Well, It's been a while, but things have been happening. First, I have made a new TBH with observation windows, and have swapped the girls from our first TBH into it. I have also put windows in that hive now.
So the swap from TBH to TBH went well, almost too easy. We have Ideals, full depth and frameless mixed in, and with the windows it is easy to see what is happening and do what is required. They have already stuck wax to the glass on one of the frameless and are treating the ideals as frameless on the bottom, looks like it may actually be a good idea. You cant see far into the hive on the "busy " end.
Last night was time to swap the lang into TBH. First it was 6 boxes high (Ideals) so we had about 2 boxes to many frames. The next problem was the hive had brood all up the hive,and lots of drone cells and drone's. The were normal cells also. My wife copped a couple of stings on the throat early in the show, the smoker kept going out, and some brood had to be sacrificed,and it was messy work with plenty of angry bee's.
Anyhow, jobs done, and as Caticind said, it looks like the ideals may be Ideal.
p/s.... My wife LOVES her Top Bar Hive !
Thanks
Col