Making a split with a TBH

[Heritage]

I'm considering making a split from my hive. I was wondering about how each of you do it. I know everyone seems to have their own techniques, and I would love to hear. Thanks.

[chemistbert]

Just like a Lang. Remove a frame or two of eggs and brood. A few frames of pollen and honey and put them all in a new hive. That's it. I don't even look for the queen, which ever hive is queenless will raise a new one.

[Scot Mc Pherson]

Well that's a bit chancy. Its best to give the queenless hive a boost if you can because the queen right hive will rebuild and layup quickly, the queenless hive will have to wait for the new queen before they can really get going.

I describe a modified checkerboard split for TBHs on the beewiki

http://beewiki.linuxfromscratch.org

[Heritage]

I haven't seen any drones in my hive yet. I'll check it again, probably today, and see if I have any, but if not, it would probably be safer to wait on the split, right. There are very few honeybees in this area.

[MIKI]

Do a search on the subject, It has been discussed in detail in the past. You will find just about everyones method.

[Heritage]

what about the drones?

[Robert Hawkins]

Heri, if you'd listed your location when you registered we wouldn't have to ask. Where are you that you don't have drones in June?

Hawk

[Heritage]

In Virginia, I hived a swarm 5-10. I haven't seen any drones yet. I was going to check today, but it's been overcast and wet, figured I'd wait for clear skies.

[BerkeyDavid]

hi Heritage I bet you have drones. I would not worry about not having any. There are drones around your area by now.

Scott: Nice site I checked out your Bee Wiki stuff.

All: I am going to try to split up my TBH into some medium five frame nucs tomorrow. I am cutting some Lang frames in half on the band saw and attaching 1/4 hardware cloth like Michael's swarm frames.

My sole surviving TBH is simply busting out all over. I thought it had swarmed, there were so many bees hanging on it but actually it is just too hot probably and they were simply bearding.

Just another dumb rookie mistake!

In looking again at the two failed TBH's I am convinced that they simply froze out because the hive dimensions were too small. The hives that failed should have been a little wider and a little deeper. My 3 langs made it through without insulation or wrapping, and they were not as strong as the failed ones. But next winter I will add a sheet of styrofoam on top.

I am excited about looking in the TBH tomorrow. There must have been 6-8 pounds of bees hanging
out there last night. I just hope they don't swarm before or after the split and I lose all those great bees...

If this works it will be a good alternative use for TBH's - as a breeder / source for making up Lang nucs.

[Heritage]

David, thanks. I checked in on my hive briefly but didn't see any drones at all. We don't have too many bees in this area, I'll recount my experience - I've captured one swarm 1/4 mile from here, don't know where it came from. The colony in my hive was captured about 40 miles away. A feral colony was in a building about 5 miles from here; the building was burned in Winter, doubt the colony made it. That is the only bees I am aware of nearby. Not too many bees here.

If I were to make a split and there weren't any drones for the virgin queen to mate with, how would I know that? Would she simply not lay any eggs? If that is the case, could I use the 'newspaper between hives' trick to put the colony back together? As you can tell, I am quite the novice, and any help will be very much appreciated! Thanks!

[BerkeyDavid]

Heritage:

I say there are probably drones near you because nature abhors a vacuum. While you may not be able to see other beehives, the chances are strong that they are there, particularly if you captured your swarm within a 1/4 mile!

I would go ahead and do your split and not worry about it. Even if there are no drones in your current hive, which is doubtful, your new queen will be better off by breeding with whatever is out there than with her brothers or half brothers.

If she did not breed, and still started to lay eggs, they would all be drones. So you would know that way.

[Heritage]

Ahhhhhh. So if there were no drones (which is doubtful) she would lay unfertilized eggs = drone eggs. These would hatch and then mate with the queen later, thus producing a queen which would lay fertilized eggs? Is this right? I'm getting things ready to do the split now. Thanks.

[BerkeyDavid]

you got it. the queen "decides" whether to feritlize each egg with sperm. If she decides to do so, the result is a female. If she doesn't, it is a drone. Fascinating stuff, ain't it? good luck and have fun

[chemistbert]

BerkeyDavid:
Are you saying that a drone laying queen will go on a mating flight after she has begun to lay? That is what heritage is saying.

I have never heard of that. Please enlighten me.

[Michael Bush]

>Ahhhhhh. So if there were no drones (which is doubtful) she would lay unfertilized eggs = drone eggs. These would hatch and then mate with the queen later, thus producing a queen which would lay fertilized eggs? Is this right?
>you got it. the queen "decides" whether to feritlize each egg with sperm. If she decides to do so, the result is a female. If she doesn't, it is a drone. Fascinating stuff, ain't it? good luck and have fun
>Are you saying that a drone laying queen will go on a mating flight after she has begun to lay? That is what heritage is saying. I have never heard of that. Please enlighten me.

I guess I wasn't paying that much attention. I'm guessing BerkleyDavid wasn't either.

Once a queens starts laying, whether fertilized or not, she will not go on a mating flight ever again. So if she doesn't mate, she will not lay for about 25 to 30 days, but once she does she will lay nothing but drones the rest of her life and she will never mate once she starts doing that.

[Heritage]

hmmm. I knew a queen could decide to lay an unfertilized or fertilized egg, you're right, it is fascinating! So, I think I will simply wing it. I'll take the old queen into the new hive and watch the old hive closely. Unless anyone else has any suggestions. Thanks.

[Heritage]

Well, the split is done. The queen was found and put in the new hive along with brood, eggs, and honey. Things went exceptionally well. I've put empty bars in place of the bars I removed from the old hive. Should I put empty bars between the bars I removed? Should I use a follower board to restrict the size of the hive temporarily? Should I separate the two hives for a while or leave them be? They are presently about 4 feet apart (put there to make it easier to split). Thanks for all the help, I'll let you know how it all comes together.

[Scot Mc Pherson]

You should place empty bars where there are now bars missing in both hives. Its just like checkerboarding, you put empty bars from where full combs were removed.

Bees beard in TBHs at least in mine, bearding started here a few weeks ago and will continue until the end of september likely here. Its about environment control, and doesn't necessary indicate a swarm.

[BerkeyDavid]

Hi guys
Thanks for clearing it up. What I was saying was that if the queen didn't mate he would know because there would be nothing but drones. I missed the detail in that comment. Wow that would be interesting... thankns for catching it. ChemistBert i will defer to you and MB on almost everything! No one had responded to Heritage so i thought i would give it a try.
The main thing was that he should not worry about the perceived lack of drones at this time of year. Agreed?

I took some pics of the bearding of my TBH yesterday, off now to do some splits. Hope to post some pics later. We are having Scot McPherson weather up here, 90 degrees 3 days in a row. I sure hope I don't have a lot of comb collapse, although this TBH is a year old so should be tougher.

[BerkeyDavid]

With some help from Mitch I went through my surviving TBH last night and made a split into a five frame Lang nuc. I was really impressed with the toughness of the comb, inspite of a day that reached 90 degrees.

Even Mitch was impressed with the depth and amount of bearding that extended over more than half the face of the hive and up over the lid.

On entering the hive I did lose the first top bar. It was packed with a comb of capped honey. This first bar is always a problem for me because there is no easy way to cut the attachment comb. Once that first top bar is removed I can cut the side attachments. The good news is that I have a nice comb of honey!

I was also impressed that there was very little side attachment to the old comb, as reported by Scott and others. I agree with Scot's statment that the bees seem to know whether side attachment is necessary. Once tthe comb is older and tougher they must realize they don't need the side attachments.

The brood nest extended almost the entire lenght of the hive, from bars 4 to within 4 bars of the entrance end. There was significant drone on the bars within 3 of either end.

The brood nest was quite constricted. There was really no room for laying. We had a lot of trouble finding eggs, although there seemed to be a lot of sealed brood and open brood.

We did find one good bar with some eggs and cut it out to fit a medium frame. Tied it in and cutt additional brood comb to fill out the frame. The eggs were at the very bottom of the comb. Because of the dimensions, the comb had to be rotated sideways to fit into the frame, rather than cut and placed in the same position as it was in the TBH.

We cut up another bar of open and sealed brood as well to make up 2 of the frames of a five frame medium nuc.

We culled some drone comb, tried to straighten up the comb that had strayed, and then as we returned the frames to the TBH we brushed the bees from each comb into the nuc to build up our nurse bee population.

By the time we had closed up the hive, there were still about 10 pounds of bees still clinging to the cover or bearding on the side. We then placed all of them into the 5 frame nuc as well (we had placed an empty nuc on top to help channel the bees down into the new nuc.)

Mitch thought this was probably overkill, since most of these bees hanging out would be field bees anyway and would leave. But what the heck? If we had inadvertently picked up tthe queen (and for a while we thought maybe we had), this would have kept the field bees.

We then added 2 frame of sealed honey and pollen and a frame of open nectar into the bottom five frame nuc on either side of the cut comb. These frames came from my strongest Lang hive. The bees from these frames were first brushed off before placing in the nuc.

Because of the large number of bees now in the nuc we could not remove the empty second nuc, so we decided to add 5 frames of foundation and then closed it up. An entrance reducer on the nuc helped hold them in.

This morning there were still significant numbers of bees at the nuc entrance, and no significant bearding on the TBH.

Plan is to check in 5 days for queen cells, and recheck for laying queen in 28 days.

I do think that this TBH hive is also too small, although it was bigger than the ones that did not make it through the winter. This was the same hive that I photographed and that was analyzed by Dennis.

As Dennis pointed out in his examination of my hive, there really is not a lot of small cell in this particular hive. And I think the reason for that is, partially, that the hive is just too small. There is really insufficient room for significant brood space on the interior of the comb.

The other reason for the small amount of small cell is beekeeper interference. I overly worked this hive in its first year and rotated comb out of order to try to encourage straight comb.

I think it is better to number your top bars right from the start, using the narrow ones in the middle for brood nest and the wider ones on the ends. Use a follower board / feeder to limit the size at first, but then do not rotate or move your top bars. That way they will organize the brood nest how they want and the small cell will stay in the middle.

OK, so much for this essay...

Thanks Mitch for your help. As you know there was no way one guy could have done it as effectively. Mitch I hope it was good practice for your cutout job this weekend! ;)

[Scot Mc Pherson]

How big are your hives, I have never seen my hives get so full that I couldn't get out the first comb. My hives are 4ft long, and the equivelent of 3 deep supers in volume, and this may have something to do with, plus the fact that I remove comb through the seasons as they finish capping them.

[BerkeyDavid]

It is a secret. But I will tell you. ;) Length only 40 inches. slope of sides is 30 degrees. or maybe 27.5 I will have to double check smile.gif

The first comb I usually have to harvest because it gets attached to the side and I cannot cut the side attachment until at least one bar is removed. So when I pry up the #1 top bar the comb remains behind.

I should / could rotate an older comb to the #1 spot. I had no trouble when I had the feeder / follower. Made it easy to just remove the feeder then I could access and cut the brace comb.

Fortunately this means that I usually get a nice harvest reward with new comb honey from the #1 bar. They never have (yet) put any brood in the #1 bar comb. Pure stuff.

Also, I like to eat the entire comb. I have become addicted to comb honey. So I don't crush it, just eat it!

Cheers!

[Heritage]

Well, thanks for all the help, but I do have another question now. I've "checkerboarded" both hives now and they seem to be doing well. The split has started building more comb on the empty bars now. Question is this: is it normal for them to stay inside for a while after splitting? They aren't foraging - no activity outside the hive at all. Inside they look normal though. Any ideas? Thanks.

[Mitch]

I did enjoy Daves THB hive but it is not for me.I am just now starting to do splits and the like and find the langs much easyer for me to work with.Might be a retirement project for me but that is a long way off.

[BerkeyDavid]

Heritage you are in the wrong forum. I thought you had a top bar hive. If you are checkrboarding you must have Langs. You are correct they are not foraging. All you have is nurse bees. That is good. They will start foraging later when more nurse bees emerge. you should post these qu3estions under Beekeeping 101. good luck

[Heritage]

Thanks David, but I don't have Langs. I have TBH. I was using the term "checkerboarding" based on Scot's post above:

"You should place empty bars where there are now bars missing in both hives. Its just like checkerboarding, you put empty bars from where full combs were removed."

I'm sorry if I've come to the wrong place.

[jim b]

David-
Any thoughts about supering your TBH?
I'm wondering if it would work.
I suppose you could put a Lang up there, even with foundationless frames.
Maybe someone could elaborate on this idea, whether it's realistic or not.
jim

[BerkeyDavid]

Heritage
My bad, sorry. I have been making way too many assumptions this week!

jim b
I think MB or maybe bwrangler has done that.

[BerkeyDavid]

OK, here is an interesting site with info on supering

http://www2.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/super.htm

James Satterfield site. WOrth a look.

[Heritage]

no problem, David. Should I separate the two "Top Bar Hives" smile.gif from each other? They are about 4 feet apart and as of now look to be doing fine. Should I move them further apart before the split starts to forage? Thanks.

[BerkeyDavid]

Heritage
I think it is more important to face the entrances in different directions than the spacing, or have the entrances in different positions on the hive itself. I did get some drifting last year from my middle lang to the ones on either end. So to prevent drifting I changed the compass direction of the entrances on the end and that seemed to help.

But if your TBH's are of such different designs that it is easy for bees to tell the difference, probably ok.

You could run a poll and ask them! ;)

[Heritage]

I'll be sure to check with them smile.gif The design is pretty much the same except one is on a stand, the other just barely lifted off the ground with blocks. There is about an 18" height difference. Other than that they are pretty much identical. Both entrances are facing South (somewhere on the forum here, someone said their bees had told them that they like the Southern entrance best) I'd like to keep them all facing the same way, so maybe the height difference right now will keep them oriented. We have just begun a renovation project and will soon move all the hives to the newly remodelled beeyard. So I'll just leave them alone for the time being. Thanks.

[jim b]

David-
Thanks for the link. Now that i see it, i think i have seen part of it-honey press-before, but it's nice to have the whole site to peruse.

[Scot Mc Pherson]

David,
http://beewiki.linuxfromscratch.org and look for TopBarHiveSplits it explains checkerboard splitting. Its what I call it since its an amalgum of checkerboarding and splitting.

[BerkeyDavid]

Hi Scot
Yes I see what you mean, nice web site, I have been there before. I liked your link pages too. Here is the new link to Dennis' site:
http://bwrangler.madpage.com/

[MIKI]

I will stick with a minimum of 12 to 16 inches in depth to allow the small cell development and add to that a pratice of minimum interference in the first season. I have 5 TBH,s that are thriving right now. My next great test will be to see if they all come thru the winter then my mind will be made up. I do not see a problem correcting comb after you have established. We had an old saying in the pits "First finish then finish first"

http://photobucket.com/albums/y291/mikisbees/?action=view&current=DSCF0104.jpg


http://photobucket.com/albums/y291/mikisbees/?action=view&current=DSCF0099.jpg