Decided to try Beekeeping and the TBH this year.

HighLowGrow

Well-Known Member
I’ve been wanting to do this for a loooong time. Ordered my bees before the hive was built. I pick up the bees mid March-April 1st. I still need a beginners beekeeping starter kit. Suit and tools.

Started building this top bar hive a few days ago. It still needs a few more things and a top.

Any beekeepers out there?

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xtsho

Well-Known Member
I bought some Mason bee's last year and put up some tubes for them but I don't think any stayed around. All the tubes are empty but I put them all in the same place. This year I'm going to get some more and move the tubes to multiple different spots in the yard and make sure There is a good supply of mud available for them. I've thought about Honey Bee's but haven't made the jump and don't know if I want the responsibility. But I do know a couple bee keepers in the Portland area so if I decide to do so I'll have a couple good sources to help me with it.

Good luck with the bee's.
 

greg nr

Well-Known Member
I used to do it but something killed them off. I'm suspecting a particular neighbor that doesn't seem to think using banned pesticides is a big deal. Yes, he wears a red hat.

It was fun while it lasted though. There is something calming about working around bees. Just be sure to keep your clothes clean and fresh; they really don't like body odor.

I might try again. You need a lot of time in early spring though, and that is when I'm usually tapped out for free time.
 

HighLowGrow

Well-Known Member
Some honey bee facts. Interesting stuff.

Honey bees must gather nectar from two million flowers to make one pound of honey.
  1. One bee has to fly about 90,000 miles – three times around the globe – to make one pound of honey.
  2. The average bee will make only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.
  3. A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
  4. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.
  5. The bee’s brain is oval in shape and about the size of a sesame seed, yet it has a remarkable capacity to learn and remember things. For example, it is able to make complex calculations on distance travelled and foraging efficiency.
  6. Honey bees communicate with one another by dancing.
  7. A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honey bees and one queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and do all the work.
  8. The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per day.
  9. Larger than the worker bees, the male honey bees (also called drones), have no stinger and do no work. All they do is mate.
  10. Honey has always been highly regarded as a medicine. It is thought to help with everything from sore throats and digestive disorders to skin problems and hay fever.
  11. Honey has antiseptic properties and was historically used as a dressing for wounds and a first aid treatment for burns and cuts.
  12. The natural fruit sugars in honey – fructose and glucose – are quickly digested by the body. This is why sportsmen and athletes use honey to give them a natural energy boost.
  13. Honey bees have been producing honey in the same way for 150 million years.
  14. The honey bee is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
  15. Honey lasts an incredibly long time. An explorer who found a 2000 year old jar of honey in an Egyptian tomb said it tasted delicious!
  16. The bees’ buzz is the sound made by their wings which beat 11,400 times per minute.
  17. When a bee finds a good source of nectar it flies back to the hive and shows its friends where the nectar source is by doing a dance which positions the flower in relation to the sun and hive. This is known as the ‘waggle dance.’
  18. Honey’s ability to attract and retain moisture means that it has long been used as a beauty treatment. It was part of Cleopatra’s daily beauty ritual.
  19. Honey is incredibly healthy and includes enzymes, vitamins, minerals. It’s the only food that contains “pinocembrin”, an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.
 

HighLowGrow

Well-Known Member
Still some spot painting to do here and there on the outside. I need to make an entrance. Not sure if I want to drill entrance holes in the end. If I made a top entrance by making a gap before the first bar, there would be no holes in the body of the hive. hmmmmmmmmm
 

Funkentelechy

Well-Known Member
I use a mix of Langstroth and top-bar hives, there are pluses and minuses to both. Most of my top bars have a front entrance at the bottom floor level of the hive and one with a top entrance in front, but I do have one hive in which the bees have established a side entrance in a gap between two of the bars and I've just let them use it that way they seem to like it.

One caveat to using a top entrance is that they tend to keep the area around their entrances clear of honey comb, so they may not build comb on the first bar if you have them enter from the top through a gap before the fist bar. They naturally don't build comb all the way to the bottom of the hive, they leave a gap, so when you build a bottom entrance they go through the entrance and crawl under the combs and the shape of the combs is un-altered. I've built hives with top entrances in the front of the hive and the bees built comb all the way up to the front, but the combs in the first couple bars had a hole through them, so I lost some potential comb area. Also hot air rises so if their entrance is at the very top, the bees may possibly have a harder time maintaining warmth during the cooler months, not sure.

Another thing thing to consider when planing an entrance, is if you are going to feed the bees or not. There are different schools of thought on feeding bees and some people don't, Michael Bush, of bush farms believes that you should never feed bees as the sugar messes with the microbiology of their stomachs. However most beekeepers feed their bees sugar water(50/50 sugar water) in the spring and sometimes fall when nectar is scarce, and some folks also feed pollen patties. The easiest way to feed bees in a top-bar hive is with an entrance feeder, so you may want to take this into consideration when designing an entrance.
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With the space you have under the roof you've built you could alternatively remove some bars and replace them with a piece of wood that you cut a hole into to accommodate a mason jar and feed them from the top. However, this approach to feeding may only be useful in the beginning because as the hive grows and expands the bees will fill the hive and you will likely eventually want all of the internal space for the bees to build comb, this is why the entrance feeders are so popular.
Whether to feed bees or not is one of those endless debates in the beekeeping community, sort of like whether to defoliate or not in the cannabis growing community, and I don't know that there will ever be a consensus. I do occasionally feed my bees, but not very often like in the very beginning, or when the bees stores of nectar are depleted and only when there is nothing for them to forage in nature. Your bees will likely arrive with a can full of sugar water with holes punched in it for the bees to feed from while they are in the packages.
Good luck!!
 
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HighLowGrow

Well-Known Member
@Funkentelechy Lots of good info. Thanks. Regarding the entrance. A couple months ago I was reading some Bush stuff and ran across some Q and As. Here is a piece.

Question: Some people say a top entrance lets the heat out. How do you do your entrances?

Answer: In any hive (top bar or otherwise) I think a top entrance in the winter is always a good plan. It lets out the moisture and cuts down on condensation. Heat is seldom the problem, condensation is the problem in winter. A top entrance will let it out. Mine are all JUST top entrances. The reason I went with them was the skunks. My first TBH have a bottom entrance and the skunks were a serious problem. After going to the top entrances they have ceased being a problem. My entrances are simply the gap at the front of the hive between the first bar and the front wall. No holes to drill.


Question: Don't I need a landing board on the entrance?

Answer: No. Have you ever seen a bee tree with a landing board? Landing boards just give mice a place to jump on to get in the hive. It's not needed at all for the bees and is, in my opinion, counterproductive because of mice.



About the feeding. Dunno yet. Probably.

I've read so much stuff and have seen so many different ideas and styles. Thanks for your input for sure.
 
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