# Basic top bar management tips



## neal (Jun 6, 2006)

Greetings,

I have 3 top bar hives that I inherited whenI bought my house in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I've had them for 10 months and finally got the gear and minimal knowledge to go in and work with them last month. They were full of honey and I cut out much of the honey store.

Since then, the bees have busily filled the hives up again, mostly with brood. I know just enough to poke around, but I don't really understand much about the philosophy of management. Are there any good guides I can look at that will outline good practices for taking care of top bar hives?

Here are a few things I'm trying to figure out:

- One hive is about 80 to 90% full of comb. The comb is largely brood, though some of it is split brood/honey. What is the best philosophy for thinning this out? Should I cut out combs that are largely drone cells? What do you do with combs that are full of drone/worker cells once removed?

- One hive seemed to have the best balance. Brood in the first half, good honey store developing in the second half. Room for growth. I thought it looked great until I found the comb with a dozen capped queen cells and a good drone production going on. So I figured it was preparing to swarm. I cut off all the queen cells and took out one comb of drone cells. Is there anything else I should be doing?

I'm sure these are basic management questions, so if I could find a good guide, I'd probably be set.

Thanks!

neal


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>- One hive is about 80 to 90% full of comb. The comb is largely brood, though some of it is split brood/honey. What is the best philosophy for thinning this out? Should I cut out combs that are largely drone cells? What do you do with combs that are full of drone/worker cells once removed?

I wouldn't pull out brood. Maybe the hive isn't big enough as having that many workers should give you a nice crop of honey. You can cut out drone if you like, certainly if I were to sacrifice some brood, it would be drone, not worker and the up side is you'll get rid of some varroa. You could do splits (if you have another box) or give some of the brood to the other hive (if it has the same size bars etc.)

>- One hive seemed to have the best balance. Brood in the first half, good honey store developing in the second half. Room for growth. I thought it looked great until I found the comb with a dozen capped queen cells and a good drone production going on. So I figured it was preparing to swarm. I cut off all the queen cells and took out one comb of drone cells. Is there anything else I should be doing?

You could stop cutting out queen cells, as they will just swarm anyway. In fact they may have already swarmed and you just removed their chance at a queen. Are they capped queen cells? Do they have an egg? Larvae? Are they just cups? 

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm#stopcuttingswarmcells

Putting space in the brood nest is the best way I've seen to head off swarming.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm


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## neal (Jun 6, 2006)

> I wouldn't pull out brood. Maybe the hive isn't big enough as having that many workers should give you a nice crop of honey. You can cut out drone if you like, certainly if I were to sacrifice some brood, it would be drone, not worker and the up side is you'll get rid of some varroa. You could do splits (if you have another box) or give some of the brood to the other hive (if it has the same size bars etc.)

All the hives are pretty full, so I don't think I can move comb from one to the other. Will the brood combs eventually become honey combs once the larvae hatch? Otherwise, I'm not sure where all that honey is supposed to go!

>You could stop cutting out queen cells, as they will just swarm anyway. In fact they may have already swarmed and you just removed their chance at a queen. Are they capped queen cells? Do they have an egg? Larvae? Are they just cups? 

They were all capped queen cells. They had developing queens in them. Thanks for the link. Lots of good reading on your site to keep me busy. If this was post-swarm activity, will they produce another batch of queens? Or have I done something terribly wrong? There is still a ton of acitivity in the hive, but I won't have a chance to check inside until Saturday. 

>Putting space in the brood nest is the best way I've seen to head off swarming.

I did some of that too. So at least I made one right decision! I didn't realize they would backfill brood with honey, so maybe I'm not as overfull as I thought. This is essentially my first month or two watching the hive and I'm really flying blind. 

Thanks for the tips,

neal


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>All the hives are pretty full, so I don't think I can move comb from one to the other.

Sure you can. Harvest some honey.

> Will the brood combs eventually become honey combs once the larvae hatch?

If they do, they are about to swarm.

> Otherwise, I'm not sure where all that honey is supposed to go!

I'm not either. Perhaps the top bar hive is too small of a volume.

>They were all capped queen cells. They had developing queens in them.

If they are capped, then they likely already swarmed and you likely have now left them queenless. A comb of brood from the other hive will rectify this.

> Thanks for the link. Lots of good reading on your site to keep me busy. If this was post-swarm activity, will they produce another batch of queens?

They probably have no queen nor the means to make one now. If one had already emerged there MAY be a virgin running around in there.

> Or have I done something terribly wrong?

You've made a very typical mistake based on the typical advice given in the typical bee book. My advice is, unless you have a VERY good reason, never destroy a queen cell. Especially to try to stop them from swarming or superseding.


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## BerkeyDavid (Jan 29, 2004)

Neal
Another way to keep a top bar hive from swarming is to do a split. If you can find the queen in one of your other top bar hives, and the bars are all the same, you could cage the queen on that bar and then just swap the bar with the queenless one. I never tried it that way but it might work. And the hive you are leaving behind queenless will then go ahead and make a new queen. That will keep the other one from swarming for a year.


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## neal (Jun 6, 2006)

>>All the hives are pretty full, so I don't think I can move comb from one to the other.

>Sure you can. Harvest some honey.

But that was part of my original problem. They are pretty much full of brood or mixed brood combs. I was looking for those lovely honey combs that I harvested a few months ago and they weren't to be found.

>>They were all capped queen cells. They had developing queens in them.

>If they are capped, then they likely already swarmed and you likely have now left them queenless. A comb of brood from the other hive will rectify this.

Whew. That is a solution that I am capable of implementing!

>> Or have I done something terribly wrong?

>You've made a very typical mistake based on the typical advice given in the typical bee book. My advice is, unless you have a VERY good reason, never destroy a queen cell. Especially to try to stop them from swarming or superseding.

I guess I can take some comfort in that, though I still wish I could get a handle on the best way to actually manage the hives. I'll go back in on Saturday and swap in some brood combs from the other hives just to be on the safe side.

Thanks again,

neal


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## Wojtek (May 31, 2005)

I would like to share some of my experience related to relocation bees from a packet to a TBH. 
When the first time I stood in front of a packet full of energetic, dynamic creature, with an advice of experienced beekeepers to shake it to a hive it was a bit beyond my imagination. So, I decided to install these bees the different way.
Description is in Polish but the series of picture will give you an idea of how I did it.
http://homepage.interaccess.com/~netpol/POLISH/Ule/Obsluga.htm
In the middle of text there are these pictures.

Also, by the way, you could see my other pages related to TBH. There are more pictures. Some of it may be interested. Try first this:
http://homepage.interaccess.com/~netpol/POLISH/Ule/CzescII.html

On the bottom of each page is return to the main page.

Sorry that this is not in English, but as I said, pictures are useful in all languages, I think


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## balhanapi (Aug 22, 2006)

<<I'll go back in on Saturday and swap in some brood combs from the other hives just to be on the safe side.>>

Hi Neal, Hope you know that you need to put in a frame of eggs/very young larvae into the hive if you want them to raise a nice queen. 

hope all goes well
keep us posted


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## neal (Jun 6, 2006)

balhanapi said:


> <<I'll go back in on Saturday and swap in some brood combs from the other hives just to be on the safe side.>>
> 
> Hi Neal, Hope you know that you need to put in a frame of eggs/very young larvae into the hive if you want them to raise a nice queen.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the pointer. At thist point, it's not good to assume I know anything! Not sure I would have done that or not. 

Anyway, here's what ended up happening. I went into the hive on Saturday. It was very busy, with a lot of activity and several new queen cells. I figured that it was probably fine. Then today it swamed, so I guess they made out ok. I'll go in again later this week to see what's going on in there.

Cheers,

neal


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## IZULA (Apr 18, 2005)

Neal-

I'm in ABQ and I can offer some help. Mr. bush is your best source for info as he helped me recover from a laying worker, among other things. His signature sums it up though, "Everthing works if you let it." Send me a PM and we'll get together.

Rob


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