Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => TOP BAR HIVES - WARRE HIVES - LONG HIVES => Topic started by: dragonfly on June 03, 2009, 07:42:21 pm
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I'm currently building what I will call my "old lady hive". It is so-called because I am getting to the age that lifting supers for hive checks is getting cumbersome, and I'm a one-woman show in the beeyard.
What I am doing is building a sort of hybrid between a top bar hive and a Lang. My Lang has three supers, and I am building a one-story hive to place them in. There will be room on the bottom of the frames for the girls to build comb if they so desire. Anyway, I'm trying to decide on entrance placement, and I plan to just use drilled holes for this purpose. The Lang I am moving them from has the standard slot at the bottom of the hivefront, plus a small entrance between the 2nd and 3rd supers that I cut into the woodenware. The size of this opening is about 1/2" x 1". The bees generally seem to prefer the small upper opening. One dilemna is that the frames will be oriented opposite the direction they are now. Should I cut an entrance on both the south and the east sides? What size round drilled holes do you guys think is good to use? I will be placing landing boards under the entrance holes- should I drill them flush with the bottom of the entrance holes?
Thanks all.
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Comb orientation to the entrance doesn't matter. In fact the DE Langstroth mod kit turns the frames 90 degrees from the norm. I like 3/4" holes because wine corks fit them nicely if you need to reduce the total entrance size. The landing boards don't need to be flush with the bottom of the holes, in fact they really aren't needed at all. I don't put them on my swarm traps and the bees do just fine (actually never had them on my TBHs either). With that said it does make it easier for a fully loaded bee to land and enter the hive. Once on the landing board they have no problem climbing up to a hole. SO I guess it comes down to if you plan to every have to block any of the entrance holes and if placement of the landing boards impedes your method of blocking them.
When do we get to see some pics of your creation? :-D
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Comb orientation to the entrance doesn't matter. In fact the DE Langstroth mod kit turns the frames 90 degrees from the norm.
Ahhh. I didn't realize that. Thanks. Scrap the east side entrance plans. :)
I like 3/4" holes because wine corks fit them nicely if you need to reduce the total entrance size....
SO I guess it comes down to if you plan to every have to block any of the entrance holes and if placement of the landing boards impedes your method of blocking them.
3/4 sounds good, it's a nice average between 1/2 and 1 ;)
The only blocking I ever do is for mice, but this past season I didn't even do that, and didn't have any problems as a result. I think I'll go ahead with a landing board and place the holes about 1/2" above them.
When do we get to see some pics of your creation? :-D
When it's finished if you want to see it. It's really quite plain- simple white box. White to help reflect Texas sun and heat, box because that's easy to build and the bees seemed to like the idea. :-D
On second thought, maybe I'll do something to spruce it up a bit. :-D
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http://www.bushfarms.com/beeshorizontalhives.htm
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Thanks Michael. :)