Populated and Hastily Made TBH's

I have three swarms sat in bait hives that need re-homing before I leave for Sweden in two weeks time. I spent the last few days making a couple of Kenyan TBH's (Top Bar Hives). I made them out of some leftover timber I brought back from Sweden for work on the log cabin. The roofs are simple flat OSB boards with a strip of wood around them to provide an air gap between the roof and the top bars. I didn't have enough woood for the third hive so I have converted the mould I made for the papercrete hive I made a couple of years ago into a catenary curved TBH.

Today I did a very brief inspection of the two Kenyan Top Bar Hives that I hived swarms in on the 23rd and 26th of March. What a difference in temperament. Maybe it's because they are in a hive that is more to their needs and are able to build natural comb. Each hive had built out over 12 combs each since that time and had good pattern brood on about 10 combs. I didn't mess too much as I didn't need to find the queen. The combs were centred perfectly on the starter strips with no side wall attachments whatsoever. I would give both these colonies a 3 for temperament now whilst before it was 6 or 7! I was particularly careful with these combs as they are brand new, built only in the last few days. My mission was purely to see that both queens were laying and was quite surprised at their progress.