Stored bars in the winter

[ivashka]

I heard you have to move stored bars with honey closer to the cluster because in top bar hives, cluster doesn't move and that it says on one end of the hive.(Mine is always at the front.)Is this true or not ? Can someone explain to me just a little bit better or give me an idea ?
Thanks.

[DavesBees]

I can’t explain but I can give you an idea.  This is just my take on the subject and how I behave.  Bees know what to do!  Once set up in the hive and allowed as much as possible to act like bees they should be fine.  Nobody is moving honey around in feral hives and the bees seem to find it.  If bees are deficient in some way and can’t find their own stores then nature will let them die.  Another colony will find the now available stores and take them for their own.  Again nature’s way of working things out.  Bees have lived naturally for millions of years… a record that far exceeds man.  Only since man started making them into farm animals have they suffered so.  Beekeeping philosophy ranges from Super bees breed to do what I want, that I must feed and treat and manipulate to my every desire; to putting my feral bees in a box and leaving them alone as much as possible.  You will have to find your comfort zone, develop your own philosophy and apply those principles to your very own method of beekeeping. 
So this is my method for the KTHB in the winter.  I leave them alone.  I don’t know how much honey they have beyond the fact that it looked like plenty going into the winter.  I don’t know how much they have used or where it is in the hive or where the bees are.  They are alive, I saw one make a quick flight yesterday.  I will not open the hives until spring when there is some real action.  I will remove my bottom boards in the spring as well.  Overall I mostly let nature take its course. 

[annette]

Dave

This is way different from most of the stuff I have read on TBH's. So how successful have you been doing it this way?  I am just learning this year about TBH's and helping a friend start one, so I am reading all that I can on the subject.

Annette

[Michael Bush]

In any hive, vertical or horizontal, bees will not move across empty comb or empty spaces while clustered from the cold.  So putting the empty combs at the far end from the bees is the right place for them and putting full combs up by the cluster is the right place for them.  Usually, the bees will already have planned it that way, but you can intervene if they haven't.  I try to have the cluster at one end, full combs next and empty at the far end.

[ivashka]

Thanks a lot for response.  I really do appreciate it.  I'm new to this and not sure what I'm doing.