# preventing swarming instinct



## mfisch (Aug 28, 2007)

Assuming I successfully feed empty bars in and keep them building up to what I've estimated a good maximum for the brood nest they'll eventually need to swarm (or be split). But whats the strategy for temporarily preventing one?

I'm not sure I'd ever want to stop one, but how does this work?

Will number/size of entrances affect anything? If I push the brood back and leave space at the front of the hive will this make them more comfortable (not running out of space), or more likely to swarm because there's more room for a cluster?

I actually think one of my KTBH may have swarmed a few weeks back, though I didn't witness it or find the swarm.

I ask out of curiosity after noting all the swarming threads.


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## Dinor (Mar 6, 2007)

You already know you cannot prevent them swarming but there are a few measures you can take to disincline the swarming instinct.
Space, allowing enough room for the queen to lay.
Comb building, giving them opportunity to build new comb.
Inspections, every time you go through the hive you disturb the colony life and especially the queens laying, this may lead them to conclude she may be failing.
New Queen, requeening regularly.
Queen selection. Select from only non swarming stock.


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

This is going to be long, so stay with me...

Perhaps the biggest factor in the swarming problems you are having
is the use of the Top-Bar hive itself. They are "swarm factories", 
nothing more. Colonies in these hives stay small and weak, and 
rarely work towards anything but swarming as the lack of side bars 
(or side walls) restrict the comb to having only a strip of honey
closest to the top bar, and nothing but brood below in the 
catenary curve shaped comb area.

This may be surprising to you. 
You might even react with denial and anger.
Please don't.

TBH's have been known to have been a very bad idea for years, 
and controlled studies (in Kenya) have confirmed the personal 
experience of hundreds of thousands of beekeepers in Africa.

In the real world, beekeeping is often the only possible source 
of a cash income to a family in deep poverty or barely 
getting by on subsistence farming. TBHs simply to not allow
their colonies to thrive and produce large crops. They only
promote a choked brood chamber, and limited stores.

Here in the US, hobby beekeepers are convinced to use these
hives by the pitch that they are somehow "more natural",
not knowing that the comb-by-comb management of these
hives is frustratingly unproductive as compared to the
box-by-box management of langstroth hives.

But there are groups like this one, who are working hard to 
replace TBHs in Kenya at the rest of Africa with better, 
more modern gear:
http://www.honeycareafrica.com/files/faqs.php

You can read their FAQ to see their position on TBHs,
and this view is not unique to that specific aid program.

Bottom line, TBHs were part of the problem - part of what kept 
farmers poor like you can't imagine "poor". Honey could have 
been a cash crop in Africa for generations if not for the 
introduction of the TBH.

I know a bit about TBHs, as I invested more time and 
money into trying to make top bar hives "work" than 
anyone you'll ever meet. At one time, I was running 
50 of them in my operation. I was trying to make 
them work on apples along the Blue Ridge of VA. 
Bottom line, you can't expect much honey out of them, 
nor can you expect them to build up to decent strength 
in time for apple pollination. 

If you really want to know, the history of the
Kenyan Top-Bar Hive had nothing to do with "natural
conditions for the bees". It was a simple product 
of racism.

It was intended to get African beekeepers (who are black)
away from using log hives, which did not have movable comb 
at all. For some reason, Africans were not thought to be
smart enough or skilled enough to construct the more complex 
Langstroth type hives, so the white European foreign aid 
workers came up with the "Kenyan Top-Bar Hive". A very 
embarrassing tale, one that many of us would like to be 
forgotten, and one that people like Ann Harmon, who writes
for Bee Culture magazine, have only been able to rectify.

The punch line is that everywhere you go in Kenya,
people have wood carvings to sell. Intricate, beautiful
things, examples of craftsmanship and skill beyond the
imagination of most of us. Kenyans clearly have always
had the skill to make "precision" hive parts, and could
have converted directly from log hives to langstroth hives.


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## mfisch (Aug 28, 2007)

http://mfisch.com/apis/hive1a.jpg
^^ Its 9pm (dusk), 77F, 55% RH, zero wind.

Are they keeping cool or is this a swarm in process? I don't live with the colonies so I really don't check them at night (so I don't know if this is unusual for the weather).

http://mfisch.com/apis/hive1b.jpg shows the bottom

http://mfisch.com/apis/hive2.jpg is the sister colony (Oak instead of Pine hive) for reference.

Should I come back in the morning and try to catch a swarm to put in a nuke or make more room in the brood nest?

Should I let them swarm and forget about it?

Thanks!


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

I understand your concern. I started my first hive this spring and they swarmed. However, before they swarmed there were huge hanging grape clusters of bees. Hundreds of bees hanging out. I'm talking about so many bees that they covered half of the front of my TBH and were piled on top of each other in a clump 2 to 3 inches thick. They were like this for 2 days before they parked themselves high up a tree and then departed. I do not see any where near that volume of bees in your photos. Adrian


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## mfisch (Aug 28, 2007)

Adrian Quiney WI said:


> I understand your concern. I started my first hive this spring and they swarmed. However, before they swarmed there were huge hanging grape clusters of bees. Hundreds of bees hanging out. I'm talking about so many bees that they covered half of the front of my TBH and were piled on top of each other in a clump 2 to 3 inches thick. They were like this for 2 days before they parked themselves high up a tree and then departed. I do not see any where near that volume of bees in your photos. Adrian


Yah, they didn't look like a swarm cluster, but it just seemed so odd to me for nighttime behavior (though like I said I dont often look at night). My wife says they looked like that all day. It was hot and humid, could that be it? When I got up close they looked like they were just hanging out (not necessarily fanning nor near entrances). Maybe they can't stay properly cool with the bottom boards off (which I just removed).

I wanted to look inside to see if they were clustered at the entrance but when I shined the flashlight in they all started buzzing pretty furiously and I gave up on a passive observation.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I'm not an expert by any means, and I don't do TBH I do Langstroth, but yours is looking normal to me. 

I've got a Cell Builder I setup today, and tonight I've got at least 5,000 bees on the front. It's one of those 108F days today, and now at 9:30 it's still 91F. I know mine aren't going to swarm, but there's sealed brood in the hive and the bees are hanging outside to keep the brood cooled down to a temp where it will survive. I would imagine that swarm bearding would look similar to what my cell builder is looking like tonight. It's a layer of bees covering the entire front of the hive, so 14" by 9.5" and it's 4 inches thick.


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## mfisch (Aug 28, 2007)

So does anyone have an opinion on my other thread re: bottom boards? This is my first few days of trying an open bottom. Is it possible its more difficult to keep cool with the bottom open?

-Matt


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## buckbee (Dec 2, 2004)

Jim Fischer said:


> This is going to be long, so stay with me...
> 
> Perhaps the biggest factor in the swarming problems you are having
> is the use of the Top-Bar hive itself. They are "swarm factories",
> ...


One out of six of my TBH colonies swarmed this year, compared with 12 out of 12 of my neighbour's framed hives.

This has been a poor year here for honey production in any type of hive, but I have pulled several full combs of honey (I leave most of it in place over winter) already - that is, about 2/3 of the height of the comb was honey, with empty comb below. 

I simply do not recognize the picture you paint of 'swarm factories' or small colonies and unproductive hives.




> TBHs simply to not allow
> their colonies to thrive and produce large crops. They only
> promote a choked brood chamber, and limited stores.


What you describe is not a property of the hive, but of it's management. Only if you do not provide enough space will you get such problems.




> Here in the US, hobby beekeepers are convinced to use these
> hives by the pitch that they are somehow "more natural",
> not knowing that the comb-by-comb management of these
> hives is frustratingly unproductive as compared to the
> box-by-box management of langstroth hives.


People who keep bees for their own sake, and who do not regard them simply as a natural resource to be exploited for maximum productivity, like battery hens, would disagree with you. And allowing bees to build their own comb is a lot 'more natural' than providing chemical-laden foundation. 



> But there are groups like this one, who are working hard to
> replace TBHs in Kenya at the rest of Africa with better,
> more modern gear:
> http://www.honeycareafrica.com/files/faqs.php


The site you link to is so full of half-truths and inaccuracies, that it's hard to know where to start, but their opening line says:

Firstly, Honey Care's Langstroth hive has exact specifications and dimensions that ensure that an accurate 'bee space' is left between the frames and around the hive so that bees can travel comfortably from one section of the hive to another. This is not achieved in either of the other hives. 

... which is so breathtakingly ridiculous that it calls into question their entire knowledge of beekeeping. They seem to be saying that bees do not know how to leave a bee-space around their combs, unless it is put there for them by the hive manufacturer!

They then compound the felony by continuing:

The imprint of the cell structure present on the comb foundation acts as a guide for the bees and ensures that they build cells of the right size and shape, which they can then fill with honey. 

As if bees can only build cells of the 'right size and shape' if they are given foundation!
http://www.honeycareafrica.com/files/faqs.php 
And how do they justify their claim that honey harvested from Langstroth hives is of 'superior quality'? I suggest that, in fact, ther reverse is the case, if you look at it from the point of view of nutritional value and not just how 'white' it is.




> If you really want to know, the history of the
> Kenyan Top-Bar Hive had nothing to do with "natural
> conditions for the bees". It was a simple product
> of racism.


No, it was in recognition of the fact that they could not afford to continually buy machine-made parts, foundation and stainless steel extractors. Beekeeping development history is littered with projects that involved bringing in Langstroth equipment and training a few people up, only to have the whole thing fail within a couple of years through lack of maintenance after the project money ran out.

Top bar hive variations have been used successfully for thousands of years and it is arrant nonsense to suggest that they are merely a product of racism.

I hope this project is more successful than its predecessors, but I suspect that it will thrive for a while, until they discover that Langstroths inevitably bring with them all the problems of disease and infestation that we have experienced in the West over the last 150 years since their introduction.


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