Hive Inspection from Week of St. Patrick's Day

 Tonight I held a virtual hive inspection for Metro Atlanta Beekeepers. We watched the video below to see three inspections: a Langstroth hive that overwintered from a split in 2021; my top bar hive into which I installed the March 2 swarm I caught in Decatur; the split I made in my own backyard which has finally made queen cells.

If you'd like to see what we watched, minus the ongoing discussion that we had on Zoom as we watched it, the video is below:

The ongoing Tale of the Top Bar

So I opened the top bar to find an entire ant colony camped out on the top of the top bars.  I brushed them all off with my bee brush, but I kept feeling distracted by ants on my hands.  I like the feel of bees walking on my hands, but ants are another story.  Maybe I should sprinkle cinnamon on the tops of the top bars.



The bees were doing about a B+ job of building comb.  There was some jutting out inappropriately.  One set of two combs - the first two, actually, were joined together.  Comb three on bar three was a little crooked as well.

I tried to straighten it out, but later today thought I might go in and reverse the bar.  I think that would confuse the bees but would at least put a straight comb in position three going forward.  The combs on four and more were not built out to the ends yet, so were straight in the center.

At first looking at the brood on the comb below, I was concerned about the green in the bottom of some of the cells, but now in looking further at the photo, I think the green is grass showing through holes of incomplete cells….at least I hope that's what it is.


Here is one of the bulging combs - probably the one I will reverse (comb three)….so once again, the top bar is challenging me even though it is in my own backyard and more accessible for keeping up with it.

And for the Remaining Hive Inspections

Luckily it is Spring Break in Atlanta and lots of people are out of town.  I didn't have to be at the office today until 4 PM.  So today was a major bee day - I picked up five nucs, installed them in three places and inspected seven hives on this side of town.  Tomorrow (also a slow day) I will inspect the hives at Jeff and Valerie's (four of them), the hive at Blue Heron, and the hive at Chastain.

Next up was the other package installation at my house.  Unlike its 10 frame neighbor, this hive had not drawn out the majority of its box, so I didn't add a box.  I did see eggs and the queen - she was lovely but I didn't take her photo - in this box, so I feel fine about it.  They just aren't as energetic as the 10 frame.  It's funny - the package for the 10 frame had a ton of dead bees on the bottom, but this package had the least dead bees of all the packages I installed.  You never can tell about bees……



The little nuc split from Colony Square had failed to develop a queen, so I gave them a frame of eggs from Lenox Point last week.  I did have to drive the frame 25 minutes from my old house, so the eggs might not have been great when installed here.



They had built a beautiful queen cell, however.  I very carefully returned this frame to the nuc and hope she'll do well once she emerges.



They had also made these odd attempts at a queen cell (see below in the upper center) but those are not queen cells.



I also installed the last nuc this afternoon and saw the queen. She has a yellow dot on her back and is at 9:00 on the frame below.


You can also see her on the end of the frame, pointing downward - isn't she lovely with her black abdomen?



There were pretty cells in yellow wax in this frame.  These bees came from south Georgia.  I remember that our bees on the farm last year drew yellow wax early in the season.



I also checked on the Decatur Swarm in the top bar hive.  They were doing OK - had begun drawing out about five top bars.  They had gone a little crooked at one end of all five bars, so I cut off the wax and took it inside.

I thought this was a secondary swarm and the state of the hive bore that out.  The queen had just begun laying (as in yesterday).  I only saw eggs and some tiny c-shaped larvae, and there was no capped brood.  I think this means she spent the last 10 days getting ready to go on her mating flight, getting mated and getting ready to lay.  Now she is working hard at it and hopefully this hive will succeed.

Below is the comb I cut out - I took it inside and will melt it down or use it for bee talks.



So after a long bee day and many bee blog posts, I bee tired and am going to bed!

Splitting Topsy

Lots of moving is going on in my life. I've moved out of my house that I lived in for 13 years; moved to a smaller intown house in Atlanta; my daughter and Jeff, my son-in-law, are moving into my old house and they are renting out their house which is where Topsy has been located.

So among the many changes, Topsy can't stay in the backyard of a house that will be rented.

On Sunday, Jeff and I split Topsy into two hives with the plan of moving the split to my new house. It was hard and made difficult by the fact that the honey comb has been cross-combed for the summer and we haven't been able to get the bees to draw straight comb in there.

Here's the pre-split hive.



It's hot in Atlanta so they are bearding both down here at the entry to the hive and under the top board. This is a huge hive with lots of bees.


We took out the brood frames first. We propped up the top bar and examined each comb to determine how to divide it up because we were rubber-banding the comb into Langstroth frames.



We were as careful as we could be and rubber banded the comb into frames, fitting it as best we could.


Here's a look down into the hive before I quit taking pictures. When we got to the honey-filled combs, everything got sticky and taking photos wasn't happening after that.


The brood comb was straight and beautiful and we carefully cut each comb to fit the frame, trying to save the most brood and eggs possible.



The honeycomb part was a complete mess, but we managed to get them some saved comb and I put some of the comb into a filter bucket to drip through to feed it back to them.


There were so many bees that we ended up putting on three boxes for them and putting a hive top feeder of their own honey above the inner cover.



There were so many bees on the outside of the hive that we propped the top despite the notched inner cover to allow them a top entry. Both Jeff and I felt a little defeated by the daunting task of trying to split this hive and weren't sure how it would turn out. We decided to leave them for this week in the new hive and move them on Saturday night when I get home from vacation.



So I'm at the beach with my family and Jeff, who stayed in Atlanta, called to tell me the split hive had absconded and are hanging in a tree behind his fence.

My super swarm catcher tool is locked in my new house and these bees are about 20 feet up a tree.  Jeff is going to try to get them tomorrow, but it's not going to be easy.  I'll let you know how it all comes out.

I'm very sad about all of this.  I put a lot of energy into this top bar hive and haven't done well with it.  Also this is the third split I've made this year that has not succeeded.  So I'm not too optimistic that he will capture the swarm and that we will keep these bees.

Tonight Jeff is moving the hive boxes to my new house and if he can capture the absconded hive tomorrow, he'll install them at my house where there are three other bee hives.  He's picking up the pole for my swarm catcher which is still at my old house and is going to get a large water cooler bottle from Home Depot to try to use on the end of it, since the water cooler bottle is locked in the basement of my new house.

Beyond Frustrated with my Top Bar Hive

I enjoy and admire Sam Comfort and am so pleased to have met and heard Wyatt Mangum speak, but neither of them addressed the problems I am having at Topsy. I don't know if it's how I constructed the hive, its location in Atlanta or what, but I hate inspecting it.

It's always one problem after another. After nearly destroying the hive to correct the cross comb problem, I visited it today to see if the queen were still alive and laying.

I opened Bar 11 and immediately found cross comb. GRRRRRR. I cut it out, it fell to the bottom of the hive and frustrated by the inability to come up with any way to repair what I would have rubber banded into a Langstroth hive's frame, I pushed it down to the unused part of the hive next to the follower board.



 Innocent bees peering up at me, the helpless beekeeper.


I then moved to bar 10 which looked OK, but when I tried to lift Bar 9 there was resistance and it broke off of the top bar, leaving a gaping opening and honey dripping.

Is the queen there and laying? I certainly don't have any idea because I wasn't willing to destroy any more comb to find out.

What is a top bar beekeeper to do in these instances?

My understanding of the top bar is that there is great advantage in only removing one bar at a time rather than lifting out a whole box. But the HUGE disadvantage of this system is that the beekeeper has no idea what is going on until damage has already happened.

I just closed the hive up, took off my veil and walked away.

I may leave it for the rest of the summer.

I hope they enjoy the honey they make. I certainly will not.

There is no way to harvest honey out of a top bar without killing a bunch of the bees and I'm not willing to do that. There's no way to monitor the hive because the top bars keep pulling off of the comb.

I wish there were some way to move this hive into a Langstroth box because this is beyond me.

Topsy Turmoil

The last two times I've checked the top bar hive, one top bar has come off from the top bar as I've tried to lift it. The comb attached (or not) is all full of honey.  The comb appears to be attached to the bottom of the hive.  I haven't really had any idea what to do.

The last time I was in the top bar hive, the brood bars were full all the way up to this honey.  I didn't want the honey to make the queen feel honey bound and influence the hive to swarm.  The only choice was to undo the stuck comb.

I have not enjoyed the top bar hive.  It is so much more difficult to work with than the hive box.  I can't see what is going on and I tend to create destruction as I did today.

With a regular frame, you can shake the bees off of it.  This comb could not possibly be shaken, nor can any top bar comb.  I wonder how in the world you harvest honey without making the mess we did today?

I put all of the mess on a slide show.  We killed at least 500 bees in the process and may have destroyed the queen as well, although wet with honey bees all look like queens because their bodies are so shiny.

First Jeff and I slid our hive tools down the side of the hive to loosen the comb from the hive.  Then we reached in and gently pulled the honey comb up from the bottom of the hive (and at least 500 bees).  Bees died from being squashed.  Some died from being coated in honey.

We put the comb in a large roasting pan and tried to brush the bees off....OMG what a mess!  Suddenly Jeff said, "Oh, no, there's the queen!"  He's really a good queen spotter but I'd prefer to think that I'm not sure it was the queen.  We took the questionable bee, covered with honey, and gently put her back into the hive.

We put some of the cut honey back into the hive in front of the follower board on some aluminum foil.  I took the rest home and was heartsick as I cleaned tons of dead bees off of the remaining comb into my kitchen sink.

At least we did see brood and eggs so they have the resources to make a queen if we have destroyed her.  I am so sad about this.  Makes me not want to open the top bar ever again.  I certainly won't build another one.  Here are the problems I've had:

1.  Hard to keep bees in the hive - lost one swarm, lost and recovered one package
2.  The only way to keep the bees in the hive was to put old comb on the bottom and close off the screened bottom board.  The comb on the bottom was the source of the problem today
3.  If comb is crooked or breaks off, there's no easy way to tie it into the hive - you can use string on the top bar, but it doesn't really do the trick and bees get tangled in the fiber of the string.  Rubber bands can't be used.  Below this list is a picture of how bees get caught (and die) in the string
4.  Any problem on the bottom of the hive is invisible until you tear things up to get to it......grrrr.
5.  I can't imagine harvesting - how do you get the bees off of the comb without using smoke and without shaking the comb?

Picture below of bees entangled in the fibers of the kitchen twine (dead).

Anyway, here's a slide show of the mess:

A Look at Topsy

Today I ran by Valerie's to check on Topsy.  At my last check there was some brood but not a lot.

First I looked at the hive entrances which had signs of nosema the last time I visited.  The hive looked just the same - no new nosema on the side of the hive:

Inside the hive looked really healthy with lots of bees and lots of capped brood (about nine frames).  The combs were all built out and looked good.

On the 10th bar, the comb was heavy with honey and attached to old wax on the bottom of the hive.  As I pulled on the top bar, the comb tore off.  I set it back together again, but next time I visit that hive, I am harvesting that honey comb so that I can remove the wax on the hive bottom and can help the hive make progress.

I didn't see any new brood or eggs until I got to the 11th top bar and there were eggs and c-shaped larvae.

This hive is healthy and will have a problem if I don't get the honeycomb that is stuck to the bottom out of that hive.  Maybe I'll try for that on Sunday this weekend.

I like the top bar concept but find the hive really difficult to inspect.  The bees seem happy but I'm not sure I am.  Maybe if it were a smaller hive, I'd like it better;  maybe if I had ever seen the queen I'd like it better; maybe if I hadn't had such a hard time getting it off the ground, I 'd like it better.  As it is, I don't love working on it or inspecting it.

I also haven't figured out how to make repairs.  In the Langstroth if the bees do cross comb, a huge rubber band takes care of all my troubles.  In this hive rubber bands don't work.

Having foundationless frames in a Langstroth box makes me happier.  Maybe I like structure more than the top bar allows me.