Remind me

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Remind me

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Cathryn

Joined: 16 Jul 2005
Posts: 19856
Location: Ceredigion

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 15 11:23 am Post subject: Remind me

why I use a topbar? I went into it properly for the first time this season. Lovely calm bees, nice comb, laying pattern slightly haphazard. Got to their stores and the first comb was braced, the heavy comb broke off, the next one looked a bit vulnerable so my nerve went and I moved the next few in a group. Guilt and regret but this might distract them from swarming as I did see one queen cell. None of them were fully capped off so I didn't get a good piece of honeycomb either. But yes, greed is why I keep a topbar hive, not so much mine as my partners.

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 15 2:18 pm Post subject:
Cross combing is an issue that improves with time. If you put an empty bar between two good uncrossed & move the worst to the outside eventually you will have a set of good combs. When you harvest crossed comb scrape all the wax off so as not to encourage further x combing when you return to the hive. When you harvest a good comb leave an inch of comb to keep them on the straight & narrow.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 15 2:32 pm Post subject:
as a small happy aside from your technical chat the bees i mentioned a few days back turned out to bee (ha ha )wood bees and i have relocated their birdbox to a safer place

Cathryn

Joined: 16 Jul 2005
Posts: 19856
Location: Ceredigion

Posted: Tue Jun 02, 15 4:32 pm Post subject:
Thanks Tav, I will try that.

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