Crossed Comb building in Topbars

How to avoid crossed comb building in Top bar hives?

Hello beekeepers, thank you very much for preserving bees and helping them to live happily as we enjoy their sweet honey.

Today we are going to solve a common problem to most of the beekeepers that are moving from log hives or fixed comb hives into movable comb hives.

Many beekeepers complain about crossed comb building in Kenyan Top bar Hive being a common problem. Well this is something very simple to manage and control.

Crossed comb building is when bees build combs across the bars instead of building each comb on a separate bar as designed. Usually bees crossed comb building is when bees build one comb on two or more bars.

 The following should be noted;

1. The width of bars.

The bars should strictly 3.2cm or 32mm wide. This was happily measured by our predecessors so; we just have to follow the principle.

2. Regular supervision is also very important whereby a new colony can easily build the combs in a wrong direction. Therefore when you supervise them before they build very many big combs, you can easily break the small white combs and align them correctly.

3. Repair/ clean bars. Whenever you open your beehive, make sure you scrap off all the propolis bees used to glue the bars. This will maintain the width of the bars.

4. Starter strips are also recommended for example you may use propolis or beeswax on the bars following the line you wish the bees to follow while building combs. This can avoid crossed comb in top bars. Take an example when a grooved bar is used, you can melt beeswax and pour it in the groove on the bar and when it cools, it stays there and when bees colonise the hive, they will start building combs following them.

5. Avoid hanging a beehive in a slanting position. The bees always maintain a vertical comb building position. If a beehive is slanting at an angle which is not right, the bees will not adjust to that angle but instead they will build combs following their own directions and angles.

6. Avoid leaving broken and destroyed combs in the hive which will act as barriers when bees are working. This is very common with brown combs are hard and bees cannot easily chew and repair them.

7. Maintain equal sizes of bars. Make sure that the side of bars facing inside the hive is level. This doesn’t matter whether you are using V-shaped, U-shaped, Block- shaped of grooved bars so long the sizes are equal.

Yes, beekeeping is fun, watch your bees build combs and find out why they are building them wrongly from the order you wished them to follow. I recommend breaking the combs when they are still empty, new and soft, and put them in the right position.

Careful breeding programme leads to low rates of absconding and improve gentleness of bees.

Using queen excluder helps to prevent absconding of newly installed bees, and trait selections.

Contributed by Brother williams

If you can keep the bees in a hive long enough for the queen to produce some brood, the bees almost always stay with the
brood - if it is in the larval stage. Larvae produce a pheromone known as
"juvenile pheromone" - sometimes referred to as "hormone"than pheromone. It is this pheromone that causes the colony to stay with the hive. The pheromone is not produced in sufficient amount by bees in the egg stage, and is not produced by bees in the pupal stage, so it is necessary to have
larvae present in the hive to hold the bees there.

When I catch a swarm, I take a piece of equipment called a "queen excluder", and cover the entrance to the hive, making sure the bees cannot leave the hive through other openings. This allows workers to forage freely, but will not let the queen - or drones - leave the hive.

This will keep the queen in the hive long enough to produce brood, which will help in keeping the colony in the hive. With the African bee, there is a characteristic of absconding as a survival mechanism. Although African bees do store surplus honey that may be used by the colony for food during times of drought or when there are no good sources of nectar available, the tendency of the African bee when confronted with a period of dearth is to simply leave the hive and find a more suitable area for foraging.

To ease this tendency would require a careful breeding program selecting stock that has lower absconding rates, then line-breeding these genetic lines for several honeybee-generations. The desired tendency (lower rate of absconding) may prove to be "recessive", and may have to be
continually selected in each breeding-generation.

This is the case with defensive behavior. Gentleness can be achieved through careful breeding programs, but is lost in the very first out-cross using non-selected stock;
it is a very recessive trait. Using a queen excluder is the simplest method
of handling this issue.

Do bees build brown combs?

How do combs become brown and stain honey?
Contributed by Brother Williams.

He says,
Honey will absorb both color and flavor from the comb it is stored in.
Bees that forage on the same blooms, but store the nectar/honey in different comb (light, freshly produced wax versus dark, old comb) will seemingly produce honey from two different sources.

This is not the case, as the honey in the dark comb will become darker by absorbing some of the stain from the old comb. Along with this color change comes a taste change as well. Old, dark colored comb has very little wax in it. It is dark because it has been used as brood-comb for several generations of brood.

When the bee is in the larval stage it goes through 6 stages of molt, where the larval skin is shed. after the new bee emerges following pupation, the nurse bees begin cleaning the now unoccupied cell to prepare it for the queen to use again to lay an egg in. The "cleaner bee" can only remove 3 - 4 of the molted shed-skins, so to keep the diameter of the cell at a size that is usable by the queen, the worker bees remove wax, rather than the molted skins.

This causes the comb to appear a little darker in color with each successive generation of brood that is produced in the comb,eventually becoming almost black. This is one reason for an 'off" taste in the honey. It was stored in cells that were lined with , essentially, dead bee-skins.

Eventually the cells will become unusable due to their ever-decreasing diameter. The cells will lose their shape-definition, and although the outside of the cell will still appear hexagonal, the inside will be round, with no definition to hexagonal angles.

Do bees build brown combs?

How do combs become brown and stain honey?
Contributed by Brother Williams.

He says,
Honey will absorb both color and flavor from the comb it is stored in.
Bees that forage on the same blooms, but store the nectar/honey in different comb (light, freshly produced wax versus dark, old comb) will seemingly produce honey from two different sources.

This is not the case, as the honey in the dark comb will become darker by absorbing some of the stain from the old comb. Along with this color change comes a taste change as well. Old, dark colored comb has very little wax in it. It is dark because it has been used as brood-comb for several generations of brood.

When the bee is in the larval stage it goes through 6 stages of molt, where the larval skin is shed. after the new bee emerges following pupation, the nurse bees begin cleaning the now unoccupied cell to prepare it for the queen to use again to lay an egg in. The "cleaner bee" can only remove 3 - 4 of the molted shed-skins, so to keep the diameter of the cell at a size that is usable by the queen, the worker bees remove wax, rather than the molted skins.

This causes the comb to appear a little darker in color with each successive generation of brood that is produced in the comb,eventually becoming almost black. This is one reason for an 'off" taste in the honey. It was stored in cells that were lined with , essentially, dead bee-skins.

Eventually the cells will become unusable due to their ever-decreasing diameter. The cells will lose their shape-definition, and although the outside of the cell will still appear hexagonal, the inside will be round, with no definition to hexagonal angles.

No more absconding

African bees are known for absconding, this is a very big problem in beekeeping becuase bees need time in a beehive before becoming productive.
Of course there are various causes of absconding such as poor hive condition, poor hive management, limited nectar sources, hash environment conditions, limited space in the hive and many others.

African bees are funny, they don't value the time and care we give them; they just abscond anytime they want.

A few days ago, i captured a big swarm which was desperately hanging on a tree and installed it in a new hive. Immediately i supplied the bees with sugar syrup as first aid relief and to show caring on them.

But just after two days even before eating all the syrup, they absconded and this is one of the reasons why we can't easily buy packed bees in uganda and install them in hives like beekeepers do in USA and Europe: our bees abscond so easily!

Therefore the best way to control absconding after installing the bees is to cage the queen but again it is not easy to see the queen especially in a big swarm. And when you try to turn the bees around in search for a queen, again the queen may escape in the process and fly away causing all bees to follow her leaving the hive empty!

I have got an idea of making a net sack using old mosquito nets. This net will help to wrap around the hive after installing the bees for a period of more than a week or two in order to force the bees to get used to their new home.

I have chosen the net because it will allow good air circulation though the bees will not be able to fly but i will be providing them with sugar syrup which will stimulate their enzymes to produce wax and build combs which will allow the queen lay eggs. I think when these bees have something in place, they will less likely to abscond.

Using a queen excluder could be another solution. With this, the workers can fly out freely in search for nectar and learning about the environment. It's very unfortunate we don't use queen excluders in our KTB hives.

Normally african bees are used to moving themselves into a new hive at their own convinience.

It sucks to find newly installed bees have left the hive...without valueing the effort and care you spent on them.

Manipulate African Successfully

5 steps to manipulate successfully with African bees

African bees are known for their aggressive and defensive characters which make most beekeepers fear and hate them. Of honey they produce is for their babies and food during scarcity yet human being go in to grab it!  Fortunately these creatures were endowed with bullets (stings) which they use to defend their treasures.

Well, African bees are calm and can be manipulated successfully when you follow the following steps.

1.       Smoke yourself

Bees use their antennas to sense and detect everything including their enemies. And bees have the ability of detecting moisture on human body in form of sweat, and eyes drops. Therefore to obstruct bees from feeling our smell/odour and moisture from our bodies, we shouldn't use perfumes while going in bees, shouldn't be sweaty because bees will detect you easily.

When you are ready to work with bees, after lighting your smoker, smoke your whole body with a lot of smoke to cover yourself with smoke than perfume and odour.

2.       Smoke after dressing

After the first step up of smoking yourself, now you can dress your beesuit or jacket and smoke it as you did before dressing. This gives double protection and the bees can't easily detect you even when you don't puff smoke on yourself next time as you manipulate.

3.      Carry the hive

When you approach the hive, smoke around the entrance as usual and cover the entrances. Now carry the hive from it's original location into a new convenient location where there is a good shade and a hide away from the original hive location. Please make sure you replace the old location where you get the hive from which an empty hive box to catch and collect bees that come back from foraging and the bees that fly from the hive you are manipulating for a temporary period of time. After working with the hive, it will be carried back to its original location and smoke bees that have collected in the temporary hive to fly back into their original hive.

4.      Smoke the hive

Smoke calmly on the bees and do allow them to escape and settle and one point normally on one end.

5.       Work gently

Gentleness is very important while working with African bees because African bees are very sensitive to noise, therefore too much hitting on the hive body should be avoid. When working with bees, you should show a highest degree of calmness. Normally when you approach and smoke at the bees for the first time, bees tend to buzz heavy which sometimes force beekeepers to hit the hive in hurry and fear of bees but when you smoke at them and they buzz heavily, please slow down the rate of puffing until they also cool down.

When you follow the steps mentioned about, you will never have trouble working with African bees and this is the practice that we use to make bees become flies…..and we work with light jackets and sometimes without any protective clothes but with smoke.

But African bees are very aggressive and they have ever killed goats and cows and human beings. therefore we can't rule this out.

Bees are purely agricultural

Agriculture is the practice of cultivating land, rearing animals, keeping bees and keeping birds.
First of all agriculture is fully functional when there is rainfall that is to irrigate the land in order to grow what is sown. Therefore every aspect of agriculture has to be influenced by rainfall forexample animal keepers need rainfall for pastures to grow and later they feed it to the animals. The crop growers also depend on rainfall for water to irrigate their crops in order to grow into useful produce. The beekeepers in a same way need rainfall for the plants to produce flowers where bees will collect nectar from for storing as honey and their food.

Everyone involved in agriculture directly especially in beekeeping should take note of the following; agriculture has risks and uncertainities: therefore beekeeping has risks and uncertainities.

Beekeeping is faced with risks and uncertainities like flactuations in production (yields vary according to season), yields are unpredictable and asset availability especially in african bees is unpredictable (bees can abscond any time).

Beekeeping is seasonal! I always tell people who normally ask me for honey especially when i don't have honey that honey is not available until the next season. And they ask me why? ....we thought you just go to the hive and pick more honey like a brewer could with alcohol....

....and this is my casual answer; bees are like beans which germinate, grow and flower during the rainy season or rainy months and then dry during the dry months. So for the case of bees, they have to wait for flowers to come and they collect nectar and they must make sure they store enough nectar which turn into honey which is their lifeline food when there are no flowers or during dry season and the bees have never kept honey for humans!

Therefore beekeeping is seasonal and has risks and uncertainities like any other agricultural practice; production will vary depending on the season's influencing factors such as rainfall, pests and diseases, management and many others.
New beekeepers don't think that it's a matter of hunging a KTBH and then go back to harvest 25kg of honey for everytime you go to work the hive.

Causes of Absconding

Causes of absconding in African bees

When bees leave as a whole colony and leave the hive empty is what we call absconding. There are many causes of absconding and here we can point out a few of them.
1. Hive location.
The location of a beehive is very important because bees normally don't want too much heat therefore the hive shouldn't be in direct sunshine. This applies to bees in African setting. And also bees don't want damp areas therefore the temperature should be balanced. a beehive shouldn’t be located in direct wind direction which normally inconvenience bees.
2. Pests
Pests like rats, mice, beetles, lizards, birds and many others can easily force bees to leave the hive to run away from the inconveniences caused by these pests. Therefore a routine hive inspection is recommended to stop these pests from invading the hive. Termites are known for destroying wooden hive bodies as well as other crawling insects which nest in the hive.
3. Poor harvesting practice.
This involved 2 ways; when you harvest all the honey and even the brood when annoys the bees and when you poorly and aggressively handle the bees during harvesting like hitting the hive, scorching then with fire and crashing them. Bees should be manipulated gently without panic and hurrying. This will not destabilize the bees so much hence avoiding absconding.
4. Bad hive conditions.
Broken hive bodies and leaking hive covers can easily lead to absconding. Hives with no covers which allow wind and rain to enter into the nest freely and inconvenience bees eventually lead to absconding.
5. Size of the bee hive
The size of a bee hive is very important especially a small bee hive shall be abandoned by bees when their population grows big and strong, they will look for a big hollow to stay in than a small limited hive. Also bees may abscond from a too big hive in search for an average to nest in. This is due to cases like bees may not be able to regulate the temperature in the big hive and defend it well; they will leave it in search for a good size.
6. Nectar sources
When bees have to move a look distance in search of water and nectar, usually get ware out fast and tired by the end of the day. This will in no time drive away in search of a better location, situated near nectar sources and water.
7. Pesticides
Some pesticides used in spraying in gardens and animals are very poisonous to bees. For example when cows are sprayed with unfriendly pesticide and are grazed near an apiary, the bees will get affected and will consequently abscond. Spraying crops near apiaries with a bad pesticide will cause absconding to nearby affected colonies. Beekeepers are advised to use only bee-friendly pesticides with words: Non toxic to bees.

Note:
Naturally, African bees are known for absconding easily even when conditions are equally favoring.
African bees also abscond frequently from KTBH or modern hives than from logo hives or traditional hives. This has lead to many beekeepers say that modern beehives are less productive than traditional beehives. This has been confirmed in various parts of Uganda by experienced beekeepers and beginners.

Beekeepers are advised to use both traditional and modern hives for transitional purposes.

Bees in a Termite hill

Rescuing bees from a termite hill

On 18th March 2014, I was invited to extract bees from a termite-hill which was in a plot of land where constructing was going to take place very soon. And this termite hill was just a few metres (10metres) from the road.  Bees normally nest in termite hills when abandoned by termites since they have possess hollows enough for bees to live in. this is also common because a few bees are domesticated and most of the huge trees have been cut down due to urbanization and charcoal burning. Well these were the traditional nests for bees and bees could nest in the hollow parts on these trees. Bees cannot easily nest on branches of trees in an open (as swarms) because there are a lot of predators like birds, lizards, insects and human beings!
The person who called me said; if you love bees, come and rescue them or else I am going to buy petrol and use it to set fire on them! Of course as a beekeeper and a hobbyist, I had to run fast and rescue the bees.
The manipulation process was simple and easy. I dug a hole on the side of the hill. Note, the bees had their entrance right on the top of the hill and this helped when I covered the entrance with a box as I manipulate.
After opening into the nest chamber, I began puffing smoke into the nest which drove bees up into the box where they collected. This lasted for over 30 minutes until all bees including the queen abandoned the combs in the nest chamber to seek refuge in the box.
When all bees were in the box, I removed the combs which I tied on the bars which I put in the hive where I moved and installed the bees.
I covered the box as bees when on the upper side and carried them into the new hive.. All this happened from 6pm up to 2pm. I decided to use that period of time purposely to collect all bees including the foragers since by then all have come back and the place of scene was too close to a road therefore I didn't want to inconvenience people using the road. Likely some people stopped by to watch the proceedings though I and Amos we constantly requested them to keep distance.

The operation was successful and the bees are happily living in their new home and we rescued them from killers.

Bees turn into flies

Bees Turn into flies.

Wampiti Beekeepers Association has its roots in wampiti but it covers very many communities where members come from and we don't stop members from outside the community of wampiti to join WBA because we are interested in developing beekeeping and sharing knowledge.

Before I continue, let me take this opportunity to thank you very much for everything that you have done for us to see that our beekeeping truly move to a third stage of Beekeeping because we were on a second stage of bee-having! You have extremely changed our primitive beekeeping into modern beekeeping.

You know we have three stages of bee-human relationship ie; bee-killing, bee-having and beekeeping! 

Currently we are moving from bee-having into beekeeping!

Fun and Buzzes

Wampiti was full of fun and buzzes of bees as we were moving to different individual apiaries for inspections and practical trainings.

I read from the internet, i get ideas and notes from friends, this applies to other members who attend workshops, visit other members outside WBA and also read literature. We also have ambitious members who are too innovative in beekeeping practice.

So when i got to  in late January 2014 Wampiti, we all members of WBA agreed to pull the resources together so that we all benefit equally. And fortunately, members agreed to contribute money in pairs to pay to one of our members who is a tailor to sew bee suits and we also pay to make more smokers too.

All these were successful and we were able to get suits ready and the smokers. For the bee suits, pants were separated from shirts which have veils. 

Now we have enough suits and smokers for the members though they have to share but it is better than none. Members had veils but they were not confident enough to work with bees at any time of the day. And thorns could easily tire them.

We also didn't know that it is very important to smoke ourselves heavily so that the smoke can stick on our bodies and so that the bees don't smell us quickly! 

Teamwork is very important!

You know veils are less durable especially in our environment where there are hooky thorns which tire them very fast, in fact most members' veils were torn. Though veils are torn but at least some members had developed confidence through working with bees especially in late evenings and very early mornings and there has been less members going in bees during night hours.

Can you believe that we have been working with bees during noon hours (11:00 am to 4:00 pm)? And throughout the whole exercise only 20 people got stung and only about 60 bees stung people! And we also had one live incident where bees absconded from the rustic hive we were transferring bees from into a new top bar hive!

From that incident, we started covering beehives with a piece of cloth so that bees and especially the queen is exposed to less direct light.

We were training on job!

All members now know how to light smokers, puff and smoke themselves heavily before approaching a bee hive. They also learned that bees should be worked gently without hurrying and apply small smoke at intervals.

Members also learned how to transfer bees from old damaged rustic hives into new top bar hives, when they tie combs on bars.

Lemon grass was also considered as one of the best baits when you rub it in the hive, so members started using it immediately.

Members also bought wood which was taken to machines for making top bars and cutting the wood into proper dimensions so that they become easy for members to join. Actually every member got a new KTB hive.

I was so amazed with all what members were doing. Members had good harvest last November and that's why they happily invested in beekeeping.

Of course not all of them contributed equally, but all the equipments were distributed evenly because we agreed and formed groups where every group had to raise an agreed amount of money for their additional smokers, suits and for wood.

During practical sessions, most members finally discovered that working with bees in a humble way makes the bees docile. And the members finally said; "bees have turned into flies"!

We discovered vorroa mites in two separate hives at different apiaries; to discover mites, we rubbed bees in icing sugar (confectionery sugar, which members had read about). We were not sure that there could mites but we finally found them!

I recommended members to hold such practices every after 3 or 4 months so that they can learn more from each other deeply.

Every time we could transfer bees, we were supplying the bees with sugar syrup and this was very useful because there was no honey in the hives since this is a dry season (January to March). And some colonies didn't have brood and honey at all!

We also mapped calendars for nectar flow, honey flow, rainfall and colony build-up. This was very important because some members didn't really know when to go and check in their hives for honey.

We introduced an idea which seems to work perfectly; moving a hive that is going to be worked on into a shade and far away from its original location. When the old hive is taken, we would immediately replace the position with a new empty box to catch the forage bees that come back from the fields. And also some bees that fly from where we are working from would comfortably fly back to their original hive location. This enabled us to work with a few bees and the bees couldn't defend aggressively their colony from a new location. The place where we working from was chosen considering the following:- there should enough shade, no bee hives close by, should be closed from old hive location so that bees cannot easily locate where their hive is and ample working space.

We saw drones, drone cells, worker cells and only on our last day that's when we saw a queen moving around.

During this time bees are collecting cassava flour so much and water. 

However WBA has greatly improved and solved most of the challenges, there are; 

Many of our members don't have suits and smokers.

Members are not so much convinced that KTB hives are more productive than traditional hives because bees colonised log hives very fast than KTB hives, bees can easily abscond from KTB hives compared to log hives and many of them claim that they harvest much from log hives than from top bar hives!

Since all this is part of our experience, every member is will to improve on the production through improving the management skills.


Go to photo gallery for more photos.

Lessons to learn from bees

Here are some examples of lessons we could learn from bees:

Honeybees live within their means. There are no loans or credit cards in the bees' world; only the resources they themselves gather and store. Their ‘bank’ is their store of food, gathered when conditions permit and stored for lthe times when foraging is not possible. Like us, bees need to eat every day, and they do everything in their power to ensure a constant food supply by storing it – not so much for themselves, but for bees yet to be born.

Honeybees achieve extraordinary things by working together. Fifty thousand workers can shift a lot of stuff. Co-operation is the key to their success: tens of thousands of individuals behaving as a single organism.

Honeybees demonstrate that division of labour can be highly efficient. And everyone knowing how to do the full range of essential jobs makes for flexibility and adaptability. Bees move through a series of jobs in the hive before finally emerging as food-gatherers. In an emergency, they can revert to their former occupations to make up for losses.

Honeybees make honey while the sun shines. Bees are opportunists, taking advantage of available food as soon as conditions are right. Even when their stores seem full, they will find odd corners to pack with food.

Honeybees behave as though individuals matter, while the common good is always their first priority. Ego is not a feature of honeybees: their first duty is to their family and bees will sacrifice themselves without hesitation if they perceive a threat to the colony.

Honeybees understand that hard times happen, and they are always prepared for short-term interruptions of supply as well as the more predictable seasonal shortages.

Honeybees share: they know there is plenty of food out there for everyone, including other bees and other pollinating insects. Honeybees do not compete head-on with other species: there is overlap in their food sources, but they do not need to drive others from their territory.

Honeybees adapt to their surroundings. This extends even to their use of propolis, which varies according to local conditions, and can protect them against localized pathogens.

Honeybees behave as if they understand that honest communication is at the heart of community. Bees are highly effective communicators, using vibrations and pheromones to pass complex messages around their colony. As far as we know, they are incapable of telling anything but the truth as they understand it.

Honeybees' survival depends on selecting high quality, untainted food from a variety of sources. Because we have assumed control of much of their territory for our own purposes, we are responsible for ensuring that they continue to have access to flowers untainted by toxic chemicals, against which they have no defence.

For almost all of the last 80 million years or so, bees have had flowering plants to themselves. Only in the last 100 years has their natural diet been contaminated with substances they can never before have encountered: man-made chemicals designed to poison them and their kind, some of them cunningly incorporated into the very bodies of the plants they feed on. More and more of these toxins are being spread on crops and on the soil, and the bees have no chance of surviving their onslaught.

If we care about the survival of the honeybee, we must reform our farming and food production methods. The alternative is a world dominated by a handful of powerful corporations, intent on bringing the food chain completely under their control.