narrower top bars needed

[naoba.org]

Hello, NAOBAns

I hope that this message finds you all well, and that the place where you and/or your bees live recently received some good rain or snow. 

Here at the COB we received .41 of mostly rain and some snow between Monday afternoon and Tuesday late afternoon. We are thankful.

As some of you may know, I am working with a locally adapted South Africanized colony living in an elongated Golden Mean top bar hive that I harvested as a swarm from an old ponderosa pine snag. It's a bit of an experiment.

They have been thriving in the top bar hive. However, I have noticed that some of their combs are "doubled" on a single top bar, especially in the broodnest area, and that this issue will amplify once enough nectar is available for them to begin constructing new combs.

That's problematic because eventually the beekeeper cannot lift and examine the combs without breaking or tearing them. No bees enjoy that experience, and that's especially true for the more defensive honeybees. Some can barely tolerate having their bodies (wax combs) cut.

Because I know that this colony is South Africanized (mtDNA test), I can also see that their bodies are slightly smaller, which may be the cause for this double-combing. Their bee space is slightly narrower than the bee space for the European bees for whom these top bars were designed.

I want to see if changing their top bars to a slightly skinnier or narrower dimension might help, but I don't have a table saw that could be used to shave off the edges of existing top bars, which have a bevel down the middle. Top bars for South Africanized honeybees should be 32 mm wide, rather than 35 mm wide.

If anyone can help, I'd be much obliged. This minor woodworking project would involve altering the width of about 25 top bars. We could also just start from scratch, rather than retrofitting existing top bars.

Thanks,

Patrick Pynes