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.

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 Check

Today Jeff and I did a quick Topsy check over lunch. We hadn't opened this hive since spring came around. First thing we both noticed was that there were signs of bee poop around both entrances. This could mean nosema or it could mean desperate release after the cold weather. In any event, we documented it with a photo and will see if it's worse when we return.



More bee diarrhea around the entry hole.



First we pulled up the honey comb. Losts of beautiful new wax. Some was cross-combed and we broke it off and tried to straighten it out.



You might remember that we put some old comb into the hive to make it smell attractive to the bees. We tried to lift this one honey comb and found that the bees had barely attached it to the top bar. They had attached it to the sides and to the old comb in the bottom of the hive. We didn't try to move this but we did remove all the old comb except this one piece from the hive bottom.

I don't know what to do with this errant comb - especially since they are storing honey in it.



The first comb at the beginning of the hive was being used for honey storage.



The second comb and several others contained brood and young larvae. We didn't see the queen and in the glare of the 1 PM sun, we couldn't see eggs, but obviously the queen is laying and building up her numbers.



On the down side of things, we saw 2 hive beetles and killed one wax moth larvae. In this photo magnified, I can see two bees with DWV (deformed wing virus) which is vectored by the varroa mite, but I don't see any varroa on the backs of any of the bees.  We also (on the down side) still at some point need to deal with the errant comb - maybe we just harvest it so the bees have room to expand the brood nest.

Tales of the Top Bar Hives

On Saturday we checked Noah's top bar hive. There was lovely comb throughout the hive like the one in the frame above but all of it was empty - no honey to be seen. Bees were flying in and out so we felt like the hive had survived the winter so far, but no stores does not bode well.

Julia had a box of cut comb honey in the house, so she brought it out and put it in the hive.



Suddenly we spotted the queen. She's at about 9:00 just above my shadow cast on the comb.


Here she is again. You can see that the hive has pollen but no honey. We didn't keep looking at the comb at the point when we saw her Majesty. Instead, we closed it up for another day.




I feel reluctant in the first inspection after cold weather to break the propolis sealing the hive.  If the queen is dead, as she is not in Noah's hive, we can't replace her at this time of year anyway.

If we had looked deep enough into this hive to see the beginning of brood, it would be reassuring but doing so would not be worth compromising the safety of the hive as March's unpredictable cold/warm weather is upon us.

I visited my own top bar hive today at Valerie's.  This hive certainly has many fewer bees than went into winter. They also seemed a little disgruntled. So even though I didn't hear a queenless roar, I am concerned that they may be queenless.  Or maybe they just resented the intrusion.

Here they are congregating at the entry.

I could see the tiniest bit of pollen in the pollen basket on the bottom bee and felt a little relief.  Maybe there is a queen and some larvae that need feeding.  We'll see in the next inspection.

Despite opening a top bar and tearing off the wax covering over obvious stored honey, I still left them some comb honey in a box to let them know I was thinking of them and that there still is a beekeeper interested in them.

So How's Topsy, the Top Bar, Doing?

I've been feeding Topsy a quart - two quarts a week for the last two weeks. On Tuesday I took two quarts of syrup over there and was pleased to find bees tumbling over each other at the entrance, loaded down with pollen.



I had only taken one quart over on Thursday the week before and it was totally used up. I did see about 10 small hive beetles on the Boardman - which upset me, but I'll take a small hive beetle trap over there - the Sonny-Mel will sit fine on the screened bottom - the next time I go.



The hive is only occupying bars 1 - 10 but there are plenty of bees. This is bar 10. I pulled it out and I think it's just bees clinging to each other like they would do on a slatted rack. I was in a hurry and didn't stick my finger in to find out if there were comb under the masses, but if you'll look close up, there doesn't appear to be.



Bar 9 is a brood comb and had capped brood on it, also covered with bees.



I'm going to continue to feed this hive through October and I'll put an SHB trap in it. I will probably move the follower board close to bar 10 as the cold weather approaches to close their space and make it easier for the cluster.

Big Bee Day Part Three: Topsy Top Bar at Valerie's House

And what's not to love about bee inspections in the Atlanta heat? Wanting even more fun, I went to Valerie's and opened the hive at the end of the day on Sunday. The top bar hive is still confined to the 10 bars they have used from the beginning.

In the middle of the hive, I had tied in some wax to inspire the bees. They aren't using it and it is no longer tied up well - this was the beginning of my inspection. I really went in because I have been feeding them the too-moist honey I harvested a while back. This bar was over the Boardman feed I have resting on two pieces of wood on the hive bottom.



The queen is still laying and the girls are making beautiful comb. There are bees festooning at the bottom of this comb.


Some of their comb is really perfect.



Isn't this pretty - Valerie kept taking pictures!



They have taken all the honey I have given them.  There are no combs of just stored honey in this hive which occupies about 10 bars of the top bar hive.

I left them with two Boardman feeders - one with the last of the moisture rich honey and the other with sugar syrup.  I didn't want to put sugar syrup in until I was sure there would be no honey to harvest from this hive this year.

But aren't their combs lovely?  And I worked them in just a jacket, open toed sandals and no gloves.  These are the calmest bees....from Don at Dixie Bee Supply.  I'm thinking since the hive is so small that I'll move the follower board to the end of the ten bars they are using as winter approaches to give them less space.  There are always bees all over the interior of the top bar box, but the life of the hive is in the bars that they have drawn out and used.

News and Views from the Top Bar Hive

Doesn't the green look lovely with the grass in Valerie and Jeff's back yard? Topsy's bees were flying in and out contentedly when I arrived. They seemed happy.

I donned my bee jacket and opened up the top of the hive.




The bees had built out to about 1/3 of the box. They seemed to have used the top bars well. This top bar is the last built out top bar in the hive.



The top bar just next to it was solid brood and looked so good. I'm excited that they are doing well and building up. Hip Hip Hooray!
I only pulled two bars - they are living happily in the hive and doing well. Since it is exceedingly hot in Atlanta right now, I opened up the cork-stopped side opening to give them a little air circulation and another door.

Checking on the Top Bar Hive

Yesterday I went through all my hives to see how things were going. I drove to Valerie and Jeff's house to check on the top bar which I haven't looked at in 10 days.

They were doing really well for the most part. They were building comb on about eight of the top bars. The comb is beautiful for the most part. Here's an example:



The queen is wasting no time in laying eggs. You can easily see eggs in almost all of the cells on the left of this picture. Isn't the new wax lovely? I love letting bees build their own foundation - it's always beautiful.



Where I had tied in old comb to welcome them to the hive, they are doing interesting things. Below you'll see an old comb I tied in. It had large cells so they are using it (the old comb) for nectar storage and have attached brood comb to either side. They definitely don't like the string in their hive and have made each piece I looked at fuzzy by picking at it with their mandibles.



Early in the hive there were a few examples of cross comb. I hadn't interrupted this the last time I went in, so this time I worked on it to give them the idea that they are to build their comb straight. I exposed brood in this process and hated doing that but these bees need to build comb in parallel with the top bars.

If you'll look closely at this picture, you can see the each bee in the line extending her proboscis to collect the fluid leaking from the broken cells.



I'm still using the two empty packages to prop up top bars to look at them.  Setting the crooked comb top bar on them, I tied the now-broken comb onto the bar, pulling it more in line.

This is an interesting picture to look at because Don's bees are small-cell bees.  You can see the contrast between the cell size on the old comb and the cell size of the brood comb that the bees have built next to it.

Here are some of the other combs - notice the string and how they have managed it.  And notice how they have built around the tied-in-comb.  If you click on these pictures, you can view them larger.:

   

  

My daughter Valerie took all of these pictures.  I was so proud of her.  She threw on a veil and a pair of gloves but even though I brought a bee suit for her, she didn't wear it and wasn't worried.  I wish I had taken a picture of her - I will the next time.

I think this hive is going really well now.  It certainly has been a learning curve.  I am going to name the hive Topsy for Topsy Turvy - which is certainly the way it has gotten started in a topsy turvy way!

Top Bar Hive is Building comb - WHEW!!!

Today marks one week from the disastrous absconding top bar event. If you'll remember I scooped the bees up from the ground and then made some changes to the top bar hive. I covered the screened bottom with a board the length of the hive, I tied some old comb onto some of the top bars, and I made sure all of the available top bars closest to the bees had some melted wax on them.

Then I re-installed the bees, put a queen excluder over the entry and crossed my fingers.

When I arrived at Valerie and Jeff's house, the bees were flying in and out at the small hole at the front end of the hive. I haven't built a holder for top bars to use when inspecting them like a frame rack on a Langstroth hive, so I improvised by setting up the two empty packages I had in my car as a frame rest.



The bees appeared to be happily building comb. In all of the small beginnings on the seven top bars where they were building comb, there were eggs in the newest wax on the top bar. I didn't, sad to say, get a good picture of eggs on this trip. The sun was in the wrong place and I did well to prop the bar on the packages - didn't want to risk making another mess.



I did very little disturbing of the hive. I only looked at the six or seven bars at the end where they appear to be building comb. They were doing a little cross comb on the side of the hive where I was standing. I decided to let it alone this week. I know it can get out of control in a hurry, but if I interfere and they leave again, I just couldn't take it, so I am taking the risk.



The bees did look happy.  To interfere as little as possible and to help them feel at home, I didn't cut the cross comb and I did leave the queen excluder over the top bars where they are living.

Interestingly in studying for the test at Young Harris, I was taking a practice quiz and one of the questions was when in a nectar flow will bees in a hive not build comb.  The answer:  when the hive is too bright and/or when the hive is queenless.  I've solved the "bright" problem by closing up the screened bottom and we obviously have a laying queen so they are now off and running.



It's easy to inspect a top bar hive and less intrusive than inspecting a Langstroth. I lit my smoker but then didn't use it. I did discover a difficulty that I hadn't anticipated. In the Langstroth hive, the frames have bee space between them so sliding frames against each other doesn't involve the death of bees. I realized in sliding the top bars, that I had to watch carefully to make sure no bee was between the bars and thus in line for certain death. I guess I could have used my smoker or blown on the bees, but I just observed this time.

Like in a Langstroth inspection, I removed one frame - about the tenth from the front of the hive so that I could slide bars easily and that seemed to help. Even with the bumpy start, these bees only seem a day or two behind the Rabun County bees who were installed on the same day but started building comb right away.