BIOGRAPHICAL
I’m over half a century old and happily married to Ria, a professional nursing sister. We have two daughters, Sandy, 17 and Keren, 21 who are finishing high school and a teacher’s training course, respectively. I run my own plastics converting business; we live in Hout Bay near Cape Town, South Africa (34° S 18° E) and are situated in the smallest, but one of the most diverse of the six floral kingdoms of the world. We are fortunate to have indigenous bees here of the race APIS MELLIFERA CAPENSIS and I consider it quite an honour that they share their space with us.
Scutellata & Capensis: This shows the CAPENSIS bee we work with on the right. (It is also known as the Cape Black Bee). On the left is the SCUTELLATA which is used in the north of the country and is more productive, although also more aggressive.
For interest, concerning our CAPENSIS bees, I quote from The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Beekeeping, edited by Roger Morse and Ted Hooper, first edition, page 334:
‘One race from south of the Sahara has a unique position among all the races of the honeybee: the Cape bee, APIS MELLIFERA CAPENSIS, occurring in a restricted area on the Cape of Good Hope. Made queenless, the worker bees start to lay eggs within 4-5 days, and from these unfertilized eggs develop female bees and not drones as in other races. Queens can be reared from worker laid eggs, and thus the possibility of self remedy exists for a queenless colony. There are also morphological peculiarities, such as a higher number of ovarioles and a developed, functioning spermatheca in worker bees. This aberrant type is only a geographical race, as it is easily hybridized even with European races – in spite of the fundamental difference in reproduction.’
This characteristic is presently wreaking havoc among beekeepers in the north and east of South Africa where someone, careless or ignorant, has introduced CAPENSIS.
INTRODUCTION
I had a friend, Brian McGladdery, who had a large-scale beekeeping operation in Natal in the east of South Africa and who was successful with migratory beekeeping. He also had a large (by our standards) bee supply business and he often fascinated me with his beekeeping stories. It was only after his untimely demise that I translated my latent interest into action. What follows is an account by a rank amateur of his fumblings in the world of the honeybee.
BEGINNINGS
Foolishly, I decided to begin with an observation hive, which I erected in our kitchen, not knowing that this was the most difficult to successfully maintain. Nevertheless, I was determined to see, and thus learn more of these ubiquitous indigenous creatures, and I did see and learn a lot, as did my friends and friends of theirs etc. It was not long before the observation hive succumbed to whatever they succumb to and I decided to embark on the real thing.
I then purchased a swarm in a Langstroth hive from a professional beekeeper. The swarm was willing but the hive was weak. Here I was faced with my first two beekeeping realities. Firstly, I had to purchase, at great cost, which I hadn’t conceived of before, a new brood chamber and base board, and secondly, I had to move an irascible swarm to new quarters. All I had was a veil, a smoker and a screwdriver but I managed. A third reality hit me when it was time to buy a super, its furniture and the foundation comb to suit. At this point I started to think that there must be another way! Along the way I acquired another swarm in a Langstroth that needed a super and furniture, and that was enough!
I can’t remember where I got them from, but I found myself in possession of some photostatted pages from a publication of the Zambian Dept of Agriculture on the manufacture and operation of top bar hives.
BUILDING THE HIVES
Using the Zambian dimensions, which I will give later, I proceeded to build my first two hives. I had a source of scrap timber from discarded pallets that were used to ship carton-board and remember thinking what a waste, even if convenient to me at the time, to discard these pallets instead of returning them for reuse. These hives were as heavy as hell. Subsequent hives were lighter as they were built from different discarded pallet material. Because these materials were meant to be discarded, they had not had any chemical treatment, so were bee-friendly, though one hive later succumbed to premature dry rot because of this lack of treatment.
On all hives, the width at the top and at the bottom was the same, as
was the height. The length varied because of the different pallet materials
used and for no other reason. I don’t think this made any difference
to the bees.
End of Hive: This shows the proportions of the hive's cross-section, which were recommended, in the Zambian literature. All my haves have been built to this shape.
The hives were put together with water based PVA glue and galvanized clout nails. The outsides were coated with waterproofing membrane type PVA paint and the insides were left uncoated.
Internal Battens: This shows the grooved battens running down the sides and along the bottom of the hive. A queen excluder or a divider board can be placed in the groove.
Queen Excluder: In this photograph, the queen excluder has been inserted into the batten grooves.
Divider Board: The divider board is in the batten grooves. This effectively reduces the volume of the hive if management of the colony suggests that this is desirable.
In the middle, I attached battens internally down the one side, across the bottom and up the far side. These battens have a groove in them which can hold a queen excluder or a divider board which latter is used to halve their volume and thus make them more friendly to a newly introduced swarm.
The tools I used in their manufacture were; a table saw with a 5mm wide tungsten tipped blade, a claw hammer, a panel saw to correct some errors, pliers to correct others, a tape, a pencil to mark and very little else. The glue was dispensed from honey squeeze bottles, which I had filled from the drainings of a bulk drum of glue used in the manufacture of paper bags. So you can see, it was a real scrounge operation, not for lack of financial resources, but rather from a challenge to make the most from the least.
The hives have sloped sides for the reason that I was following the Zambian model. The disadvantage is that they are unstable because of their narrow bases and can be blown over in a strong wind if they don’t have about 40 kgs of rocks on top. I think the advantage is that there is less volume than a straight-sided hive and this, I think, sits well with the bees. The sloping sides don’t stop them from attaching the comb, but this is easily severed with a hive tool.
The top bars are made from the crosspieces of the pallets and are rather thicker than the bodies. The bars are sawn to 32 mm width which is what our APIS MELLIFERA CAPENSIS require and a groove of 5x5mm is sawn longitudinally down the centre and into which a 20mm wide piece of foundation is secured with molten wax. The one side of the hive has a ridge against which the bar rests to locate it. This concept can best be grasped by studying the photo. It has the disadvantage that, while it prevents the bars sliding if the hive is tipped in one direction, it fails in this regard if the hive is tipped in the other direction, thus making my hives unsuitable for easy transportation. The earlier hives have 30 bars and the later ones, 24 bars.
Top Bars: This shows some top bars with the foundation waxed in place.
Locating Ridge: This can be seen on the right of the hive. The bars come up hard against it and are prevented from sliding when the hive is tipped towards the right, but not when tipped toward the left.
The hive is topped with a sheet of corrugated roof iron to keep out the rain and to reflect the sun. This is held in place by wooden battens, which are through bolted with pieces of suitably bent threaded rod. The rods are held to the hive body by carriage bolts and the battens are secured with wing nuts and washers.
Whole Hive: This photograph shows the completely assembled hive with the roof in place.
Roof Mounting: This shows how the roof is held in place with a batten and wing nut on a piece of threaded bar which is secured to the hive body.
Entrances consist of a series of holes along the long side of the hive, positioned at the bottom, level with the floor. The holes are the diameter of a wine cork, which we have plenty of, and these are used to seal some holes off in winter. There is a shallow landing board in front of the entrance holes. The hives are positioned on a roof with a 7½° slope, which allows any excess condensation to drain away through these holes.
Entrance Holes: This shows some of the holes open and others closed with wine corks. The landing board is also apparent.
Rooftop Apiary, View 1: Here the Langstroth hives are shown along with one of the top bar hives.
Rooftop Apiary, View 2: The remainder of the top bar hives are visible in this photograph.
COSTS
The hives and bars cost me about SA Rand 8, The roof covering SA Rand 10 and the queen excluder SA Rand 22. (There are 6.3 rands/US$ ). See the economic comparisons note near the end.
DIMENSIONS
END:
Top width - 500 mm.
Base width - 250 mm.
Vertical height - 300 mm.
LENGTHS:
First two hives – 1000 mm. Volume: 112 litres.
Next four hives – 900 mm. Volume: 101 litres.
All measurements are internal.
POPULATING THE HIVES
All swarms in the TBHs were caught as trek swarms; none were transferred from other hives, nor were any bought. By using swarming bees, one only hopes that they have stronger queens. These swarms don’t always stay and my success rate has been only about 50%. I don’t confine them after hiving as I think it stresses them too much. Our swarming season is from about Aug to Dec and the main flow from about Nov to Mar. Bees caught in the swarming season don’t produce a surplus that season and I leave them well alone to let them get established.
When I hive a swarm, I put in the divider board to reduce the volume and they have responded positively to this. For new hives, I rub the inside liberally with propolis, which I first soften in the sun, and I also rub some BEE CHARM, a French product, into the hive interior. I usually also take a comb of brood from an established hive and put it with them to try to persuade them to stay. It doesn’t always work. They are more prone to stay if the hive is put in full sun as I suppose it’s easier for them to keep warm.
At the beginning of the following season, I remove the divider board and replace it with a queen excluder but I’m not sure whether this is really necessary.
MANAGING
When managing the brood, I first remove the bar nearest the middle of the hive and have a peep inside to see how far they’ve progressed. Thereafter I work my way progressively toward the end of the hive, one bar at a time, always placing the bar I have finished with, one position back. When the job is done, I push all the bars back into their original positions and replace the one I first removed back into its original position. When harvesting, I start at the end of the hive furthest from the brood, then work toward the middle. I replace the bars I harvest with spare bars I have pre-prepared with wax strips on them.
I use smoke at the entrance before opening up and then a little between the bars as I am working. Much less smoke is needed than with the Langstroths which require great billows down between the frames just to get them to keep their heads down. As I don’t wear gloves, I find it helps to blow smoke on my hands to reduce the number of stings. In the smoker, I use oak shavings, which are very pungent.
For harvesting, I have made a box with rope handles, which holds about 15 bars and I do one hive at a time. The bars are carefully lifted out of the hive and hung in the box after the bees have been brushed off. The hives are situated on the roof of my house so the box has to be lowered to the ground and I then retire to the kitchen to cut up the comb and pack it into see-through punnets. All the honey is in comb form. I don’t extract at all.
After harvesting, I remove the queen excluder and put in the dividing board for the winter. In spring, I put back the queen excluder after removing the divider board.
I’ve noticed that the TBH bees don’t follow me very far whereas the Langstroth bees will follow me all the way into the kitchen, (coughing as they go), and then wait until I have removed my veil to sting me on the head. They also stay ticked off for longer and don’t regain their couth as quickly.
YIELDS
I have been beekeeping for only four seasons and have had harvests from the TBHs for only two of them, so don’t attach any scientific weight to the yields that I have recorded so far. Furthermore, one harvest, the last one, was affected by some very peculiar weather patterns, which caused the seasons to be 4 to 6 weeks late and which saw some uncharacteristically low fruit crops. Compared to the previous year, the bees performed dismally. The eucalypts flowered erratically and though their flowers remained on the trees longer than usual, they were not giving nectar, if one were to judge by the absence of the bees.
The yields were:
1996
2 Langstroths; 15.05 kgs and 16.05 kgs. Total; 31.1 kgs. Av; 15.65 kgs
4 TBHs; 27.16kgs*, 12.12kgs, 11.63kgs, and 10.63 kgs. Total; 61.54 kgs. Av; 15.39 kgs.
*The first TBH seems an aberration. If you discard its figure, the average for the others is 11.46 kgs, which supports the contention that TBHs produce less that Langstroths. For further support, see the ‘97 yields. This very productive swarm has since inexplicably died off.
1997
2 Langstroths; 27 kgs.* Av; 13.5 kgs
4 TBHs; 22 kgs.* Av; 5.5 kgs.
*The harvests were so poor and so few frames and bars were filled that, for convenience, I harvested all the Langstroths at once, then all the TBHs at once; hence no separate figures for each hive.
HONEY FLOW
Our main honey flow comes from the sugar gum (eucalyptus cladocalyx). This starts in Dec and goes through to about Mar. It produces a light coloured honey with a delicate taste and low viscosity. Other, less important EUCALYPTS are the flowering gum (eucalyptus calophylla) which produces a very stringy honey and the blue gum (eucalyptus grandis) which produces a honey that is very prone to crystalising. All the eucalypts are alien to the area, having been brought from Australia in the last century for use mainly as building timber. During our winter there is a moderate flow from the indigenous flora called ‘Fynbos’ (Fine bush) which produces a dark strong flavoured honey and throughout the year there is always some flow from the urban gardens that are in our valley, so I don’t feed in spring.
SOME OBSERVATIONS
Lesser wax moth was a problem in the first season’s crop, producing grubs in some packs which didn’t look too appetizing when seen wriggling around in the comb. The second season, I froze the entire crop to minus 40° and then rapidly thawed it. The thermal shock must have damaged the eggs since there was no evidence of mobile protein in this crop.
For the first crop, I had put a 20mm strip of foundation along the underside of the bars, which the bees followed faithfully. I cut the comb about 1 or 2 mm below the bar and presented them with that to start the second crop from. Instead of straight comb, I got a lot of cross comb and comb meandering from bar to bar. For this season, I have gone back to 20mm of foundation and will report on the result after next April.
FUTURE
There are 4 TBHs and 4 Langstroths with swarms in the apiary at present. I intend filling the other 2 TBHs with trek swarms this season and then capping my apiary at 10 hives with the 6/4 split. This should give enough comparison between the two types to see what the respective yields are.
I have thought of other types of TBH bodies and may try some alternatives. When I was constructing the hives, I thought what a lot of work this all was and there must be an easier way.
A beekeeper living about 1000km away had tried using old paraffin tins but wasn’t successful as he thought there was not enough thermal insulation even though he lives in an area which is almost sub-tropical. Some alternatives could be; thick-walled plastic, concrete or asbestos piping of suitable diameter, split lengthways, double or triple wall corrugated board that is wax coated, plywood or hardboard or even a hole in the ground, dug to the right size and lined with clay or a weak mortar mix.
I’ve considered basket hives but can’t see how one can get a good horizontal separation between brood and stores. If I come up with any ideas, I’ll report on them later.
ECONOMIC COMPARISONS
The approximate cost of a complete Langstroth setup, being; bottom board, entrance restricter, brood chamber, brood frames with wire and foundation, queen excluder, super, super frames with wire and foundation, inner cover and outer cover is three hundred South African Rands. Today’s exchange rate is 6.3 rands per dollar, but before you do the calculation and say – that’s only US$48, bear in mind that the exchange rates on the financial markets don’t bear much relationship to what the man in the street earns and spends. Price comparisons are more important. To give you some idea of prices in South Africa, I pay the following for everyday items:
Loaf of white bread (800 gms) R2-50
Can of beer (340 ml) R1-50
Quart of milk (1 litre) R1-80
Big Mac R7-80
From this you will see that the ratio of 6.3 to 1 should be closer to 3 to 1, so the Landstroth setup would cost about US$100.
Janurary 29, 2000: "We have found Varroa in our swarms. It seems to have entered the country through the port of Cape Town and has spread outwards from here. I don't know quite how far it has got, but I know that my swarms are affected.
We also have had some serious bush fires on the Cape peninsula. Because the smoke was around for about a week, the bees had become restless. They are only just now settling down and I think I may have lost some part swarms which may have trekked. I can't look at them yet since they are still twitchy.
So with Varroa starting last year I got a poor crop and have not recorded it as part of my ongoing beekeeping records, and the fires this year, with the Varroa will likely make things worse."
COPYWRITE
I DON’T CLAIM COPYWRITE ON ANY OF THE ABOVE. IT CAN BE FREELY DISEMNATED.
Peter Gibb email: petegibb@iafrica.com James D. Satterfield email: jsatt@gsu.edu