Bee Newbie

[Hambone]

Hellllllllllloooooooooooo ALL. This is my first of many post on this forum. This one may be long. I promise to shortin them after this. I have decided to go w/ the ktbh. I just built on last weekend. I did a hirschbachapiary.com Very easy to build. I am doing a Bush one this weekend. These will be my first ones ever. I am one of the guys that has never read a book about beekeeping yet. I have 2 ordered. I know its not the way to go. But I am jumping in head first. A few questions. Some maybe dumb but bear with me.

***** I have 16 Brood and 18 Honey bars. Triangle style. Do I need to put a divider w/ an opening in the bottom between them. To serperate the brood and the honey.

***** I plan on having both my hives done this weekend. And bees ordered shorty after. If I have bees installed by Early-Mid April will this be enough time for them to settle in and make enough honey for them to make it though next winter.

Lets start here and roll with it. I would personally like to think Bee Source, Michael Bush and Hirschbach Apiary. Your info and dedication greatly appreciated.

[Scut Farkas]

Take a look at the Abbe Warre hive design. It's kind of like a verticle top bar hive. It has lots of cool features - for the Bees that is.

[Michael Bush]

> I have 16 Brood and 18 Honey bars. Triangle style. Do I need to put a divider w/ an opening in the bottom between them. To serperate the brood and the honey.

No.

> I plan on having both my hives done this weekend. And bees ordered shorty after. If I have bees installed by Early-Mid April will this be enough time for them to settle in and make enough honey for them to make it though next winter.

Most likely it will be plenty of time and if it's a good year they might even make you a little honey.

[Tim Hall]

Derek,

Welcome. I'll be starting some KTBH's not too far from you, and I'm a first-timer this season too. I'd be curious to know how things go for you. If I recall correctly, you have a fair amount of mesquite pasture around Ennis...should provide a good nectar source. My understanding is that without mesquite the nectar flow is relatively short in this general area...not bad, just short. I'll be driving through there on my way from FW to work my two hives in Fairfield. Also have four hives in FW.

[Hambone]

Tons of Mesquites. I have 5 acers east of town, surrounded by miles of open land and a few houses here and there. Should be a good spot.

[Tim Hall]

Just make sure you pull your honey (assuming there's a surplus) before the broomweed and/or bitterweed come into bloom, if you get a lot of that. I hear these make an awful tasting, bitter honey.

[Shapleigh's Bees]

Welcome and let us know how you make out. A real live person (mentor) will be a big help to you. See if there is a bee club around. Keep in mind that top bar beekeeping is foreign to most folks. You kind of have to adapt what you learn from every source to what you are doing.

[Tim Hall]

See if there is a bee club around. Keep in mind that top bar beekeeping is foreign to most folks.

I think there's a club in Waco. I went to the club in Burleson a few times, but it wasn't very eventful or educational, and I felt like everyone would have looked at me like I had three heads had I mentioned top-bar hives. The beekeeper that is preparing nuc's for me has no experience with TBH's, but has been very open-minded and helpful.

[Tomas]

Derek,

Trying different styles or construction methods for your ktbh boxes is fine (and fun if you’re into carpentry). If you’re changing the dimensions that will affect the comb size, however, you might eventually run into problems. Ideally or eventually you should probably try to keep everything the same size so you don’t have problems if you want to transfer combs between one hive and the other. You don’t want them to be too big for the other box. Experiment if you want to try to get the right size box for your area and beekeeping conditions but eventually make everything a standard size. It might save you a headache later on.

Right now for me it would be a pain to start changing the dimension of the boxes for my operation since there are so many (especially if you take into consideration trap hives and nuc boxes). But at the same time the comb size I get works well for me and the bees here in Honduras. The only thing I’m changing is the length of the box, which I needed to increase. To do that doesn’t cause any problems.

----------
Tom

[Shapleigh's Bees]

I...I felt like everyone would have looked at me like I had three heads had I mentioned top-bar hives.

I was trying to hint at that without saying it. Clubs can be a good source of stuff -- like when they bulk order packages. And show you how to use some of your stuff. I'd just keep my mouth shut unless someone actually cared about my hives. Helping someone go through Lang hives can help with the trepidation that folks start with when they open a box full of bees.

[Shapleigh's Bees]

Trying different styles or construction methods for your ktbh boxes is fine (and fun if you’re into carpentry). If you’re changing the dimensions that will affect the comb size, however, you might eventually run into problems.

Tomas is clearly a highly experienced beek and it's well worth a search on his posts on this board for any tbh enthusiast. My philosophy runs similar to his in that I want everything uniform in the interest of keeping stuff simple.

If your intent is to experiment with a few designs, even with different bar sizes and slope angles, do it. Have fun and learn something from the differences. Just think about why you are doing it.

[Hambone]

Good points. I don't plan on changing widths. Just ease of building.

***I had to go to Dallas this morning and stoped by borders books and got The Backyard Beekeeper by Kim Flottum. Any opinions on this book. This is the only one they had.

[Tim Hall]

That's one of the books I read...I thought it provided a good overview of beekeeping. Just keep in mind that at times you will have to be a little more creative in your hive manipulations than what is described in any book, because they all assume you're using a Lang. 95% of the information applies, but some things just work differently when you don't have bee space between bars and a frame surrounding the comb.

Another book I read and liked - "Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture" by Ross Conrad. I think this book along with Flottum's and the information gleaned from this forum (especially the resources of Michael Bush and Dennis Murrell) have made a good foundation for getting started.

Other books I've read and enjoyed just for fun: "A Book of Bees" by Sue Hubbell, "Sweetness and Light" by Hattie Ellis (history of bees and beekeeping), "The Archaeology of Beekeeping" by Eva Crane, "Health and the Honeybee" by Charles Mraz (who was Ross Conrad's mentor), and "The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore" by Hilda Ransome.

[Shapleigh's Bees]

I'm getting the Barefoot Beekeeper by Phillip Chandler as soon as I get paid. His site is http://www.biobees.com.

Michael Bush, who already replied here, is http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm. I like his no-nonsense approach, and dedication to new-bees.

Dennis Murrell seems to have done the most experimentation with top bar hives. http://www.bwrangler.com/bee/index.html

Also there are a lot of posters to this forum that have some incredible information.