Hive Transfer

I decided that I needed to transfer this modified top bar hive set up into a traditional Langstorth hive for the season.  This modified design didn't work as well as I had hoped. The bottom box is an eight frame traditional Langstroth deep box, but the upper two boxes were half the width and open, with the intent that they would build comb from wooden slats hung across the top.  Instead, they built from the bottom up and it was difficult to open the box without doing a lot of damage to the hive.






When I opened the top box, this is what they had built in the space.  Any honey that had been stored in the comb was already consumed. I took this piece of empty comb to melt down later for wax.

My first task was to transfer the eight frames from the base into a typical ten frame box.  Most of these frames were empty drawn comb, as the cluster had migrated to the upper portion of the hive.  I filled in the empty space with two frames full of honey that I had.

The main cluster was in the first small box, which you can see above.  Each one of those wooden slats had comb built on it, but it was not as easy as lifting the slat to pop out the comb.  The comb was also attached to the sides, and in prying the slats up I often broke the comb from the slat and had to pull the comb out in pieces.  It was a very sloppy job.  Some of the comb I just put in a bag.  There was loads of honey in it, but since I had a buch of Langstroth frames full of honey, I didn't really need to go through the trouble of transferring this mess of honeycomb into the new hive.  I'll extract the honey later and melt down the comb for the wax.  Only a couple frames had brood, and those I place in empty frames with rubber bands to hold them in place.  In the midst of the mess, I didn't stop for pictures.  I wish I had.

Here the tranfer is complete and the hive is closed up.  The bees are stirred up, but still pretty gentle, as is typical in spring.  I tried to make sure that I got as many bees as possible into the new hive.  I didn't see the queen, so I can't be sure she survived the upheavel, but I tried to save as many bees as I could.  I'll check the hive in a couple days to make sure they are settling in and in a couple weeks to make sure the queen is laying eggs and the hive is rebounding.  The whole process took over an hour and I was a sticky mess by the end.

First Check of My Hives in 2013

First check of my hives after a relatively mild winter.

The hive on the right is my main hive from which I harvested over 50 lbs of honey last fall.  It is a traditional 10 frame Langstroth design.  I use two deeps for the brood chambers and then shallow supers for the honey havest.  The top box is a shallow super I left with 4 frames of honey just to be sure they had enough food going into winter.  The front entrance has a mouse guard to keep the critters out during the winter.






The hive on the left was just started last season.  It is an experimental top bar design.  The base box is an eight frame Langstroth design, but the two upper boxes just have top bar slats for the bees to hang comb off of.  Instead of building from the top down, they built from the bottom up last season, which made it almost impossible to check inside without doing severe damage to the hive.  If you pull off one of the top boxes, you will tear a bunch of comb up.

The black wrap is just roofing tar paper, intended to help with warmth throughout the cold winter.

Sadly, the Langstroth hive did not survive the winter.  There was still a lot of honey in the box, as seen in the picture above.  All the capped area in an arc around the upper portion of the frame is capped honey.  There were a number of frames that looked like this.  In addition, the four frames I left in the upper super were untouched, still full of honey.

Still, they almost certainly died of starvation, as the telltale sign is a patch of dead bees with their heads inserted into cells.  This is exaclty what I found when I opened the hive.

There were only a few inches away from some capped honey, but in a cold spell, they won't break cluster to move to a new portion of the hive or frame.  The cluster of bees in the picture above is all dead.  I cleaned up the hive a bit and reduced it down to one deep and one shallow box.  I removed the tar paper and closed up the entrance to prevent bees, wasps, or other critters from stealing the honey that is still in the box.   I think I may try to transfer the small hive into here, since it is much easier to check and has such an abundance of honey.

As for the smaller hive, the bees were flying about when I arrived.  In the cold months, they come out of the hive on warmers days for cleansing flights, as they won't go to the bathroom inside the hive.  The little yellow stains around the entrance board are the bee's "deposits" from these cleansing flights.  They are all over the hive and the snow is stained with many yellow spots.

The small hive has an observation window, which is a nice way to do a quick check on the hive.

I opened the small hive, which did some damage to the honey comb, but I needed to see if they still had honey.  There was still a good bit of honey, but to be safe I scraped a frame that was half full of honey from the big hive and put it in an empty Cool Whip dish and set it on top of the hive along with a pollen patty.  Until the nectar starts flowing, I need to make sure they have enough food to survive.  We're not out of the woods yet, but they appear to be in good shape to start the season.

I checked the hives abut a weeka nd a half ago during a warm spell.  Since the, the weather has gotten chilly again.  I will wait until it warms up again and work on tranferring the living hive into the larger hive box - no simple project since much of the hive is not built on traditional frames.  But more on that in a future post.

Welcome to my beekeeping blog.

I am a beekeeping hobbyist, learning as I go.

I have been keeping bees for about four years and have harvested honey and wax.

In the future I plan to expand my experience by havesting propolis and honey comb, rearing queens, and capturing swarms.  I have processed my wax into lip balm, but would like to expand on this by experimenting with other balms and ointments.  The propolis would be used for homemade cough drops.

I had two hives going into the fall of last year, but lost one over winter.  I have ordered a nuc (a nucleus hive) to start another hive this spring.

This blog will be a journal of my beekeeping experience.  I intend to bring my camera with me a lot this year to make this a visual record of my beekeeping.

I can't wait to begin.  Thanks for joining me.