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Harvesting all the honey out've a topbar and feeding syrup? I may have a problem

13K views 46 replies 18 participants last post by  kilocharlie 
#1 ·
Hi guys,

I'm a first time beekeeper. I've built two top-bar hives out of 1.75" thick cedar, the hives themselves are well insulated but I may have a serious problem. My 2 packages of bees arrives March 30 and my bees will mostly be forging canola flower. From what I've heard bees will not survive the winter on canola honey. Canola honey crystallizes quickly and the honey it self is rich with nutrients, this causes the bees to make lots of trips to empty their bowels, if it's too cold and they begin to relieve themselves within the hive they will die because of dysentery. What all beekeepers here do is harvest all the honey in mid august and begin feeding the bees high volumes of sugar syrup. Sugar syrup is clean and free of nutrients, it doesn't crystallize as fast as canola and bees have to make very few cleansing flights. But here's the problem I have a top bar hive and I'll have to crush the combs, beekeepers here use langs and don't have to crush the combs.

Will the bees be able to build all the comb back in August and September if I feed them tons of syrup? And anyone else from Manitoba or elsewhere harvest all the honey and replace it with syrup?

I don't want my bees to die :(, please let me know if the syrup method will work.

Thanks,
Anderson Litton
 
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#2 ·
As I see the situation, the Lang beekeepers need to harvest before crystallization otherwise the honey will not come out of their combs when in the extractor. But since you are using crush and strain, crystallization is not a serious problem for you. So don't harvest honey the first year, and let the bees eat what they need over winter. Bees can eat crystallized honey. Here's more on that:
http://www.honeybeesuite.com/can-bees-eat-crystallized-honey/

Given your location, I would try to figure out, before you might actually need it, how you could feed your TBH bees, if needed.
 
#3 ·
Thanks for the info Graham, but the problem isn't harvesting it's the fact canola honey and our environment doesn't allow bees to gather water and make cleansing flights that the caused by the "undigestibles" in the honey. Syrup has very few "undigestibles". When the average temperature in winter is -30c bees won't be able to feed on the canola honey and will most likely die.


Do you think if I harvest all the honey in the beginning of August and begin feeding syrup to my hive, that they'll be able to replace the honey and comb I take by the end of September?
 
#6 ·
And - I would strongly recommend getting new hives to an area where there was a greater variety of flowers. A single monoculture crop won't cut it, especially canola / rapeseed. I would double my wager if I lived that far north. An area with more than half a dozen different crops well-timed would give you a better chance.

I would add pollen (or substitute) patties and I'd add essential oils to the sugar syrup, but my first priority would be to get those bees nearer to a greater variety of flowers.

Bejay is correct, but I would be sure to time the honey harvest early, not late. A failed fall bloom would doom your bees, comb or no comb.

Rader is also correct. Do not harvest the first year...let them build up.
 
#8 ·
The problem isn't with crystallized honey in general it is a problem specific to canola honey and long winters with no or few cleansing flights.
You could try to set aside surplus honey from other sources like clover or alfalfa or any syrup comb built in spring to put back in the fall.
They will build comb during fall feeding but not sure if it would be enough to winter on. That would depend on how much and how early you start feeding.
I never extract the brood frames. I do make sure most of the honey is to the outside before I start feeding so that it will be consumed late winter or early spring when temperatures should allow for cleansing flights if needed.
 
#9 ·
your issue as I understand it is comb storage. I would suspect that the backfilling of the broodnest are would be sufficient to handle this. In the TBH I use the brood bars are 1 1/4 wide and honey bars a 1 3/8 I use 20 brood and 10 honey. those 20 brood combs can be backfilled very quickly.
 
#10 ·
Maybe you should contact Acebird about scratch and drain. He says he can get a fair amount of the honey out of the frames. You could do that then you could feed sugar syrup. Kilo, in the prairie provinces bees can usually build up enough to give a fair honey crop, sometimes more than 100 pounds. I'm not sure about top bar hives though.


Nathan
 
#13 ·
Maybe you should contact Acebird about scratch and drain. He says he can get a fair amount of the honey out of the frames.
Not if it is crystallized, you will get nothing. In the case of a top bar hive with no frame structure it might be difficult to scratch and drain unless the tool was a heated paint scraper and you took your time not to break the comb.
 
#11 ·
Canola honey on the prairies for sure isan issue. Knowing this, I'm not sure why you would choose a top bar hive. Harvesting all the honey in august then trying to feed heavily could be tricky. I did meet a woman from Calgary that usese top bar hives. She undersupers them for the honey harvest. Maybe when you harvest in August the brood nest is large say, 8 frames and if you feed heavily they back fill most of those 8 plus build another 2-4 frames then you are fine.

Long live Langstroth.

Jean-Marc
 
#12 ·
You could extract the canola honey from the combs by scratching open the cappings and putting the full topbars under a strong langstroth hive...let the lang bees put the honey in combs that you can extract. Then, you can put the empty top bars/combs back in the TBH to fill on a fall flow, or by feeding.

deknow
 
#15 · (Edited)
Graham - Thank you for those articles!

And - One idea I would consider is to make creamed honey from the fast-crystallizing honeys such as the varieties of oilseed rape. Jean-Marc figures your honey extraction would be much easier with a Langstroth hive frame, and in addition, you'd harvest a lot more honey.

Deknow has an innovative thought - a TBH box for brood and a Langstroth to extract honey by spinning it. Using Deknow's setup and making creamed honey, you'd enjoy the best of your entire honey situation, but you still have the issue of not enough variety for the bees. I'd suggest that you plant a food patch - as many native wildflower types as you could get seeds for - near your apiary.

Nathan - I doubt anyone gets 100 lbs using crush and strain in a TBH, even with 20 hours of sunlight on canola. That sounds more like Langstroth hive poundage with a good extractor, and getting those frames back on the hives quick. In years past, 200 lbs per hive average was exceeded, I only know of Wilmer Apiaries making big honey numbers anymore, down here U.S. side. I'm sure there are others, probably up in the Peace River Valley, exceeding 100 lbs per colony average, but I'd bet they are all using Lang' equipment. It takes 17 to 20 lbs of honey to make 1 pound of wax, so crush-and-strain just doesn't put out the high poundage that the Langstroth frames in extractors can. There are even studies that showed that the smell of fairly dry, extracted comb stimulates the bees to forage even harder at the beginning of a nectar flow.
 
#19 ·
It takes 17 to 20 lbs of honey to make 1 pound of wax, so crush-and-strain just doesn't put out the high poundage that the Langstroth frames in extractors can.
I think the numbers here are a bit reversed. A pound of wax comb can hold about 20 pounds of honey. It takes about 8 pounds of honey to make a pound of wax. So yes, you do lose production (bees making wax versus honey), but the upside is you are pulling old comb out faster. Hopefully you are pulling adverse chemicals out of the hive as you pull the comb out.

You are right though, it is doubtful that you would get 100 pounds from a top bar, but it isn't impossible. I doubt I would ever see that in Virginia, but I hear that on a strong Sourwood flow they can really make honey quickly. I hope to see one of those heavy flows someday!
 
#16 ·
Just a thought, but what about feeding the bee jeezuz out of them as soon as you get them?
Add a bit of food colouring to the feed so you can visually determine how much syrup they put away, maybe a bit of feeding stimulant like HBH, and once/if they put enough away, stop the feeding and let them forage.

I don't know how this would work out...anyone care to weigh in?
 
#17 ·
> It takes 17 to 20 lbs of honey to make 1 pound of wax ....

Those numbers may be a little high. Courtesy of Michael Bush:

From Beeswax Production, Harvesting, Processing and Products, Coggshall and Morse pg 35

"Their degree of efficiency in wax production, that is how many pounds of honey or sugar syrup are required to produce one pound of wax, is not clear. It is difficult to demonstrate this experimentally because so many variables exist. The experiment most frequently cited is that by Whitcomb (1946). He fed four colonies a thin, dark, strong honey that he called unmarketable. The only fault that might be found with the test was that the bees had free flight, which was probably necessary so they could void fecal matter; it was stated that no honey flow was in progress. The production of a pound of beeswax required a mean of 8.4 pounds of honey (range 6.66 to 8.80).

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesharvest.htm
 
#18 ·
It's possible to extract topbar comb in standard gear, you just need a basket or cage (Warre mentions this in his book) to hold and protect the comb while it's being spun and it should be in a radial style machine vs a tangential to keep the forces as much in the plane of the comb as possible.
 
#20 ·
I haven't tried this but it is a possibility. You could try using a queen excluder to contain the brood nest. Similar to a single brood chamber honey production unit. You will need to manage the brood end of the hive by removing capped brood to the opposite side of the excluder from time to time. Replace them with empty bars.
If you can saving a supply of good brood combs and replacing the removed brood combs once the brood has emerged could be helpful. I'm thinking that at the end of the season very little honey will have been stored in the brood end which is what you'll find when using a single Langstroth brood chamber. You can then feed them up with syrup to winter on.
 
#22 · (Edited)
It is true that the amount of honey to produce one pound of wax is a difficult quantity to determine experimentally. Dr. C.C. Miller was comparing total weights from comb honey-producing hives vs. liquid honey-producing hives in the same bee yards over several years when he arrived at the 17- to 20-pound approximation.

Analyzing the chemical compounds of the average sugars in the honeys and the average fatty acids composing the wax gives numbers in the 4 lbs. to 9 lbs. to one range (depending on the fats and sugars), and there are indeed a lot of variables and a lot of ways to calculate it, each with it's pros and cons. Because I suspect that there is alot more involved that a straight conversion, I have always leaned towards Dr. Miller's crude calculation as probably closer to the truth, as the math is much less complex, and numbers in that ballpark have been repeated many times by other beekeepers. He usually produced 17 to 20 times as much liquid honey per colony as he did honey-in-the-comb per colony when comparing colonies of similar strength in the same locations. I would suppose that the ratio varies greatly as equal colony strengths go up or down, but that is a S.W.A.G. (Scientific Wild-@$$ed Guess) , not confirmed by the bees nor experimental data.

The bees probably have it figured better than we do, but I'd also bet that they are dealing with stress more often these days than they are optimistic about building comb. If you were a bee that lived on Wall Street, it's kind of like investing all your honey into wax when there is lots of bad economic news. Any way you slice it, I can't see a 100 lbs per hive average happening very often out of a TBH using crush-and-strain. If it happens anywhere in North America, it happens in the Peace River or other BIG Canadian nectar flow during the 18- to 20-hours of sunlight either side of summer solstice on a good year. Canola combined with clover and alfalfa is perhaps the best bet out there, although there are other very strong nectar flows other places as well. Not that it is impossible, just that it is improbable, but it happens on a regular basis and in a lot of places with Langstroth equipment and an extractor. If you actually do it with TBH and crush-and-strain, you're good, and you have really good bees :)

The TBH brood box and Langstroth honey boxes that were suggested earlier would sure do the trick on a good year, with many of the benefits if a TBH to boot.
 
#23 ·
I'll be trying the scratch and drain method for harvesting the honey in August, without crushing the comb. Albeit I won' be able to take out all the honey the remaining honey would be mixed with sugar syrup resulting in a mixture that shouldn't be hard for bees to ingest and shouldn't require them to source water. I don't know if I'll be successful or not but once thing is for sure; if I leave the rapeseed/canola honey the bees are guaranteed not to survive, canola honey requires them to source water something they cannot do in -30c weather.

I want to thank you all for the responses as they were all very helpful. I didn't expect to receive so many responses but I'm glad I did.

Thanks again,
And
 
#24 ·
Now I am VERY tempted to try Deknow's suggestion - TBH brood boxes with Langstroth honey supers. Because I am a queen breeder, I will have lots of fresh drawn comb for Jay Smith / Henry Alley Cut Cell and /or Punch Cell queen rearing methods. I do have a feeling that bees will want to stay home better in a TBH or any situation with some natural-drawn comb. My hives that fared best last year had up to 25% foundationless comb.

Any suggestions regarding top bar design? I will be using 10-frame medium Langstroth boxes.
 
#32 ·
that was my thought in the beginning. i understand the appeal and romanticism of the TBH but it just may not work their. especially if you are have serious issues with dysentery and canola crystallization. the fact is that LANGS are the way to go. im blessed that we run both here. langs and tbh's. but if one design didnt work i would head to necessity .
 
#28 ·
Thank you, Dan! I'll check into that.

I did find six top bar designs online last night - lots of issues about keeping the beeswax starter strip attached and strong enough, so I'm thinking a dovetail strip cut right into the main piece. I like the arched splint idea, but my guess is that it is a lot of labor for a commercial guy.

Michael Bush just sent me a message - because TBH's have no gaps, they don't work well with supers. He suggested foundationless Langstroth frames - which I will probably try in the brood boxes, and foundation in the honey super frames. That way I still have the advantage of any frame fits in any box (I use all medium 10-frame Lang's).
 
#29 ·
Phil Chandler, author of the Barefoot Beekeeper, recommends removing all possible honey and feeding sugar syrup.

His advice, not mine. But if you feel the canola honey will cause a problem in your environment it could be a good idea. There was a Canadian study where they found bees wintered on sugar syrup came through with lower nosema levels than bees wintered on honey, presumably because they has defacated less.

A note about sugar syrup. Mix it a thick as you can using hot water, and add a cup of vinegar to each 4 gallons. The vinegar is beneficial in several ways.

The other issue though, is getting comb built and syrup stored, at seasons end. It's rare, but I'm in agreement with DeKnow as per post #12 on this. Best to have the existing combs of canola emptied by other bees, and give the combs back to the TBH to refill with syrup.

Long term, you'll need to come up with an easier, simpler plan for having combs available for syrup, but for this season, i think you should do as DeKnow suggests and see how it works out. Having done it once, will probably give you ideas how the method could be improved / simplified.
 
#31 · (Edited)
Vinegar makes the sugar syrup closer to the acidity level that honey is so it's easier on the bees. It also acts as something of a preservative so the syrup is less prone to mould while it's in the feeder. And finally, it can help "invert" the syrup but don't ask me what that means but whatever it is it's supposed to be good LOL. :D

There is debate about which is the best vinegar to use with some claiming apple cider vinegar is best. Me, I just use whatever is to hand it all seems to work. However in your situation, you are wanting to reduce indigestable solids for the bees that they would have to excrete, so in my opinion, white vinegar would be best.

One other thing, if temperatures get below 50 f the bees will find it too cold to go into the feeder & remove the syrup. So you need to plan this so you'll have syrup stored before temperatures get too low. They'll take syrup from an overhead feeder at lower temperatures, as the warmth rising from the cluster warms it. But in a TBH an overhead feeder may not be possible.
 
#34 ·
I know people who use apple cider vinegar as a Nosema preventative. I have tried it (and distilled vinegar) in syrup and it seemed to set off far more robbing than plain syrup or syrup with ascorbic acid in it. It has too much smell, in my opinion, to be a good feed that won't set off robbing.
 
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