While the rest of my family loves their sleep-ins on the weekends..............
.......(just dont understand it!).............
Thankfully, my youngest daughter wakes up early, crack of dawn, ready to go - like me -- and as not allowed electronic devices before lunch, she gets a bit toey early in the morning with no one else out of bed but me - i am usually in shed, or working with my show chooks, or in the vegy patch or working with the bees. if not the next things to occupy my time I am working on currently - aquaponics and bonsai
And this morning she said to me "can we do something with the bees?"
- why not, indeed!
All a Dad needs is an enthused child to pass on his "wisdom of life and the world" onto rather than as a captive audience or as my only son would say - "slave labour"
So the youngest daughter and I wiggled into our bee suits - quietly so as not to wake the sleeping dragon (Mum) and then headed off down the back of our block with the sun just creeping over the horizon to the east. We got the smoker working and then gloved up, hooded up, zipped up - we are ready to do some bee keeping.
A bit of context and reasoning first about the work today ---
I have one last long TBH being used (10 of them unused in the shed) that was full of bees, brood and honey and I was going to split next week but with the youngest daughter's enthusiasm high, I was keen to take advantage of the situation (she hasn't been keen since getting her first bee sting through a glove 9 weeks ago)
I have been over the last few months taking splits out of my long Top Bar Hives (TBHs) placing them in the new Langstroth hives I made from scrap timber in July 2020 , with 7 out of 9 walk away splits having worked really well, all 7 producing their own queens, this from four - five frames of brood and honey placed in the new langstroth hives.
My longer TBHs have 30-32 top bars so are equivalent to 3 box high 10 frame langstroth hive, I have been getting 3-5 kilo of honey out of the TBH hives, however the method of extraction renders the comb not being able to be used again by the bees (crushed and squeezed), any brood is wasted too - the used comb no use except for extracting the wax for other uses.
So the reason for the change to the langstroth style hives from TBHs has been more honey wanted - in particular without brood being in the same comb. You can add a queen extruder into a TBH, placed vertically about 10 top bars in, rather than horizontally like in langstroth style hives between brood box and super box above, - but not why I originally made the TBHs which was for just the fun of keeping bees
However with personal and career timing influences, I am wanting to turn the bees into more of an income focus - with honey, honey in the comb wax, queens and NUCs the main products
I still need the larger longer TBH as I feel they produce what I feel is the perfect comb for walk away splits (that is don’t need new queen purchases or raised) - filled with honey and brood all in a single frame, but eliminating my last two long TBHs is needed to help me shift the bees to a better location on my block. If moved long distance - TBHs don't travel well, as the comb is not fully supported on all sides, unlike a langstroth frame with all the comb surrounded by timber, a TBH frame only has timber at the top.
I have shifted hives across the block before - using the 'Place tree in front of hive in new location " method but alway a few forager bees that get lost - and a large longer TBH full of comb, honey, bees etc is super heavy and awkward to move about - and then add in the unstable comb issue - fraught with dangers. So taking splits out and leaving behind just a brood box in the original location was my solution for today. I will restart the longer TBH off (3-6 of them) from the three short TBH I now have once they mature
back to the real beekeeping action .......
So the daughter and I take the lid off TBH and start shifting top bars with hanging comb absolutely packed with bees, pollen, and honey. Some into the langstroth brood box I was going to put back in the location of the TBH but also into a couple of short TBHs (each hold 15 top bars). So with 8 or so top bars with comb in each box empty of frames and top bars added respectively.
There were no actions taken to find the queen, just even out the comb between the three boxes I had - then leave the langstroth where the long TBH was and take the two short TBHs over to new location - The foragers in the two short TBHs would return to original location but the nursery bees would remain with brood etc. Then as they mature and start foraging they would orientate themselves to this new location none the wiser - also hoping before that, that they will take a young fresh laid egg and turn it into their own new queen.
I had thought maybe I would get only one walk away split from the TBH this morning, as I had already taken out comb for two other walk away splits four weeks ago. But with the amount of comb and bees this morning in the long TBH I would need another box - so used two short TBH boxes instead of the one intended
We (well me as too heavy for a 7 year old) placed the short TBHs in the new area I had set aside for the racks to hold the bee hives.
The middle hives are short TBHs, the far right a langstroth, the far left a flow hive base section
Number 11 is a swarm I captured from a school in Marlow Lagoon, I think 2 weeks ago
The Flow hive base section you can see above - is a split I am attempting for a member of a FB group for Darwin beekeeping
Number 10 is the final product for todays efforts of transferring the TBH to Langstorth
Number 2 is a split from two months ago, just added a shallow super due to hive numbers
See the blue string at rear in gap on left - that was where one of the failed walk away splits was
We placed two shallow supers on the new langstroth brood box - not needed except for space for the older bees to settle into, that can be removed one in a week or so if needed, as you dont want too much free space in a hive.
The cloud of bees outside the new hive's entrance was intense - but given disruption and a hive that didn’t look like the old one - understandable.
Next weekend I will take the two hives above and two more, making four hives in total, currently not in ideal locations, to the inlaws farm out past Fogg Dam for a week or two and then bring them back to the new location on our block.
As we tidied up, I asked my littlest daughter how she went today, but she was unable to talk to me as she was intently talking to a little bee crawling around her gloved hand. Then after their conversation she gently placed it back on the hive, asking it to tell her family to relax, chill, and enjoy their new hive box.
What an awesome daughter I have!!!
Next on the game plan is to make 10 or so, 5 frame NUC boxes - which I intend to sell off to pay for all the hobbies I have that are draining my savings. I have already used CAD software to create the 3D printable NUC entance. After that I want to make an attempt at some queens in the new year.
So exciting times ahead!
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