top bar hives

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top bar hives

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catalyst

Joined: 03 May 2005
Posts: 6

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 07 1:31 pm Post subject: top bar hives
anyone here have any experience of top bar hives? i am considering building one, and switching to foundationless beekeeping to avoid varroa. any practical advice welcome...

lottie

Joined: 11 Aug 2005
Posts: 5059
Location: ceredigion

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 07 1:44 pm Post subject:
How will you extract?---by pressing?----let us know how it works out if you do it----I'd be really interested

chez

Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 35935
Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 07 4:08 pm Post subject:
Ditto, no experience, but interested in the process/results!

alison
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 12918
Location: North Devon

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 07 7:38 pm Post subject:
How does the varroa prevention work. I have only seen top bar frames for Queen rearing.

joanne

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7100
Location: Morecambe, Lancashire

Posted: Sun Jul 22, 07 9:10 pm Post subject:

As I understand it - using top bar frames encourages the bees to revert to their natural size - The worker foundation we use normally is actually fractionally bigger than the worker comb bee's would build in the wild - Now you can encourage the bees to build smaller comb by going to Small Cell foundation or by using top bar frames which relies on the bees building their own comb - It takes a couple of generations for the bees to start building smaller comb but the Queen will still lay in it regardless

It controls Varroa in a number of ways - 1) The bees are closer to their natural state

2) The comb is smaller therefore space in each cell is less which means the Varroa doesn't have the space to grow

3) The smaller comb means the bee finishes pupating a day or so earlier than purely cultivated bees

There are other reasons but I've been drinking red wine and can barely keep my eyes open - so thinking at all is a bit of a challenge at the moment

Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 07 7:27 am Post subject:
there is a school of thought that says that the resulting bees are smaller from the smaller cell size and the varoa mite can't get down their tracheas as its too small

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