After hearing a branch fall in the night last week, we were devastated to find it had crashed right through our topbar hive, smashing it and the bees.

From this…………..

To this…………….

assessing the damage

We tried to save as much as we could, using elastic bands to attach the brood comb and honey comb to some spare Langstroth frames we had.

attaching the comb and inserting in a spare super

We managed to salvage enough comb to fit most of the brood and some honey in the full depth Langstroth super, plus some honey in the WSP super.

bees everywhere

The transfer was relatively successful with the bees all around eventually moving into the hive. We have observed over the week since this happened, and the bees are foraging, but unfortunately there is no pollen coming in that we can see. This means probably the brood died (it would have been out of the hive most of the night), and the queen died (we couldn’t see her during the salvage but hoped she was there).

As soon as the weather permits (it is unseasonably stormy and wet in Perth!), we will take a frame of brood from our other Langstroth and place it in this one, hoping the bees will develop a queen.

Our next plan is to develop a ‘Long Lang’ or horizontal hive, and we will transfer the frames into that. We are also hoping to be able to rebuild the topbar!

Having recently changed the kitchen hive to a Warre we have been keeping a close eye on it especially getting into our winter. A check last week revealed condensation inside the hive, and a little bit of mould and mildew. A quick google search revealed that a little bit of mould or mildew is not a huge problem as the bees will clean it up, if they are all fit and healthy. The problem though, is the condensation which causes it in the first place.

condensation inside the hive

We realised that where the hive is it doesn’t get a lot of sun or air circulation. The Langstroth seemed to cope ok, but perhaps the different set up of the Warre makes it more susceptible. Anyway, this discovery led us to look for a different location and a way of moving the hive. There is a lot of information now on moving a hive, without the need to stick to the old ‘less than a metre or more than 3 kilometres’ rule, so we chose a spot about 100metres away, not far from the Topbar hive where the Warre can face ENE and get a good amount of winter sun to help dry it out, we hope!

After dark, the hive entrance was covered with mesh to allow for ventilation but no bees, and the hive was strapped to keep all the boxes in place. Next morning we loaded the hive onto a trolley and moved to its new, prepared location.

Moving the strapped up Warre to its new location

Once in position, we put some leaves near the entrance, as this obstacle apparently makes the bees more likely to reorient and slow down their exit (they are less likely to be on ‘auto pilot’ and return to the old location by mistake).

Also to help their reorientation we kept them in for 3 days- apparently they can ‘forget’ their previous orientation.

Thousands of bees wanting to get out!

Settled in its new location, near water and the topbar, but still closed up.

After three days, we opened up the entrance, made sure the leaves were in front as an obstacle, and watched the bees pour out! Sure enough, they crawled out and circled above the entrance (a sign they are reorienting).

Bees first exit in their new location

Unfortunately there were a lot of dead bees too, but we hoped that ultimately the hive was better off for the move. Soon we saw lots of bees circling the old location near the kitchen window, looking for the hive, but within an hour or so they had gone, we hoped back to their new home.

Subsequent days there were more bees flying in the old location, but again only for a short time, hopefully they returned safely. The Warre is getting some lovely winter sun and hopefully drying out. In another day or so we will check it out and see how it is going. If necessary due to a loss of bees we can take the top box off and reduce the size. Fingers crossed!!

A while ago we posted about changing the kitchen Langstroth hive over to a Warre, well we have now finished the conversion. It took a little while because the brood were in Langstroth super, and we wanted to wait a while until the queen had moved down into a Warre super below…. well, she finally did and we felt we could remove the now superfluous Langstroth super.

Because there was still some brood in the Langstroth however, we decided to cut it off the frames and attach it to some of the Warre frames- we really didn’t want to destroy what brood remained in there.

So, with knife in hand, we cut out just the right size and using elastic bands placed the brood comb into the Warre frames.

Brood from a Langstroth frame held in place in a Warre frame with elastic bands

The final steps in the conversion went smoothly, and it wasn’t long before the bees got to work and secured the comb, removing the elastic bands from the hive!

Bees removing elastic bands

The Warre hive is now complete and looking healthy.

Warre hive

We have read quite a lot about the different styles of hives and which may be best for the bees. We decided we would experiment! The box of bees was getting really full so we decided to have a Topbar hive made for this area.

The full bee ‘box’

We cut the comb from the box, getting as much as we could-especially comb with brood.

Cutting out the comb

This was cable tied to the top bars.

Comb cut from the box and cable tied to the top bars.

When we had as much as we could, we replaced the Topbar hive in the same position and direction as the box, closed it up and left it for a week. A week later, a few of the bits of comb had fallen off and were removed, but the bees had strengthened several others and even started creating their own fresh comb!

The bee numbers looked really healthy, especially given the numbers that were lost in the process of transferring from the box to the Topbar.

Great number of bees after only one week

The bees are coming and going very happily!