# Creating a split from a Lang hive.



## bobobee (May 21, 2004)

Does anyone have good advice about how to make a split from a Lang hive to populate a new TBH? I have a couple of good colonies that I'd like to split & put in TBH's &I've never done that before. All of my TBH's are from swarms so it was really easy.

Alethea


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## justgojumpit (Apr 9, 2004)

you could shake bees from lang frames into a tbh. Make sure you get the queen from the lang hive into the tbh so that the bees stay with the queen in the hive!

justgojumpit


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## MIKI (Aug 15, 2003)

I am doing just what you want to do. IT took me a season to figure it out but here is how I am doing it now and it is working. 
The goal is to get the bees to go from the Lang frames and build on the bars, which they will be reluctant to do. Assuming that your bars are longer than your frames and the frame will fit inside of the TBH. Attach the frame to the bar so it can be moved around like a topbar, I just drilled and screwed. Put the whole brood nest and the adj. frames of honey in the BACK of your TBH. Now the hive is in your TBH half the battle is over. When they are settled in (a week or so) pull the honey frames in the front of the brood nest. Harvest the honey and baggie feed it right back to them. Mine immediately built new comb adj. the brood nest (2 days to draw a full bar) When I pulled the honey frames from the front, the inside of the last one was brood. Now start putting bars in between the frames one at a time from the front to the back. I am just doing it real slow trying to get the Queen to move the brood nest on to the bars. You will probably have to sacrifice some brood but if you find a whole frame you can move it a couple of bars away until it hatches and then pull it. Rotate all the Lang frames out while moving the bars and brood nest to the front of the hive clean all the burr comb frame by frame leave it alone on the frames your not pulling, no use in making them do more work than they have too. You want them to focus on the new bars. 
IF your frames are too big to fit inside the TBH you will have to cut the wires, pull the bottom and sides and trim the comb to fit, with the wire and foundation you should not have comb failure as long as you are careful OR make a TBH they fit in as long as your bars are all the same size you will have no problem. 

OBSERVATIONS:
1. The bees built new comb along side and underneath the frames first. I left this alone until it was time to pull frames.
2. The comb they built was diagonal across the bottom of all the frames (their way of telling me how they felt about the move)
3. During this process you will not be able to inspect your brood nest, they will comb everything in. I did not find this a problem I just monitored activity and what I could see.
4. I was able to recover the all equipment.

You can shake them but that will set them back.
If you want pics send me your E-mail address.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The two obvious ways are a shakedown or a cut out. The cut out requires some "swarm catching frames".

http://www.beesource.com/plans/swarmfrm.pdf 

You'd have to adjust this to the dimensions of the top bar hive of course.

The shaken swarm would take less work but the cutout would guarentee a straight start for the comb AND in the future if you ever needed to add some eggs so they could raise a queen or boost them with some brood, you could cut a comb to fit and add it in.


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## bobobee (May 21, 2004)

Thank you all for your good advice. Unfortunately, our tbh design is not wide enough to fit Lang frames in it - Our next one will - we will be trying out a variety of shapes and sizes as we increase our hives. The three I have now are based on Top Bar Guy's design - & I have come to like them very much - our next ones will be based on the Crowder Hive geometry. What a smart idea the swarm catching frame is! It is the solution I was seeking.

Alethea


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## Scot Mc Pherson (Oct 12, 2001)

The easist way is to do a shake down and move the queen. Do this at night just before sundown so the bees are apt to stick around and be introduced to their new home. Put the queen in the tbh so they can brood, the lang colony will raise a new queen.


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## chemistbert (Mar 4, 2004)

You could also try installing the frames like MIKI did but put them in upside down to encourage them to abandon the frames.


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