This weekend I did my first split from a top bar hive to a lang! My very crowded top bar hive has an incredibly mean queen. It took 3 hours from start to finish. Nothing is easy, when you have mean bees pouring out of the hive, crawling all over your tools, and constantly head butting you. Anyway, I moved the mean queen into a new lang. Each top bar got cut horizontally and rubberbanded into 2 medium foundationless lang frames. The next day, I brushed in two more bars of nurse bees. The lang with the nasty queen is quite calm. All the defending foragers are in the other hive. I'll requeen the top bar hive this weekend and eventually kill the nasty queen in the lang.
I learned a lot this weekend.... working a top bar hive with a nasty queen makes beekeeping not very fun. Wear 2 pairs of pants and rubberband your pant legs. Langs are a breeze to manipulate!
I can't wait to see how they do.
I learned a lot this weekend.... working a top bar hive with a nasty queen makes beekeeping not very fun. Wear 2 pairs of pants and rubberband your pant legs. Langs are a breeze to manipulate!
I can't wait to see how they do.
