# tbh swarmed



## captcatfish

i have a tbh that swarmed twice. i,m a new bee and i just trying to understand how to stop this from happing. i have read a lot on mr bush web site
my top bar is mr bush design it had 18 bars full out of 32 and they swarmed it was booming with bees i noticed some queen cups being built
did not take action i did not really understand what to do from what i have now read should i have been putting empty bars in the broods nest is this correct.
i have a few caped queen cells in the hive now i guess i just have to wait and see.
thanks for the help Franky


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## Baldursson

was the 19th bar full of honey?


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## captcatfish

no the last three bars were not even completely drawn out just a little caped honey on top edge.


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## Tom Brueggen

I've been keeping my bees confined, and only adding a few bars in the brood nest each week as needed. I don't know if this is the right thing to do or not, but I have not seen any signs of swarming. I just know you don't want to keep them too confined or too open. I may actually start adding more bars to the brood nest, as many as I can based on how many good bars of straight comb I have available. Unfortunately, my bees are still trying to build a little crooked. As soon as I get a real bee suit I imagine I'm going to get in there and reshape all the bad comb to try and line them out once and for all. As is, I just keep cutting the cross comb as needed.

Let us know if you figure anything out! Thanks.


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## Zonker

Some people call TBH's swarm machines. The best advice I seen (here at the bee forum of course) is to move honey comb back from the brood comb and move all the comb back from the entrance. The queen wants to keep the brood together and won't cross honey comb to lay discontinuous brood, so you need to set it up so that there is empty comb around the brood. Also brood laying works towards the entrance, so have free space between the comb and the entrance is suppose to help. They build fast so frequent management seems to be necessary.


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## SteveBee

I think the secret is, as mentioned above, to keep empty bars in the broodnest to give the nurse bees plenty to do. We've had them swarm when we didn't want them to, and then couldn't get them to swarm when we did want them to.


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## Daddy'sBees

It helps to keep a piece of a plastic queen excluder stapled over the entrance holes of a TBH as well as a clipped queen.


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## captcatfish

well i just took a look in my top bar and at the front entrance of the hive.bars 1 and 2 were full of caped honey and i found a 4 fully caped queen cells
bar 18 has more like 30 % caped honey what should i do remove honey bars 1 and 2 or take 18 out what about queen cells leave them alone ???


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## Mr.Beeman

Speaking from experience, keep the bees confined with the follower board. I had one abscond due to the fact the follower board was placed too far back. Think about it, a regular lang is ten bars wide when a package is installed. I install with 6-7 bars. My nucs are 5 bars. They seem to do real well in the nuc even when there is 5 lbs. of bees in them.


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## Oldtimer

captcatfish said:


> i noticed some queen cups being builtdid not take action i did not really understand what to do from what i have now read should i have been putting empty bars in the broods nest is this correct.


Moving some empty combs to the middle of the brood nest will help, but once all frames are full not much you can do. Once the hive is choca with bees, they have nowhere to expand any more they will swarm, as top bar hives are not expandable.



captcatfish said:


> no the last three bars were not even completely drawn out just a little caped honey on top edge.


 This is the issue with long hives, if it's too long the bees don't naturally like going too far out to the side they will sometimes swarm rather than work all the way out to the far end, which is why other hive designs are verticle.


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## Bush_84

Something that I have been thinking about. This year before the dandelions bloomed I shifted things back and put empty brood bars between the brood nest and the entrance. That gives them some room to expand. I then tried to add empty brood bars in the brood nest. I was worried about adding to much to quickly, but in the end I didn't add enough. Today I found queen cups all over the brood nest. 

So next year i will add around 5-8 empty bars towards the front. Then as soon as the dandelions start I need to add 2 bars somewhere in the brood nest weekly. 

So that is likely my plan for next year. As for this year, i caught them in time and performed a cut down split. I don't have an issue with swarming, but I want to catch them before they do.


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## Michael Bush

http://www.bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm#management

Q: What is different about the management of a top bar hive or long hive? 

The need for empty bars in the brood nest during prime "reproductive" swarm season to expand the 
brood nest more and prevent swarming.


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## captcatfish

Well guys thanks for all your help.
I,m in need of more help now. I thought my bees were doing great in the tbh. I just checked them and i found queen cups with larva
with them. Looks like they are getting ready to swarm again. I have been putting bars in to open the broods nest i guess did not put enough of them in to keep up
They are starting to back fill the broods nest with honey. Is there anything i can do to stop them from swarming at this point.i added more bars to the broods nest
harvested 2 bars of honey probably to late ? I do not want to make a spilt.. I have langsroth hives too but i really enjoy my tbh i just wish i could stop this from happing.
I think i,m starting to get the idea of opening broods nest. to late now,. Thanks in advance Franky


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## captcatfish

Well here we go again my top bar swarmed again. seems like they swarm every two months added bars in broods nest i even moved them back from the entrance and poof there gone very frustrating can some one please help me? i have know idea.this is the third time in less than 6 months.i,m ready to turn my tbh in to a planter for a herb garden.


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## Tom Brueggen

Swarming is typically induced by two things: overcrowding and overheating. The former can lead to the latter. If your hive is sitting in full sun, the bees are going to have a hard time keeping it cool, and they may sense they are crowded because they can't cool the hive. That's just a thought. I'm I'm Houston TX and my four TBH's sit in almost full shade. I've seen no signs they even want to swarm. Granted that could be a false positive, but just something to chew on. 
I suppose another cause for swarming could be a really strong flow. What's in bloom for you? Are the bees booming? Think about it: a strong flow will induce a population boom, which could result in crowding and overheating...and swarming. It's in the bees' nature to swarm when the survival odds are best, and from their perspective, it doesn't get much better than a strong flow!


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## Oldtimer

captcatfish said:


> can some one please help me? ....this is the third time in less than 6 months.


Don't think anyone can. As previously stated, TBH's are not expandable so once they are choca with bees there is nothing you can do, other than split it into two hives. If you don't want to keep splitting it, you just have to watch them swarm.

That's why all other hive designs are expandable, ie, you can add unlimited boxes, or whatever, to them to make more room. Except skeps, which are meant to swarm to make increase.


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## shannonswyatt

captcatfish said:


> i,m ready to turn my tbh in to a planter for a herb garden.


Don't do that, they make better feed troughs! 

Is it possible that your hive is too small for your area? I wouldn't think Micheal's design is too small, assuming you built one like he describes on his site out of 1x12s. I assume that were you are there is very little "off season" for the bees. If they are crowded they will swarm. That good thing about top bars is you can do pretty much what you want to do, but there isn't much consensus on the best way to do things. Some say front entrance, others say side entrances, as you can move the the entrances farther back towards the honey storage. If it is an issue with the size it is easy enough (usually) to make a bigger hive to put the bars into. I'm starting to ramble.

Tomas is a top bar beek in Honduras, I assume the climate where you are is closer to his (although I think he is in the mountains). In any case, he may have some insights on top bar beekeeping in tropical climates. You may want to search his posts to see how he does things, or get in touch with him.

Oldtimer is on some kind of personal anti-top bar hive Jihad, not sure what that is about. (oh no! Now I have done it ) Seems like there are a decent number of top bar beeks out there that are happy with what they are doing and their results. Some even have hundreds of hives.


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## Oldtimer

Jihad? 

Actually, I was just telling the guy that there is nothing he can do about swarming in his situation other than split the hive. With top bar hives, that's just a fact around the design. Accusing me of a jihad won't change that although it may make you feel better, if you want to stifle a full discussion of the issue.

If you are in an area where swarms don't matter such as a non suburban area without close neighbors, then no worries, just let the bees do what they do. Some of my friends top bar hives swarm and they don't even know they swarmed, things just carry on.

And oh. I currently have 4 very small TBH's in my back yard, I use them as mating nucs so I got the swarming issue down. Should mention that incase somebody wants to spin it i'm running a jihad or something.


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## shannonswyatt

Good to see you have a sense of humor! 

You can actually do something besides a split. You can put them in a bigger hive. That hive can be deeper, wider or longer. All depends on what you prefer and what the problem is, and what you can do based on the current bar and comb size. A lot of folks have tiny "garden" top bars. The comb volume is less than a medium and may be less than a shallow. That small size is definitely going to produce a hive that swarms. Others have them made from 55 gallon drums and they pull huge frames of comb. I was surprised when captcatfish said that he had a hive based on M. Bush's design, as that is a decent size hive. 

All hives can swarm, even well managed hives. Certain types of bees are more prone to swarm than other types. He could cut those bees out into a Lang and still have several swarms a year.


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## Delta Bay

In my view MB's hive design is a bit small. If you want to stay with that size you will have to relieve the population pressure at times. Shaking a package of bees from the hive at key times may be helpful. Removing the queen with cell pinching and new queen introduction could be part or another option but doing nothing is most likely going to result in a swarm being issued no matter the hive.


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## Oldtimer

Delta Bay said:


> In my view MB's hive design is a bit small.


Yes I'd go with that and Mike being pretty open guy I'm sure would not be opposed to people using bigger desgns if need be. I've been a little frustrated seeing my friends build very small TBH's, that I know are just going to be trouble. But hey, they got the design off the net so it must be correct, right! LOL 

In the bigger TBH's you are at least going to get some honey to harvest. But they will still be swarm prone I've seen TBH's swarm even when the whole thing is not full, they just didn't want to move so far away from the brood nest sideways.


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## shannonswyatt

Oldtimer said:


> Yes I'd go with that and Mike being pretty open guy I'm sure would not be opposed to people using bigger desgns if need be. I've been a little frustrated seeing my friends build very small TBH's, that I know are just going to be trouble. But hey, they got the design off the net so it must be correct, right! LOL
> 
> In the bigger TBH's you are at least going to get some honey to harvest. But they will still be swarm prone I've seen TBH's swarm even when the whole thing is not full, they just didn't want to move so far away from the brood nest sideways.


No doubt on any of the first paragraph. The problem with top bars (and all bee keeping in general) is there is a lot of anecdotal "evidence" that hasn't had scientific scrutiny. It is very had with bees to do scientific studies, since they don't do what we want them to do. We are all lemmings, just asking for directions to the nearest cliff. 

I still disagree about TBH being swarm prone in general. Small boxes yes, but if you put a swarm in a shallow they won't be staying long either. Put a swarm in a ten frame lang box with a super, leave it alone, and if they survive, they will more than likely swarm. I think some people get into top bars thinking they will put a hive in the garden and collect honey, but the instinct of the bees isn't to setup shop and never leave. If they get strong and they are not split they will swarm, just like a lang. My dad has gotten several swarms from a man that overwinters his bees in a single deep and in the spring they swarm like clockwork. 

I've seen a feral hive in a ceiling void that was 16 inches wide and about 6 inches deep. They want back a long ways, probably close to four feet in that void. The honey combs in the back were probably at least 2 inches thick. Did they swarm yearly? More than likely, since there was no intervention.


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## Zonker

I've given up on TBH's but this link https://www.box.com/shared/hkefz3qcic is to a the top bar hive I built. Much bigger than the standard bush model. I don't like the design because the bees seem to swarm relentlessly, they eat a huge quantity of honey in the winter and the combs were so large they tended to break off, but for whatever its worth ....


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## shannonswyatt

Did you have any issues with the sides bowing being made from plywood? I like the idea of the escape on the follower board. Solves the problem with the bees behind the follower board. 

I just looked at your escape board for your Warre. What are the little red cones from?


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## Oldtimer

Shannon you disagree about TBH's being swarm prone, and cite the fallacies of "anecdotal evidence", after which you go on to try to prove your point, with anecdotal evidence. Which was something about one beehive in a roof somewhere, and your anecdotal belief that bees in a lang will swarm anyway.

Of course bees in a lang will swarm if not given enough room plus other manipulations that langs make possible, for the same reason that any healthy TBH will swarm. But langs are expandable and with skill, swarming can be prevented.

I am not just blowing off some anecdotal evidence. I started beekeeping full time aged 16, working for an outfit with 4,000 hives. We used good swarm control techniques, which I won't go into they are another thread, and hardly ever lost a swarm. That was more than 40 years ago. Although my work with thousands of hives for many years was not a scientific study, I think there were enough hive numbers to make my observations more than anecdotal.

Certainly more than somebodies observation of one hive somewhere in a roof. What breed were they? What was the flow pattern? Do you know why they did whatever they did? No? then it's anecdotal evidence at it's best.

Again I'm not saying all this to knock TBH's. To keep bees properly it's best to have understanding, not see it through a rosy colored view that came from a book, that did not portray the full picture. My friends TBH's do well, if I help them manage them. Cos when I see something happening like the bees thinking about swarming, and sort that, the owner is going to get his honey harvest. But to pretend TBH's don't swarm much, is to ignore reality, at your own cost.

The thread was started by a guy who has a problem with his hive regularly swarming. He came here and asked about it. If he cannot get a full answer because of dogma, what's the point of having the forum?


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## shannonswyatt

i wasn't trying to prove anything with anecdotal evidence, just pointing out that bees will build quite large hives in the roofs or between floors. Not that it is perfect, just that it happens. And these can grow large, and then they swarm, as there is no one to split them to prevent a swarm. And the same thing happens in Langs all the time. Odfrank talks about his mastery of swarm catching. He claims that it is mostly first year beeks. My guess is most of them run Langs. 

Not saying TBHs don't swarm. But so do every other hive. That is nature of the insect. You can manage to it, but if you don't they will fly. If you want to put something in your backyard that just gives you honey and never swarms, purchase a few cases of honey. 

I don't personally think I have a rosy view on TBHs. if you want honey, don't get a TBH, get Langs. If you want to be commercial, run Langs (yes, I know there are some commercial pollinators that run TBHs, but they are not running thousands of hives. ). You will have much more help in the way of people that also run them, you can "borrow" a frame of brood when necessary, you can purchase stuff for them from a store, etc, etc.


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## Oldtimer

shannonswyatt said:


> i wasn't trying to prove anything with anecdotal evidence, just pointing out that bees will build quite large hives in the roofs or between floors.


Based on your observation of one hive.



shannonswyatt said:


> Not saying TBHs don't swarm.


No you are'nt. But the inference they don't swarm more than other hive types, managed properly, is misleading.


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## shannonswyatt

My point was not that the best hive or configuration was to have your hives in rafter space, just pointing out that it is possible to have a hive that isn't painted white and isn't the shape of a cube that could grow quite large, and it doesn't need you or me to manage. On the other hand, I'm quite sure that hive had been there a long time and it had probably at least a swarm a year, since no one was managing it.

I'm not a Pollyanna, and I don't think TBHs, are going to save the bees, let alone the world.


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## captcatfish

Wow guys take it easy. It sounds like it could be a little small for my area as Tom suggest it always happens when we have a good flow they just back filled and left. This time i stayed on top of it adding bars to broods nest they built a lot of comb but did not back fill everything before they left. i still have the first swarm that left put her in a lang and they are doing great they have filled one super full of caped honey and almost filled another.I have no idea what kind of bees i have. I caught them in my swarm traps. It seams like I might try to make it a little bigger maybe add a eight frame lang to the front end and have the best of all worlds. It,s a shame i really like my top bar.Well thanks for all the help guys.
Franky


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## shannonswyatt

You may want to PM Tomas. I haven't seen a post in a bit, but he may have good info on tropical TBHs. Hate to see you go the Frankenhive route, it is the worst of both worlds. You can't work the top bars easy because of the Lang on top, and you don't get the full advantage of a Lang.


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## Zonker

Didn't have any trouble with the plywood. The roof keeps the sides nicely sheltered. Have two sitting unused that are both still in great shape. I love (loved) the design, strong simple joints, stable legs, relatively cheap. The end pieces are a little complicated but the trick is to mark a straight line down the middle and measure everything from that one line. But but but wasn't at all happy with them

The cones can be purchased from Dadant (http://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=481) I've seen folks make them from screen as well.


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## shannonswyatt

Thanks for the reply back. I have some of the screen escapes, I thought maybe you found some ad hoc device to do the trick. I'm rather cheap. 

Sorry to hear about you TBH problems. I'm surprised that you had collapsed comb, your depth doesn't seem extreme, and your bars are not that wide either. Was it in full sun?


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## Zonker

In an effort to cause more uproar, have you considered the Warre's? Same top bar advantages (simplicity, clean wax, variable cell size, cheap, cheap and of course cheap), but with the ability to do some Lang type manipulations (adding boxes, splitting hives, etc.). I really like it and the bees don't seem to miss my supervision.


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## Zonker

It wasn't so much that the combs were too big. It was just that I didn't open up the hives often enough. Everything gets glued together pretty quick, then gets torn up when you're inspecting. The Warre's are better fit for me. I take honey in the fall and leave them alone for the rest of the year.


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## shannonswyatt

Gotcha. TBH's take more management and way more than Warre, that seem to require very little intervention. Did you use package bees for your Warre, a swarm or did you cut out from the TBH? I would like to have a Warre just to have one.


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## Harley Craig

is it bad if they do swarm? I'm not interested is producing sellable ammounts of honey or splitting and having a million hives I just think bees are cool and look forward to the benifits in my garden I live in a rural area and shouldn't have any problems with neighbors.


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## shannonswyatt

In your case no, since you are not breeding pest, you are breeding feral colonies! I would recommend that if you are not going to manage for swarms that you place a swarm trap or two near your property during prime swarming season. While you may not be interested in the swarms, someone else may purchase them from you.


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## Harley Craig

shannonswyatt said:


> In your case no, since you are not breeding pest, you are breeding feral colonies! I would recommend that if you are not going to manage for swarms that you place a swarm trap or two near your property during prime swarming season. While you may not be interested in the swarms, someone else may purchase them from you.


 I have thought about that, i'm not saying I'm not going to at least try, I just won't lose sleep over it  There are at least 2 ferrell colonies on my 28 acres that I know of, and that is how I plan to get bees for at least 1 hive. How close to the hives should I put swarm traps out?


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## shannonswyatt

Mcartney Taylor has a PDF, swarm traps and bait hives. Google it and you can find it. It pretty much covers what you need to know, and you can read it in probably an hour or two. If you know were the hives are and they are easy to get at you could do a trap out and pull some bees off. You probably won't get the queen, but you could pull off a start and purchase a queen for under $30. 

You may want to check out the swarms, cutouts and trap out forums.


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## Harley Craig

I have been lurking there. My plan is to buy a package for 1 hive and trap a swarm for the other. MIGHT decide to have one more just in case I do decide to split. For what it's worth. I'm pretty sure my ferrell colonies are swarms that took off from a fairly new beekeeper about a mile down the road  they are big fat ( what appear to be Italian bees) and appear very docile.


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## shannonswyatt

Cool. Good luck! You wont get anything this year, but if you setup a couple easy to make traps you may get lucky. It is like fishing. More lines may increase your odds, but it isn't a sure bet.


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## captcatfish

well here is my top bar/lang hybrid it is really working well loads of honey.
i added a five frame lang to the end of my top bar. moved queen in to lang 
part of hive with fully drawn frames and added a queen excluder in between
to keep her there after they filled most of the lang i removed excluder and let her 
go were she wants she move back in to top bar part of hive and they back filled 
the lang part full of honey i have been adding bars open broods nest in the top bar.
now i plan to extract honey from lang part of hive and move her back and add excluder.

http://s1283.photobucket.com/user/captcatfish1/media/IMG_0943_zps9305c7ba.mp4.html

http://s1283.photobucket.com/user/captcatfish1/media/IMG_0862_zpsedcd4cac.jpg.html


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## Rader Sidetrack

> well here is my top bar/lang hybrid it is really working well lots of honey.

Hmmm, the location of the movie and photo posted above look like the path on the computer that they reside on, but that won't work for anyone not using that specific computer.

You may be able to use the"Insert Image" icon on the message toolbar to upload your photo here, or otherwise use a photo host such as Photobucket.com and then post a link here.


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## captcatfish

thanks Rader
i think it works now.


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## Rader Sidetrack

Yes, those links work now.

That is an interesting TBH/Lang hybrid. I'm curious about the details of the transition from the sloped TBH sides to the vertical sides of the Lang portion. How big is the hole in the board that separates the two sections?

Hopefully you considered the potential weight of that box being completely full of brood and honey when you designed the transition details.

I say this as I had a structural problem with the leg/body interface on one of my TBHs with different leg lengths (to accommodate the slope of a hill.)  I was shocked at how heavy it was when I had to fix the leg problem!


FYI, now that you have figured out Photobucket links, you might want to experiment with the link style that Photobucket calls "IMG". Try pasting that in just as you did the photo above.

.


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## captcatfish

Rader, i cut the lang even with the inside dimension of the top bar i left 3/4 inch on top for strength on top bar and lang added a piece of draw comb
right on the transition that comb stays in place you can not remove it. I did consider the weight on the legs my next one will have better legs.
its really work out well I'm happy with it i have the best of both worlds and it seems like i have the swarming under control for now..
Franky


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## Steve Johnson

Mr.Beeman said:


> I had one abscond due to the fact the follower board was placed too far back.



Why do you think they absconded due to follower board being placed too far back ? Why would that make them abscond ?


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## shannonswyatt

Some people say that having too much space will cause an abscond. Not sure if it is true, but I think that it is prudent to shut down the space somewhat.


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## Harley Craig

If they swarmed it sounds like you are doing something right


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