Top Bar Hive

Late Swarm Catched

After being without bees for couple of days I got a call from some relative that he has some swarm in his apple tree yard. This time of year it is very strange for bees to swarm so I went to look if this is true. And sure there they were !

I went back home and took my bee suit and started catching my first swarm of bees. I shook the tree but only 2/3 of the bees went into the box. I tried to bring them down with my hand and they went crazy started stinging all around. I ran through the apple tree brunches to get rid of them, smoked a cigarette and went back to look what is going on. Swarm was still on the tree so it seems I didn't catch the queen. I left the box there since it was already dark, covered the top and only left entrance on the bottom of the box ( custom made 7 frames Lang beehive ).

I went next day first thing in the morning to see what is going on and I found still half of the swarm on the tree and the other half in the box.



I decided to get back in the evening and pick them up. So I went home and I got the call 2 hours later that there are no more bees on the tree. Oh well, I thought ... they left ! I went there to pick the box and guess what ! They were all inside ! Good :)

Went there in the evening, closed the entrances and took the swarm home. I had luck with my first swarm catching. I hope the next one will go smoother...

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Bees absconded from top bar hive

Unfortunately bees absconded from my top bar hive while I was on vacation. I only found some 20 dead bees in the beehive. The scene was like in horror movie.

When I got home from my vacation I went around the beehive to check out what is going on. I saw no bees flying but since it was really late in the day I decided to check them next day. I went to sleep with suspicion that there are no bees in the beehive! And I was right. When I checked them the next day the beehive was empty. Really empty and clean! Only god knows what happened and I hope they found new home.

I will certainly feed them more and close the bottom next spring when I will get new bees. This is the thing I did not do this year and we will see if next year will be happier for my beekeeping.

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Searching for the right top bar hive design

So my hunt for the right top bar hive design started. I saw couple of designs on beesource forums and on biobees.com website which I found on forum also but I was looking for plans and I went to your best Internet buddy google.com! I already decided to go with similar design as that on BioBees but still I searched around and found this plan which is perfect for a guy to just put those measurements on wood and cut it, glue or screw it and it is done.

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