Starting a top bar hive with a brushed swarm

The hardest part of starting my top bar hives has been getting some bees into the first hive when I didn't have a top bar hive I could take combs from. This is how I did it, using a brushed swarm from a framed (Langstroth) nucleus hive. 
I've written more on my top bar hive design in this post about how I've been making my top bar hives. 

Splitting a hive

When you want to start a top bar hive, it's quite easy to make the hive. But then you need to get some bees into it. When I first tried to start a top bar hive (described in my blog post here), I thought I’d do it with the method known as “splitting” or “dividing”. This is where you take some of the brood, bees and honey from one strong hive, to make another. If you don’t provide a new queen, the workers in the queenless hive will usually make one for themselves from eggs in the comb. 

We have several framed hives which we split from time to time. However the challenge was that I couldn’t do a split into my top bar hive in the normal way from the Langstroth hives, because Langstroth frames won’t fit into a top bar hive. Some people cut up frames to fit them in a top bar box, but I wanted to avoid this (I'm inhibited by my deeply imbedded frugality - if you don't suffer from this you could save a lot of trouble with a little frame chopping - see https://vimeo.com/5614348). 

My plan was to put a top bar super on top of a framed hive and get the bees to build comb on the top bars. When there was brood in the top bar combs, I could simply move the bars and combs from the top bar super into a top bar hive, the bees would make a new queen, and I would have my first top bar hive. I tried this with 2 different hives. It didn’t work, because although the bees did build comb on the top bars, I couldn’t get brood laid in the top bar combs. 

Here's a little comb being started on a top bar - beautiful

When the bees made new combs in the top bar boxes, the combs hung down from the bars which make the hive roof. This meant there was a significant air gap between the top bar combs and the brood comb below, which I think made it unattractive for the queen to go up and lay eggs. Without brood in the new hive, you can’t do a split. My plan didn't work and I needed to try something different. 

A brushed swarm

Although plan A hadn’t worked as planned, the bees had built some combs on a few top bars. Having some combs on top bars was good preparation for doing what is called a “brushed swarm”, or a “shaken swarm”. 

In a brushed swarm, you take the combs from a brood box and gently brush all the bees - including the queen - into a new hive that has some comb but no bees. If the combs are strong enough you can shake most of the bees off before brushing. Langstroth frames are strong enough to shake pretty vigorously. Top bar combs are often strong enough to shake - see expert top bar shaker Sam Comfort at work here. The new hive is then set into its new place and the bees left to organise themselves. Many of the worker bees brushed into the new hive are young nurse bees, who haven't yet been outside the hive. These nurses will stay in the new hive. The queen, who also doesn’t travel and won’t go back to her old home, will start laying in the empty comb. The nurse workers will look after this new brood, and make more comb if they have some honey to eat. 

The older flying workers will leave the new hive to do their foraging work, and then return to their old hive. The new hive will appear very quiet once the flying workers have left, but will gradually build a flying worker population as the nurses mature. In 3 weeks the first of the new brood will start to emerge from their cells, and the new hive should start to get stronger. 

Back at the old mother hive, we have a population of foraging-age workers, who have flown back to the old hive. When these workers find that they are queenless, they will attempt to make a new queen from a day-old egg - usually this works out fine. 4 weeks or so after brushing the swarm, you can check for eggs in the brood comb to see if they have made a new queen. If there are no eggs, they were unsuccessful, but you can give them a second chance by introducing a comb from another hive, with day-old eggs in it, for them to make another queen from. 

Growing some top bar combs

Having some combs in the new hive is quite important to doing a shaken swarm. It means there is comb for the queen to lay in immediately, and it saves the small crew of nurse bees from having to make so much fresh comb from honey at a difficult time. Also, in a top bar hive, existing combs are important to give you control of where new comb is built. 

I tried 2 methods of starting the top bar hives, and both did produce some combs which were very useful to the brushed swarm. The first method was described in my blog post a year ago, and I suspect it’s the better way to go. I made a small top bar super that fit onto a 10 frame hive. 

Here's my brown top bar super on a white, standard, 10-frame hive. This is a reasonable way to get some combs started on some top bars, in preparation for starting a top bar hive. Once it's done its job, the top bar super could then be converted into a top bar nucleus hive - very useful. 

I attached some pieces of free comb I cut off a hive lid onto 3 or 4 bars, to give the bees some guidance where to start - if I’d just given them bare bars, I could have ended up with comb going anywhere and any direction. The bees built these combs bigger as little honey flows occurred. 

The second method was a bit clumsy, but was necessary in the circumstances. I made a 4-frame nucleus hive (“nuke”) by splitting, that I took home to Mt Glorious when it appeared strong. It was easily transported on the roof rack of our hatchback, in cool weather. At home, I cut a large hole in the bottom of a full length (1200mm) top bar box, and strapped the nuke (with lid removed) to the bottom of the top bar box, giving the bees easy access from the nuke to the top bar box. 

Here's the top bar hive upside down, being painted, showing the hole in the bottom

Here's the nucleus hive strapped to the bottom of the top bar hive. The strap went over a separator board

Looking down into the top bar hive after it was joined to the nuke, showing frames of the nucleus thru the hole in the bottom  

The bees seemed to prefer to build free comb onto the top of their nuke frames, inside the top bar box, but I kept cutting the combs off and attaching them to the top bars. Eventually I had a few combs hanging on the top bars. 

Realising that my splitting idea wasn’t going to work for a long time if at all, I separated the nuke from the top bar box, and made my brushed swarm. I took out the nuke frames one by one, and brushed all the bees into the top bar box, making sure the queen wasn’t hiding in the frames after brushing. Once all the frames were clear of bees, I put them back into the nuke and replaced the lid. Foraging bees quickly re-populated the nuke hive. 

Here are the framed nucleus hive (background) and the newly separated top bar hive, with all their bees adapting to the new arrangement

I fed the top bar hive with honey cappings I had kept from our framed hives, spooning cappings onto a piece of wire mesh in the hive bottom and letting the bees lick them clean. I expect this was a help to their work in making new comb, which takes a lot of honey. Top bar hives make this sort of feeding easy, as there is open space under the top bars in the part of the hive where the comb hasn’t yet been built - framed hives have no open spaces. 

Over the next few weeks, the top bar hive settled down and gradually grew in strength. The framed nuke didn't manage to make a new queen the first time, but I gave it a top bar of comb from the top bar hive (replacing a frame), and they were successful at the second attempt. 

Catching a swarm

After I got the top bar hive going well, I made a couple of top bar nukes: 10 bar hives, only 410mm long, according to Les Crowder’s description in his book. I made these in preparation for splitting off new hives. This was also good preparation for swarms: a couple of days after finishing the top bar nukes, I found a swarm in a tree nearby (from a wild hive). A nuke was very convenient to take out to catch the swarm: small and easy to take out to the bush to catch the swarm, has a fixed bottom (unlike a framed super) so it can be put on the ground, and unlike a cardboard box, doesn’t require tipping the bees out into a hive when you get home. Before putting the swarm in, I put some combs on top bars into the top bar nuke, from the established top bar hive. 

Here's the 10 bar nucleus hive, swarm installed, with temporary roof

Having already-built combs on top bars was very helpful for installing the swarm: it made the bees feel at home (I think), it gave the queen comb so she could start laying immediately, and it gave me control of how the swarm bees built their comb: using existing combs to get them to build along the bars. The swarm hive established very quickly, and soon overtook my first hive (from the shaken swarm) in strength. 

Splitting

Making new hives is essential to frugal beekeeping, even if you want to keep a steady number of hives. I don’t buy new queens: they cost a lot of money, and travelling to pick them up is time consuming and expensive. I prefer to split hives when they’re strong, and unite them when hives seem weak or are found to be queenless - which happens to me reasonably often. This means that you need to either have more than one hive, or some friendly neighbours with compatible hives, who can help you with brood combs or a healthy nucleus hive when you find you have no queen. 

Now that I have plenty of top bar combs, it is easy for me or my friends to start new hives, by splitting or by shaken swarms from framed hives. 
I split hives from a strong hive, when they seem to be vigorous and there is a reasonable honey flow. 
I put 2 or 3 brood combs (on top bars), with plenty of fresh eggs (look for the tiny rod-like eggs standing up in the bottoms of the cells), into a top bar nucleus hive. I usually shake extra nurse bees, off some more of the mother hive's brood combs, into the nuke to provide more working population, and replace the combs into the mother hive. 
I also put 3 or 4 honey combs (on top bars) into the nuke, to provide food for the new hive until it is strong enough to harvest its own. 
The bars taken from the mother hive are replaced with bare bars, usually in the same places. 
I close the doorway to the hive down to a small entrance, maybe 20mm wide, to make it easier for the weak new hive to defend itself. 
I try to minimise disturbance of the new hive for about 4 weeks, so I don't mess up their making new queens. After 4 weeks, the new queen will have hatched, killed off her competing sisters, mated and started laying. If I find fresh eggs at this time, the split has worked. 
If there is no sign of eggs, there is no queen, and the colony is doomed if left alone. The nuke can either be joined to another hive or given new brood combs to try again to make a new queen. 

Splitting top bar hives is so easy!

Compared to splitting framed hives, splitting top bar hives is very easy. 
It's so easy to get to the brood combs in the top bar hive: lift the lid, and every comb in the hive is accessible immediately. You know where the brood is, because you've looked after this hive already, and you can lift out a brood comb straight away and see if it looks suitable for use in the new nuke. There is hardly any disturbance to the hive, rarely many upset bees, and I can comfortably work wearing shorts and with bare hands (I do always use a veil, in case things do go wrong). 
With a framed hive, you need to lift off all the honey supers (could be up to 40kg each), then the queen excluder, before the brood frames are accessible. The whole hive is in pieces and the bees are upset - but not as upset as they'll be when you squash dozens of them while reassembling the hive. You need long pants and plenty of smoke! 
With a framed hive, you need to replace the brood frames you take away, with new frames with fresh foundation (or other suitable worker-comb frames), which you need to have prepared first. In top bar beekeeping, you simply drop new or comb-less top bars in place of the ones you've taken away, and the bees build whatever comb they think best onto the new bars - in the brood chamber this will generally be worker brood comb. 
Checking the success of a split is likewise easy in top bar hives. When I split, I'm not particularly careful where the queen ends up - it takes so long for me to find her with my ageing eyesight, and I've never found it easy. I also don't consider it to be important most of the time to find the queen: if there are plenty of fresh eggs, there's a reasonable queen. It's important to check in the mother hive and the new nucleus to see which hive has the old queen, by looking for fresh eggs in a week or so. Again, in a top bar hive it's so easy to lift out a few brood combs and check, without having to un-stack the hive, and without causing much disturbance to the hive.