# tbh combine



## bigbearomaha (Sep 3, 2009)

if the hives are same style/size, you could use a follower board to separate them in one box then pull the fb after a bit or better still, fold a newspaper to the same shape as a fb and cut a slit or two in it, allowing them to get through it in their own time.

Big Bear


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## 11x (May 14, 2009)

FOLLOWER BOARD? FOLL0WER BOARD???? nooooooooo wayyyyy. not in my hive. thay are the devil LOL but seriously i dont own one and never will. i am going to use the paper method as i have done before with good success. i have a plan of attack i just threw the post out there to see if i might get some new ideas from other posters. thanks for the input


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## bbbbeeman (Jan 13, 2007)

I stopped useing news paper ,to messie, I made a screen out of window size .it is screen stappeled to both sides of 1/2"frame the same size as the outter mesurement of the hive, with another 1/2" on top with an interance for the bees ,leave it on with both interances in the same direction.you can leave it on sa long as you think it needed then remove for on hive .oh I know you removed to take out one of the queens! good luck rock.


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## 11x (May 14, 2009)

good idea. i will make up a entroduction screen tomorow


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## bigbearomaha (Sep 3, 2009)

just out of curiosity, why don't you like follower boards?


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## 11x (May 14, 2009)

well dont realy have the energy to go into the whole reason but to me it defeats the purpos of natural beeleeping. how would you like it if i gave you a 1 bedroom home to arrange your furnature in then came along and added 2 rooms about 3 times a month. bees arange thier brood,polen,nectar ect. according to the size of the cavity thay have swarmed to. so once thay get the hive set up with thier rescources planed to the hive size ,you come along and move your follower board and ask them to revualate thier cavity and how to distribute resources in that cavity to best suite them again. then come again and move it again and so on and so forth. but above all else it causes stress and stress kills bees. i say eventualy thay will get the whole hive so why not let them have it from the getgo???? i will never understand folower boards or center entrances..


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## bigbearomaha (Sep 3, 2009)

well, I can sorta see your point, but has been said many times, putting them in our own made boxes isn't very natural either.

to each their own though.

enjoy the bees

Big Bear


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## Beethinking (Jun 2, 2008)

11x,

Not to steer this thread too far off course, but I assume your disapproval of follower boards carries over into supering/nadiring Langstroth and Warre hives as well, correct? 

And in regard to side entrances, how are they any less "natural" than an end entrance? 

And I'd combine the hives using any of the aforementioned methods!

Cheers,
Matt


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## 11x (May 14, 2009)

"And in regard to side entrances, how are they any less "natural" than an end entrance?"
most horazontal hives i have been in with side entrances had trouble wintering because the bees tried to put honey on both ends and the brood chamberin the center. 

"well, I can sorta see your point, but has been said many times, putting them in our own made boxes isn't very natural either."

I couldent agree more but if we are going to try to get the quality of the gene pool back to where it was before the commercial honey producers screwed things up we need to be able to keep the bees acording to law. the law says that the bees must be kept in removable frame hives. bees are great at handeling stress, the problem comes when we put to many stressors on them in combination to try to deal with. followerboards,wet,mites,so on and such


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## bigbearomaha (Sep 3, 2009)

perhaps there should be a separate thread for this follower board discussion, so as not to divert from the original topic. 

There are a couple things in that last post that I would like to investigate.

Big Bear


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## eebyenoh (Sep 26, 2010)

I'm interested in hearing more about this hive myself,in case I ever run into the same problems.opcorn:


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## 11x (May 14, 2009)

i run lang hives right now. there are advantages to a langstroth over a top bar hive for shure. i think the key to keeping healthy bees is to run your opperation with as low of a human induced stress load as possiable within the limits of your opperation.


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