TBH regression time

[Sasha]

How much time is needed to fully regress a LC swarm in a newly established TBH?
I have read on some other group that if used TB (instead of 4.9 foundation)we need to wait for 6 years and also to have a new queen every year.Can someone ,who is using TBH and no chemical varoa treating comment ,on this?

Regards,Sasha from Serbia where the peaches are starting to bloom

[Michael Bush]

The amount of time is directly related to how agressively you regress them. 6 years would be about what I would expect from just cocoon buildup. But if you just measure your comb and try to keep the smaller in the center and harvest the larger and feed the empty top bars into the center of the brood nest they will get smaller much quicker than that. Doing that it would probably take two or three years to get where the center of the brood nest is 4.9mm or smaller. But if you do complete shakedowns you might get it done in two.

[Sasha]

MIchael:
But if you do complete shakedowns you might get it done in two.

Reply:
What would complete shakedown mean in case of TBH,taking al the combs out,and ,start from the beggining?

[Michael Bush]

Yes. It means shaking all the bees off of the combs into a hive and making them start from scratch. The biggest danger in doing this is the bees may abscond. In standard hives this is usually prevented with an excluder on the bottom to keep the queen from leaving until there is some brood comb again.

Usually the brood combs removed are given to a different hive until they emerge and then the comb is removed and recycled for wax.

I'm not recommending this method. I think gradual works fine, but it is the quickest way to the end results.