Top Bar Day 5

Time: 10:00 - 11:00 AM

Weather: partly cloudy with a slight breeze - mid 50's.

Well, my top bar hive (Schampel TBH) has been set up and with bees for 5 days now. The queen was still in her cage so it was time to release her. The hive is built with a screened bottom that has a sliding wooden bottom beneath that can open or close from the outside depending on how cold it is. I'm nervous about leaving the bottom wide open when it's still cold at night so it's been mostly closed all week. I've opened it a few times at night to shine my light up inside and see what's going on (ok - I've done it every night - sometimes twice). They've been very active all week as the weather has been nice. I've seen them coming back in with pollen also.

Upon first opening the hive this morning I was surprised to find that some of the top boards were stuck together. I figured the girls had propolized them together and didn't think much about it. But as I slowly pried them apart, it became obvious that the comb had crossed over more than 1 top bar.

I was able to pull out 3 different bars with comb built up (or down) about 5 inches wide and 6 inches long. I was amazed at the amount of comb already produced in only 5 days. Wow! They were filling the cells up with honey and pollen already too.

When I had built the top bars, I cut a groove down the center of each bar about 1/16 inch deep and filled it with bees wax to give the bees a starting point for drawing out their comb. At least that was the idea. Well, they had their own idea. They completely ignored the wax strips and used the edge of the top boards as a guide for starting their comb. This is going to be a problem as the comb is now attached to 2 top boards (actually centered between the 2). I ended up causing the collapse of one of the comb. I wasn't sure what to do with it so I removed it altogether.

In hopes to get them back on track, without destroying all of their hard work, I cut one of my top bars in half to use as a spacer. My top bars are 1 3/8 inches wide. I put the 2 bars with comb attached to one side of the hive and next to the 2 bars, placed the half bar. My thinking is that when the bees move over to build their next comb (if they use the same spacing), they'll end up drawing comb in the center of the next top bar. I'll let them proceed this way for a while and will eventually remove the 2 bars with misplaced comb. We'll see how it works.

The queen is in there and loose now, so I'll be getting back in next week to see if I can find any eggs or larvae and to check to see if they're drawing out their comb where I want it.

Here's a video I captured right be fore I closed her back up.