Transferring to a top bar

[manfre]

I built a top bar hive, but the swarm I put in it left. The hive has been empty, so in an attempt to transfer bees in to KTBH I removed the bottom board from a NUC and placed it right on top of the top bars. There is a small entrance gap toward the front with a little bit of drawn comb on the frames surrounding the entrance gap. Has anyone tried this before?

Pictures and more details

[Michael Bush]

Sure.  Not a lot of luck with it.  But they will usually, when they run out of room, expand into the top bar hive.  But you'll still have the main brood nest in the nuc.  There isn't a lot of communication bewtween unless you make spaces between the top bars and then they fatten the comb and you can't push them back together.

[manfre]

I lifted the follower and peered in from the opposite end of the top bar hive and it looks like have already started to draw out comb. They were out of space, so that explains why they started to get to work on the top bars so quickly.

To help improve communication without the spacing issue, I might make a some top bars that have a few inverted Y shaped tunnels drilled in to them. That should let the bees still use the bar for comb and provide a channel for them to move from top bars to the NUC. When I eventually remove the NUC, I could either plug the holes with cork or let them use those as additional entrances down the length of the hive.