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Bee Hive building & a place to share howto's on equipment
 #12605  by AdamD
 17 Apr 2022, 08:07
An easy way to get bees started in a hive with bigger frames is to attach a frame - with queen - to a larger top bar that fits the new hive.
This is one I did earlier; once the surrounding foundation had been drawn, this National frame was removed to allow the bees to continue their work on the Langstroth frames.
The drone comb either side clearly demonstrates the need to maintian the bee space in a hive!

Image
 #12606  by SuesBees
 17 Apr 2022, 15:33
That's very interesting. I have 2 Langstroth hives, one with bees and one to have bees. Everyone round here has Nationals and I was wondering how I could get bees locally. I think I'll have to do the longer top bar.
 #12608  by NigelP
 17 Apr 2022, 16:36
Friend has made several adapater boards so national sits on top of langstroth, Put queen (or shake all bee ) into langstroth with a queen excluder between them. When all brood has emerged in top national, discard and you are in business.
 #12610  by AdamD
 18 Apr 2022, 09:43
Nigel, Your suggestion is essentially a (brutal) Bailey comb exchange. It works however last year I lost a queen as the bees moved through the excluder to cover the brood and left the queen alone to get cold and die. The bees will leave the queen but won't leave the brood. That's why I was doing in a gentler way - get the queen laying on some new Langstroth comb and only then remove the National frame. Yes, I have a conversion board that sits between the two brood boxes.

It also works better when a top entrance is used, with the queen in the top box. Bees soon learn to use the top entrance and then bring stores from 'downstairs' below the excluder, up to the new brood nest.
 #12616  by Alfred
 18 Apr 2022, 15:17
I've been working hard to get a langstroth out of circulation.
Sleeved the end walls down to take Bs frames but the beespace is all fatally wrong due to frame depth differences between the boxes and the box and floor.
It's only used for bait hive duties now as its clogging up the shed.
And it's a heavy old lump.
I'm not sure the langstroth offers fargreater cell count if there's only space(in mine at least) for ten frames??
 #12618  by Spike
 18 Apr 2022, 16:50
Thornes catalogue says
National : 50,000 cells with 11 frames
Commercial : 70,000 cells with 11 frames
Langstroth : 61,400 with 10 frames
14 x 12: ?
 #12619  by NigelP
 18 Apr 2022, 17:59
AdamD wrote:
18 Apr 2022, 09:43
Nigel, Your suggestion is essentially a (brutal) Bailey comb exchange. It works however last year I lost a queen as the bees moved through the excluder to cover the brood and left the queen alone to get cold and die.
It is indeed a sort of Baily comb exchange, but I think it's simpler to cut out an adapter board than remove top bar from all the National frames and replace with longer top bars to fit a Lamgstroth.
If there are worries about the queen, perhaps best to leave out QX until they settle a bit and move her downstairs when weather is warmer and then add qx.
As usual about 30 different ways to get to same end result. :mrgreen:
 #12624  by AdamD
 19 Apr 2022, 20:23
Nigel, I just had one deep frame screwed to a strip of 19" long wood, complete with queen and brood. This ensured that the queen wasn't abandoned and encourages the bees to move up. Once there's brood on a langstroth frame, the National frame is unscrewed from the temporary top bar and put back below the queen excluder. (I had the Langstroth above the National).

There is a point to mention about transferring bees using the Bailey method if anyone has a go at it, in that a supercedure queencell can be made in the brood box where the queen has been removed from - due to lack of pheromone. A check is needed.