew their way out of the box and what would fix this problem?MORE TAPE! I began waxing "starter strips" into the Top Bars of my Top Bar Hive and, I would for the next two hours. After this entire process was complete, I packed up the box of bees and everything else into the car and, keeping my veil on, went over to the location of my Russian hive.
I set up the Top Bar Hive on some bricks and made room to shake in the package. Since capturing them, the bees had stopped buzzing and vibrating, so, I was worried that they may have been smothered. I opened up the box and, with the first slit, the bees suddenly came to life. There were THOUSANDS of bees in the box and, I began shaking them into the TBH. They formed a large, buzzing clump in the bottom. They began taking flight and, formed a mass in the air so thick that, they appeared like gnats in the sunset. I noticed that they were all flying back to the box, so I shook those bees at the enterance and they clustered all over the front of the hive. I got a quick look at the queen running around the front, before she was engulfed by her daughters. The bees were all starting to clearly accept their new home and, after hours of working on the bees and the hive, I decided that was enough for one day and, I fugured I'd check on the other three hives tomarrow, and, I'll get a quick peak at the captured swarm hive, just to see how they're doing.