# Those of you running 2 colony topbars...



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

I have one fairly strong colony and one weak one with my older queen due to the timing of the split. The strong colony is building up stores adequately when fed, I guess we've had a helluva dearth, and the new split queen there is doing a good job, lots of brood still. The weak hive is pathetic despite giving them donated brood and stores from the other hive in an attempt to do a bit of balancing - when I inspected today it's obvious the other colony has been ceaselessly robbing them of stores for the last couple months and I will do an oa dribble in the next couple of days 'cuz I see way too much varroa on my ipm tray. It's earlier than I want to treat and there's a bit of brood but it must be done. 

No sign of varroa in the strong colony but they will get a dribble when I see brood slack off. A few weeks ago the strong hive was even robbing itself when I opened up a small hole at the other end to help the workers clean up that end and put a feeder in there, the bees thought the new entrance was a great opportunity to rob from that end to take it back in thru the other end. Stupid bees. Maybe that's my fault for putting the feeder at the end instead of between brood and stores.

But my question is this - I've done all sorts of things to try and stop the incessant robbing with no success and my old queen's colony has no chance if radical action isn't taken. I put feeders in both hives today and within 15 minutes they were getting robbed wholesale so i shut 'er up again. Jeez.

So I'm considering housing them in the other end of the 4' box the strong hive is in, with the frames of stores in between, put a feeder smack dab in the middle of the full stores.

The theory being that they can share the stores going into winter instead of working against each other?

I don't want to jeopardize the wellbeing of my new queen but it's breaking my heart that they aren't giving the other gals a chance. 

Is this a really bad idea or a heroic attempt that will save the original queen so coming into spring I have more options?

What is your rationale with running a 2 colony box? Upside/downside?


----------



## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I had one tbh colony that has struggled since late spring to get going even after multiple queens. In Aug, they got a local gal, but had packed the place so full of pollen she had no where to lay and the wax moths were having a party in that hive. I didn't have to feed at all this summer, but my stronger ones decided to pick on this one and would rob it clean. Leave the queen and workers, but take every bit of honey out of the bars that I put in there. I even had the entrance reduced down to the size of 1 bee. There were just no guard bees to check them at the door.

So I made the decision to move the colony out of that hive and into a different one. Same yard, but different spot. Only equipment I had at the time were some 5 frame deep Langstroth nucs. My bars fit them perfectly so the colony when in 2 of those 5 frame deeps stacked on top of each other with space between just the end bar for the bees to come and go between levels. The entrance hole was only one bee width. What a difference that made in just a week. I gave them a bar of capped honey and an empty drawn comb. The queen had the empty comb laid up with eggs in just a couple of days and there were lots of workers coming and going from the entrance. Shortly after that, I got another topbar hive ready and moved them into that (kept it in the same spot as the Lang nucs) and they are doing very well.

I guess my advice is sometimes they just need to move to a different spot to have a fighting chance. The old hive got left in the original position for the older field workers that didn't want to re-orient (I kept shaking them off into the new hive). They stuck around at the old hive for so long, I ended up putting a mini mating nuc inside the hive for them to cluster in along with a QMP lure. Darn things drew out the frames and decided they wanted to stay. So I am adding a capped queen cell to that this weekend in hopes of getting another mated queen before winter. Crazy bees.


----------



## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

To answer our question directly about running 2 hives in one box, I haven't been able to make that work for me. That was one of the things I tried early spring with the colony that I ended up moving. One of the queens will always have a stronger scent and you will find the bees migrating over to her side. It seems to work find when both colonies are queenless and taking care of queen cells, but once one of them gets mated, the force is very strong to go over to the other side.


----------



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

Sigh. Done that mid August. Rehived 'em once. Moved 'em twice. Not far, just don't have that much room. 
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?316506-Top-Bar-Robber-Screen-that-works
Now I have a neighbor a few blocks away that would like a hive in their space, but they're just too weak to leave somewhere else right now. In the spring I hope to place a hive over there after (hopefully) doing at least one split.

Another idea I'm toying with is moving the strong hive back to the stand the weak one was originally on and putting the weak on in its' spot. I thought of this back then but for some reason forgot about it. If it could beef up by some workers in the next few days then I can varroa treat them all. Maybe put some uncapped brood and more stores from the other hive also before I treat. If I can just get them built up enough so that they can defend themselves a bit I think I can get 'em through winter. It's still plenty early to feed them up for here.

I was just re-reviewing Randy Oliver's stuff on oa dribble which has some updates from this spring. This year has been warmer than usual for us, so I think I could call this oa treatment a summer/early fall and could still get away with another when the temp really drops and brood is further reduced. Hm... Maybe I should just go ahead and do both hives in that case. Lots of capped brood in the strong one, but it might help to knock down the varroa so I don't see such a drastic problem all of a sudden when brood ends. Last year was an eye opener there, first year from swarm wasn't supposed to have varroa problems. If only these ****ed bees would listen to the experts!

Ruthie, are you treating for varroa? I can't recall seeing anything in your posts, but I have an awful leaky brain sometimes.


----------



## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I like the idea of swapping the two hives. Not sure how easy that would be for you to do. My 4' hives require 2 people to move and only one beekeeper lives at my place ;-) I do have trunk handles on all of mine so I can occasionally talk my son into helping move things around.

No, don't take them out of your yard to your neighbors. They won't get the same attention that they do at your place and they probably are not far enough from the robber bees. I'm on a 1/3 acre lot with 4 hives and 6 nucs so I fully understand not having a lot of room to change locations. I have given thought to using my shed roof to park a few...but the idea of climbing up and down a ladder doesn't sound too fun.

By all means, take the feeder out of the weak hive. No need to give the robbers one more reason to try and get in there. Add a block of sugar if you must, but I like giving them 1 bar of capped honey at a time from the stronger hive. Have you considered open feeding? I used it last year, along with anise oil in it. It was at my back door, as far away from my hives as I could get it. The stronger colonies were all over that. Maybe you just need to give them something new to focus on. (they say bees can smell anise oil from a mile away, but I didn't mind feeding everybody's hives in late Sept). I've had a couple of nucs robbed clean of any stores, but they left the queen and workers alone and eventually they built back up to defend what I was giving them.

As for treating, I tend to stay pretty quiet on that issue. Don't care for all the negative comments that people get when they say what they are doing. I do not use chemicals on my hives, nor do I use smoke. All my hives get a brood break around June/July when I pull the queen over to a nuc and let the main hive requeen. That leaves them with a young queen to go into fall. I also use powdered sugar, and I don't mean to test (I don't) or just dust on the top of the bars to let it drift down. Each bar gets pulled and turned at a slight angle and dusted well on both sides. (I don't tip the ones with open brood because I don't want it in the larvae). Each hive gets dusted probably twice in mid-late spring and then the queen gets pulled in June/July. 

I also do something very different than most and that is diatomaceous earth on the IPM board. All my hives have screened bottoms and then under that is a pull out solid board. I put a heavy layer of DE and refresh that very often so it stays powdery. (It gets caked up with all the humidy around here). Any mites that drop off, fall into that and shouldn't be able to get back up in the hive. Works very well with the small hive beetles too and wax moths.


----------



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

Same situation here, one little old lady, no way I can move a 4' by myself, just a 2' with trunk handles and mostly empty is a bit of a struggle. BUT, I see the glass has come loose a bit in the relatively new 4', so I'll finish up another with the new lid design that'll be much better, ala beethinking and put it in place... I could transfer a few bars at a time. Nah, I still have to swap 'em after dark so the weak bees have more chance of getting reoriented even tho' I want the strong worker bees to be fooled. Guess I'll have to hire kevin for a few minutes, a neighbor that does odd jobs. He's not very strong or bright and I wouldn't let him paint a hive (not that I paint mine anyway, lol), but maybe he can handle a 5 minute move tho' I'm a bit nervous about that. ;-)

Bees up a ladder, what could go wrong? The paper guy has his bees in a lang on some roof, and he's a pretty chunky hobbling ol' dood, not sure how he does that.

I open fed a few weeks ago as an attempted diversion from the robbing, but it just created a hot mess. I got stung 7-8 times 'cuz bees were just everywhere and crazy. Not mean, just stupid crazy. And they wouldn't leave me alone for the next week. I resolved to feed only in the hive from there on out. Tho' I just put the feeder from the small hive out by the other one and they're mobbing it already and I'm about to evict the 3rd bee that's come in.

Just opened up the hive and removed the feeder, more varroa on the board, eek! Too many dead little bees.

All of that sounds eminently sensible to me and I wouldn't be treating at all if I hadn't had the varroa explosion last fall. My hive design also has a bright white pullout tray under a screened bottom, with a solid bottom under that. It makes it very easy to see ANY varroa that fall and there were none, then suddenly gobs. The oa dribble was cheap and fast and easy and I'm glad to have that in the arsenal. I contemplated the powdered sugar to encourage them to groom themselves, and if you're having success with that maybe I'll give it a try. Like today, whatthehell, I need to hold off a few days on the oxalic until the new bees/brood have stabilized a bit in the box, so this would be a great test. What are you using to apply? I have a small sifter but it puts out a lot. Tried an old baby powder container for de, but it clumps together too much to dispense in a nice little cloud like the powder does. Saw a cool li'l machine in a vid from over the pond that had an awesome little "powdered sugar smoker". Turn the crank and a nice little directable stream of powder sugar come shooting out. Bet you can't get 'em here, tho'.

I used DE in a hive that had a removable screen, that was a mistake and why I've gone to fixed screens that use routed grooves in the bottom of the hive pieces and screen bead to get it good and tight. I stupidly removed the screen, trying to use another panel on top to keep the bees out of that space but I failed in the execution and bees got into it, not pretty. The other girls dispatched and disposed of them quickly, but a little bit of de goes a long way. Finally figured out to add some spacers in the bottom to prevent bowing in from the screen tension (doh!). 

I've used both spray oil and de, I don't see any difference in what stays on the board, the oil is a mess but I still use a bit of de occasionally if I see any sign of wax moth, they love to get down there and it's an early indicator, have never seen any in comb. Haven't seen a hive beetle, tho' early on I did see a single little beetle with one horn and I squished him immediately and regretted it. Under the 20x loupe he was way cool, poor guy, should have put him in a little jar to get a better look and id then let him go.

Well, I think we're on the same page with wanting to do what can be done to save a weakie rather than let it go. I'm being a bit sentimental with this queen, she's not the best but she is my first and I'd like her to have at least a 2 year run. And it's okay with me to rob out stores and brood for the weak hive this early, tho' if they don't get their act together this month I'm running out of options. I'll just keep feeding a quart or two every couple days until they've filled up every comb. 

I've been feeding 1-1 because the strong hive was/is brooding up so nicely, though I have plenty of comb at this stage. Should I go ahead and switch over to 2-1 as soon as I bring home that next 50lb bag of C&H?

So what happens to the queens after they get nuk'ed? Do you sell off your nucs the next spring with those queens? The more I think about the timing of your brood break, the more it makes sense to me. I really don't have a handle on what/when the flows are, but this is my 2nd fall with 'em and sure looks like there's nothing much for them in June/July so the forced brood break makes SO much sense and would also work well with an oa dribble after the brood is all hatched out.

Enuf rambling, I must get out and work on the replacement hive if I'm gonna do the shuffle tonite. Thanks!


----------



## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

I've got two top bars with one colony each and they seem to only use half the 4' box. 
I bored a hole on the opposite end of one of the top bars and covered it with screen thinking I might over-winter both in one before I even had the second. It's a vent for now. 

The bees in the original colony split into 3 and I only wanted two top bars. My bars are 19" long for a reason. Stuck the third split into a lang. (see?) 
Same yard but different box. Have 4 colonies from the same tree. They're wild.Two langs and two top bars. They're in my back yard being treated like pets.


----------



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

My first hive from scrap was about 40", this spring they were burstin out and I xferred into a new 4', but added a few spacers and it was full again. A big ball of bees were congregating up under the hive roof at the front and I thought they were gonna swarm, but when I got in there not a queen cell one. I split 'em anyway. I might not do that again, fine line, eh? But not so much choice when you've only got one. I wanted to see queen cells so the bees were telling me they were ready to split. But my hive is only 15" inside, 16.5 total bar length, 9.5 inside at the bottom. The strong hive is only about half right now, but I want them in the big hive so they're ready to fill it out in spring.

First 50/50 split, no go, 6 weeks later finally found the queen and moved her out and they did the job that time. So both boxes got a brood break unintentionally, but too early. Just removing the queen seems the best way to ensure that they have a good choice of queen building eggs/larvae.

I think these are ferals from a swarm last July. Pretty small bees. Uber gentle, but so far not so impressed with their rate at putting away stores, the original queen is a spotty layer, but the fact that they boomed in the spring gives me hope. If I don't get some honey next year I might mailorder a queen for comparison. The new queen has started out very strong, nice full brood at the bottom of the bars.

I'd like to double the hives every year, that's why I'm trying so hard with this weakie. I've got 3 4', 2 2' and the original 40", but I don't think I have enough top bars cut for all of them yet, but it's nice to have spare boxes to shuffle around, especially when you're experimenting with different features. My new openable lid on dowels will make it that much easier. If I get my doubling I'll have to build another box or two next year to be on top of it, would like to reserve the 2' for swarms, cutouts, nucs. Be nice if I could sell a few hives and bees to fund the habit.


----------



## Michigander (Jul 31, 2014)

Have you considered robber screens? I had a similar problem last year that I decided to do something about this year. I now have robber screens on all my hives with the exception of my TBH swarm traps. I am hopping to leave them on this winter and will see how they do. I built them planning to leave them permanent. I use a slotted upper entrance. Bees land below screen and go up to enter hive. I can try and get some pictures next time I go out to my bee yard if interested.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>my old queen's colony has no chance if radical action isn't taken.

Radical action should be taken IMMEDIATELY when you see robbing.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesrobbing.htm


----------



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

Michigander said:


> I can try and get some pictures next time I go out to my bee yard if interested.


Sounds very similar to ones I built when all of this started almost a month ago. Did not deter the robbers for more than a few moments. But I'd love to see pics of yours, perhaps there's some detail that makes all the difference.

I swapped the troubled hive to the strong hive spot. Thought I was really clever 'cuz there's lotsa bees in there instead of few. Great, now they are the strong hive robbing the other. Everything I do sets off robbing and it just wont' stop.

I failed to put stuff in strong hive's entrance on the swap, so too many of the bees went over. I wasn't worried about it 'cuz there's lots of capped brood in the strongie, and I thought the activity there was orientation. 

I've screened the robbed hive, closed up for 3 days and moved it, screened it, moved it again, swapped locations, made it the home of the robbers...

Now I think I should move the formerly weak now full of robbing bees hive to the neighbor's a few blocks away after dark, screened and with a towel hanging off the roof over the end to further befuddle them, and feed them there.

And move the formerly strong hive back to the strong position, also screened and toweled, and hold off feeding them.

Hopefully confusing the gang of robbers and leaving the weak position empty. They seem to be keying off of position as much as anything in the strong/weak struggle.

I surely never thought it would be this difficult to to outfox something with 6 legs. Geez.


----------



## Michigander (Jul 31, 2014)

Here are a few quick pictures I took. I haven't had a noticeable problem this year with any of my smaller hives getting robbed out.


----------



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

Yep, mine are the same basic idea but flimsier, just a thin piece of wood on the top, hot glued wire to it, folded the corners in.

I think one of my many mistakes is not being proactive enough, then doing silly things that inadvertently set off the robbing. Learning, learning...


----------

