Conrad Berube's video: the Kenya Top Bar Hive KTBH in Jacquesyl Haiti

This video is the result of training regarding the Kenya top bar hive or KTBH conducted in Jacquesyl Haiti in July of 2009 as funded by USAID and administered through Partners of the Americas. As you can see, the inclusion of stretcher handles onto the KTBH allows it to be easily carried and also facilitates hanging the hive for protection from ants and other pests as well as bush fires—which are often used to clear land where such hives are used. The handles also give you a convenient place to hold comb removed from the hive during hive inspections. If you leave the ends of the hive rectangular as shown here you may have to cut small recesses for the handles to ensure that they are not too far apart for a top bar to straddle. You may want to view some of my other videos on the KTBH for a fuller explanation of its design and use. Suffice it to say here that the width of the top bars, 35 mm for European derived bees and 32 mm for African derived stock, the trapezoidal cross section of the interior and wax guides along the length of the topbars allows bees to build comb with minimal attachment to the sides and bottom of the hive so that the comb can be easily removed for inspection or harvesting. If you find the queen during the transfer you can place her in a screen cage to protect her during the operation. A match box or film canister with holes punched in it large enough for the workers to feed the queen but not so large that she can escape can also be used. In any case, the cage can be stoppered with a barrier about 6 mm thick of sticky fruit candy like jelly beans which the bees will eat through to allow the queen to escape. In a pinch, such as was the case here, a small piece of comb can be used—which may have to be removed manually after a day or so. When doing a hive transfer smaller comb can simply be stuck to the centreline of top bars (note the little globs of wax along the top bar that will serve as a guide to the bees to encourage them to built comb along the midline of the bar). Even for small comb such as shown here the heat of tropical climes can be such that the transferred comb overheats and pulls loos from the top bar before the bees have a chance to repair it. I prefer to use little cloth hammocks to support transferred comb against the top bar (the comb should first be cut, if necessary so that it has a straight edge that fits tightly against the bar). A piece of thread around the face of the comb and the hammock provides additional tension against the top bar and prevents the comb from flopping out of the hammock. In about four or five days the bees will attach the comb to the top bars and the hammocks can be removed (in fact, the bees will usually chew the hammocks free themselves). One of the things I learned from the technicians in Haiti was the recommendation, borne out by research, that where varroa is a problem hives should be placed such that they do not receive excessive shade so that the hives tend to be on the hot side, as evidenced by the "bearding" evident on many hives. When bees are better able to maintain the interior of the brood nest at 35 degrees varroa mites are less able to complete their life cycle in the brood cells. This video begins and ends with pictures from a pamphlet based on text from the French translation of the complete how-to manual Small Scale Beekeeping by Curtis Gentry—a public domain document produced by the U.S. Peace Corps. The pamphlet summarizes the construction of the Kenya top bar hive (or KTBH) and how to transfer a fixed comb hive into a KTBH. If printed copies of the pamphlet are not and this video is used in rural location on a laptop or DVD player the video may be paused on the still images of the pamphlet so that viewers may take notes on construction of the KTBH. The pamphlet, as well as English and French versions of Small is available on my website which is best found by googling "bees for babar". Once you find one of my pages use the navigation bar at the top to get to the "bee stuff" page and either search the page for the word Haiti or scroll down till you find it.