Post by roadrunner on Apr 17, 2013 19:53:47 GMT
When we were inundated with swarms last year I built some spare hives 2 of which were top-bar hives. I built these hives because we were in a situation where we had enough honey but not enough wax. The first one was a bit of a disaster as I literally copied a dealers design with a groove in the top-bar for a wax starter and the bees built comb everywhere and any old how.
The second one was more successful mainly because following advice from a reference book I screwed some lengths of round moulding under the bars. This has encouraged them to attach their comb to the moulding and everything is much neater. Last week I modified this hive further by fitting a vertical queen excluder.
Now my thoughts have turned to making one of my WBC hives a hybrid. I plan to operate the brood box as normal but in the supers I am going to put empty frames with a piece of round moulding screwed on the underside of the top bar. If it works it will give me the additional wax, and I will save on foundation. Has anyone ever tried this?
In any event I will let you know how I get on at the end of the season.
Incidentally the bee inspector was not impressed to see my top bar hives, especially the first one, but he did begrudgingly agree that the second one was a great improvement.
Regards
Alan
The second one was more successful mainly because following advice from a reference book I screwed some lengths of round moulding under the bars. This has encouraged them to attach their comb to the moulding and everything is much neater. Last week I modified this hive further by fitting a vertical queen excluder.
Now my thoughts have turned to making one of my WBC hives a hybrid. I plan to operate the brood box as normal but in the supers I am going to put empty frames with a piece of round moulding screwed on the underside of the top bar. If it works it will give me the additional wax, and I will save on foundation. Has anyone ever tried this?
In any event I will let you know how I get on at the end of the season.
Incidentally the bee inspector was not impressed to see my top bar hives, especially the first one, but he did begrudgingly agree that the second one was a great improvement.
Regards
Alan