With hives in such close proximity to each other as they are in NYC, my suggested ethical guidelines are taken from Genesis 4:9 - "You ARE your brother's beekeeper". So, in self-defense, you must assist your brother to learn basic IPM metrics and basic recordkeeping, so that each can see the tangible results of their choice of approaches to deal with all the invasive exotic pathogens and pests that have been delivered to our shores as a free gift of unregulated uninspected World Trade with all the iPads and HDTVs. Two things with top-bar hives: 1) They need entrance reducers in fall more than traditional colonies, as they never tend to reach the populations of vertically-oriented hives. This protects the TBH from being robbed, even if it is very weak, and thereby protects your hives from being re-infested with varroa brought back by robbers. 2) TBHs are very much "comb at a time" management challenges, rather than "box at a time", as is the case with vertically-oriented hives. The lack of ability to expand in the natural (vertical) direction bees encounter in tree hollows means that the beekeeper is constantly moving an empty top bar to the frontmost position, right at the entrance, to coax the bees into drawing out that comb. Forget to do this, and you end up with a colony of less-than-critical-mass size. Left alone, bees don't expand horizontally all that much. 3) The combs are fragile, and handling them is touchy, so a TBH is a perfect hive for someone who does not inspect the hive. Some TBH enthusiasts have added a vertical stick down the centerline of the comb, projecting downward from the top-bar to give the comb better structural support, and they think that this is pretty neat. I say "Go Big or Go Home", and suggest that two such sticks be attached to each end of the top bar projecting downward, parallel to the hive walls, and once one has got that done, a 3rd stick to attach the bottom ends of the two downward sticks to keep them (and the comb) planar. 4) Another good accessory for a TBH is a series of swarm traps in the area. You'll be glad you did. Ooops, that's four things. Also, "Kenyan" Top bar hives were actually invented by a pair of Canadians. I guess they had never been to Africa, as they assumed that complex woodworking with tight tolerances for bee space was beyond the skills of Africans, which is patently ridiculous to anyone who has actually been to Africa, where one is approached by someone selling wonderful hand-crafted wood carvings roughly every 13 seconds. While the African bees tended towards smaller tree cavities, and smaller colonies, and likely considered a hollow log hung horizontally in a tree to be an optimal home, and the TBH was an attempt to move "a log" one step closer to a manageable movable-comb hive, these colonies never grew to the amazing (to the African beekeepers) sizes of the first of the swarms put into Langstroth hives distributed by Honeycare Africa ( http://honeycareafrica.com ) Here's an interview, where the TBH is clearly defined as what it was - a mistake for Africa, from which they are only now starting to recover. They can now produce honey in quantity and of quality for export sales, which means a consistent cash income among people who have few other sources of cash, most of their crops being "local barter quality" only: http://tinyurl.com/os8vmkn And cash allows shoes, school, books, and lamp oil or a solar-charged light. This pushes the next generation into the educated middle class in one leap. An opportunity on a scale with winning the lottery, and for the price of lumber cut on a table saw. Amazingly to some, they do have table saws in Africa. Also lumber. What Honeycare does is provide the hives, and allows them to be paid for over time with honey. This means that a percentage of or all the crop is sold back to Honeycare and the cash payments get larger when the hive is paid off. The beekeeper can still sell or barter his crop locally, but the export price tends to be a better price. That's like seven things, so I'll stop. But I like what those Honeycare guys do, and I vote with my checkbook. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html