Hi SSS, thanks for your reply, its really helpful.
Do you have a disease officer in your association? If you do, it is worth giving them some of your bees to look at if you have not cleared them. We have a lovely chap who will whisk them under a microscope to do a 'post mortem'. This may indicate any other internal nasties for future reference.
Good suggestion for next time, thanks.
Unless you have a uber desire to go 'conventional' hives and TBH, I would stick with one or the other. The reason being is that to swap bits, eggs, brood etc etc becomes a lot harder if you have differing hive types. I run my 'square' hives for honey and my TBH's for cut comb and wax. But I have to accept that I can not 'rob peter to pay paul' if I need to. It also becomes harder to merge colonies if its required.
Yep, this really hit home when we tried re-queening the TBH with national brood... very tricky. I know it will be a pain to run two types, but I think it would be pig-headed to continue down the TBH only route, with nobody to help from the BKA, limitations to my beekeeping knowledge and a first year failure... so I want to run a framed hive, so I can learn more and interact more with my BKA chums.
When I say a 'conventional' hive though, it will be a Rose OSB with no queen excluder... I built three boxes and a dozen fames yesterday.
Over the winter I run with the bottom boards in the TBH's, but leave a gap for debris and air to circulate. The bee's will propolis it closed if its too drafty.
Good idea
I am surprised there are not more people running top bar hives in your area you can 'bounce' off. There may well be some but they are in the closet. I was for a bit with my BKA. There are some TBH forums out there with lots of tips.
We are a really small BKA. I will continue to fly the flag!
Unless you have someone in your BKA selling reasonably priced nucs I would advise against buying commercial ones. They are very expensive in my opinion. Especially when starting out it can be very costly. I know some do not agree but I would wait till the swarming season and get a free one. There are gambles about disease, unknown temperament and an old queen etc. However if you make a mistake as you build your skills and knowledge there is less financial loss.
I am lucky, there are a couple of folks in the club who will help me with reasonable nucs. I will use one of these to get the Rose hive going.
I might also try to catch a swarm to re-populate the TBH. This is the easiest way (even if I wanted to throw money at it).
Not sure if any of that helps.
Yes! Thanks for that
