[ncbees]

Next spring I would like to split one of my 10 frame hives and transfer to a TBH. I guess I would follow regression or do I just shake them in?

 

[stan.vick]

Attach a brood comb with eggs to a top bar, (several ways to do this) and just shake the bees into it, the queen can be in either box but Better if she is in the TBH. Leave the TBH and move the Lang about fifty yards or so away. The lang will need to have some stores and you should feed both for a couple of weeks, I just use a community feeder, can be several inverted jars. The TBH only needs the nurse bees that were on the one comb.

 

[shannonswyatt]

It kind of depends on size of your bars. If they are 19 inches or shorter you could potentially just put them into the lang and with well under 10 bars. If you put in 3 bars in the spring and gave them a queen, and then put frames on the outside they should draw out the new frames. You would have to watch the comb to ensure they don't attach it to the sides, but their should be a big gap to the front and back and I bet they would start working the frames and not continue to pull out the brood comb since it will be old seasoned comb. Once they get some frames established with brood you could slowly move the TBH bars to the sides until there is nothing in them but honey. I've never tried this, but I think it would work. You would have to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't booger everything up with the top bars in there though.

You could potentially use some lang top bars in your hive this year and next spring just attach sidebars to them. You would need to use spacers to close off the space on the sides.

 

[ncbees]

Ok. Good stuff. Thanks

 

[AugustC]

If you can put the a few topbars in between your lang frame (even if they are half depth) or suspend them under the top bar of the lang frame (on cable ties) for a few days/week they will build some comb on them for you. Once there is a decent amount of comb on there (but not so much it ends up not fitting in the topbar hive) move them over. Since it will be the freshest comb in the hive it may well have you queen on it. Then either shake a few combs of bees in and let the flyers return to the original hive. The original hive will then raise an emergency queen (provided there is brood of the right age) OR shake them all in and sacrifice the brood in the old hive, or move it into another lang hive. Some people go for a chop and crop approach to transfer the brood over but it is messy at best. This is best done it early spring before the queen has laid out too much brood.