Finally!

I spend the afternoon working on the hive box. I must say that over all I am frustrated that the work didn't go faster and I still don't have a working model of the top or bottom but I finally have the outside dimentions where I want them. Plus I fixed the issue with my last attempt and now the standard 19" topbar will now fit. While there are no official standard length of the topbar there is a regulation in Florida that all bee hives must have 19" frames. So I decided that would the my standard length.

While I do have both the top and bottom all drawn up in my head I still do not have them translated into wood. I hope to get another day soon to put the finishing touches together.

Feeling the pressure of spring.

Spring is on the cusp here in Houston. I am feeling the pressure to get my new hives completed and my hives set for the new year. I have everything worked out on paper to complete this hive design. I believe it is finally done. I just need some time to complete the physical build.

Once this build is complete I will be able to put the entire plan into an assembly line type production. So I can get a cost analysis done.

Finished the new prototype

I worked with my brother, who is a carpenter, for several hours the other day to put together what I hope is my final design. I can't tell you how incredible the difference is. Nice strait lines and perfect angles. It is a marvelous thing to behold.

My brother only complained a couple of times when I changed something I had just told him to make. The biggest problem was that the design was only in my head and I didn't have measurements. At the end of the day the design is simple and easy to replicate. With this is built that we can take measurements from the next ones will go quickly.

Points to note.
1) The top bars are about 3/8 of an inch shorter so moving from my last hive to this will be problematic.
2) I used solid wood for the sides instead of plywood. This was because so many people worry about chemical leaching. This should give the hive better insulating R factor while only slightly reducing the interior volume. Ultimately any material could be used for the sloping sides of the KTBH even wicker or other weaving material. This would allow for a high tech skelp type hive.
3) I currently do not have an observation window. It could be added.
4) The hive has 31 top bars and is about 13 inches deep.

Now I need to make the top, bottom and follower boards.

New hives

I got the wood tonight to build the new hives. I should have time to work on them next week. YaHoo!!

Free Markets

I love the market economy.

Within the last year several people have started selling pre-made topbar hives. For quite some time before I developed "The Best Topbar Hive, EVER" I had been looking for someplace to buy one. In fact the driving force behind my developing this design was that a person could not just simply buy a TBH like they could for the conventional hives. Those days are over. I found at least 4 people selling them.

This is quite good news for me. It verifies that there is a need in the market for pre-built topbar hives. I am of course making the assumption that they are actually selling them. Just because something is listed for sale does not necessarily mean that they are selling, or that the person selling them is making any money. As I don't have a way to verify if they are selling or profitable I must assume that they are. WAAA HOOO!

More faith in the market, I have.

Life Happens

I have been so involved with life and my real job that beekeeping and blogging about beekeeping has been the last things on my mind. But I just got my new beekeeping suit in the mail and that focused my attention.

Yes I just got my new suit. Between my own feeble attempts to make this new purchase happen to back orders and I guess time of year, maybe, it has taken forever to get that new suit. But now I am ARMED with protection. I have no fear again!! Well I never had fear but I didn't like the bees inside my hat. The new set up should work just fine.

I have slightly reworked my hive design and I hope to get several of them built before spring. Which for around here is in a month or so. We had a nice little snow the other day and it has been too cold for the bees to fly. But they were still flying and feeding from my humming bird feeders until last Friday.

I guess I can say without revealing too much that my new design has focused on enabling the keeper to move the hives easier for pollination work. This new design fits nicely on a pallet and stacks or stays stacked better. I had trouble with the legs of the first hive not supporting even and empty hive while stacked very well. They work well enough when the hive is on its own but when stacked they became very unstable. This would be disastrous during a move.

I did have to sacrafice the built in comb holders. Those things were nice and made for easy work of inspecting a the hive. But alas, they had to go and another solution will have to be rendered. But that should not prove to challenging.

My hope and plan is to build the new designs and then in the spring transfer the hive into the new box while at the same time attempting to split them. I think if I can get the weather right I should be able to pull this off. Moving the hive to a new box will be very tramatic and will take the hive quite some time to recover. I am thinking that if I also split the brood at that time both halves will recover and the hive without a queen will raise one.

In the end my updated design places two hives per pallet and gives the ability to stack pallets and hives for moving and storage.

I have also been working on the design feature that allows the keeper to adjust the size of the brood chamber. As I am new to beekeeping I am not sure how useful this will be but it will be easy to do.

I have been integrating bee doors and bee space to to give better control over the bees in the hive. So things like queen excluders can be added or simple things to block workers from the honey bars just before harvest. These items may not be of much use to keepers of European bees but of great worth to those who keep Africans. If it works this should allow the keeper to have access to the hive for as long as he/she wants regardless how aggressive the hive is. In fact if this works like I plan I will turn the bees aggression against them. It will not harm them but the more agressive they act the more bees that will be blocked from the keeper during hive the honey harvest. This should greatly increase the speed that the hive can be harvested.

I know I have dumped my brain here and it is probably hard to follow but just because I have not been working the bees does not mean I have not been working the bees, if you know what I mean.

While the winter is upon us and it is hive building time I hope to get several build before spring.

Bee in my bonnet

I harvested honey from 2 of my three hives and in both cases I had a couple of bees get under my veil, what fun that was.

With the first hive I only got one sting with only one bee getting through. On the second hive those bees are quite creative and I ended with 7 total bees inside my veil, 3 stings and 4 dead bees. Well I guess there was 7 dead by the end but 4 I got first. They didn't all get in at once. They came in one or two at a time. It was when they teamed up that they got me. I would get one but the other would get me. I may requeen that hive in the spring, just because.

I have a new suite ordered and will use it to harvest from the last hive.

Langstroth to Topbar conversion

If you read the history on this blog you will remember my work in a bee yard this spring. For my efforts I was offered a couple of the hives. One of the reasons I didn't take any was I didn't have knowledge of an efficient way to move the bees from the Langstroth hive to the Topbar. There are many ideas and several people have been successful at making the bees move to the different format. But with my limited time to manage a hive I didn't think I would be able to make the transition successful

Moving bees from one hive to another is nothing new. This is not really that difficult. You basically take the frames, in the case of Langstoth, topbars, in the case of those hives and put them in another. The problem is that the Langstroth frame will not fit nicely into a topbar hive. So it is not that simple to change formats.



Generally speaking to change formats you want the bees abandon their brood to move into and build new comb in the topbar hive. But the brood is the most valuable asset to a hive and they don't abandon them. In fact it is almost impossible. So to successfully move formats you have to move the bees through several steps.
1) Get the queen and most of the bees into the new hive.
2) Allow the bees that tend the brood access to them.
3) Allow the hatching brood access to the queen and the rest of the hive.
4) Make the queen stop using that brood comb to continue laying.



Successful moves usually entail turning the brood comb upside down after moving as many of the bees and queen into the topbar hive.



SOOO I finally got some time to think about this situation. After working through several possible solutions. My first was to build a special hive that has a place for Langstroth frames at one end and KTBH bars on the other. I thought it would be a cool looking hive but a bit too complex for this project. So I decided to leave that project to others to work out the details expressly how to make it "bee tight" with the Lang frames. There were other managment issues that were too numerous to keep that as a serious design.

In the end, I think I have come to a very simple solution. It is just a modified Langstroth hive top cover and a small box with two holes.




The idea is to take the complete brood box of the Lanstroth and place it on top of a topbar hive and force the bees through the topbar hive to exit. This is a temporary situation and should be completed in a about 3 or 4 weeks so I took no thought about making the hive water tight. In other words you will have to cover the hive with something like a tarp to keep the water out until the process is complete.

The key to the success is the strategic application of a one way bee door and/or a queen excluder and smoke. I had this type in mind but I am sure anything will work.

https://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=480


The top of a Langstroth hive seals or covers the hive body completely and if you sandwich the hive body with two tops the bees would be trapped and not able to get out. This is not necessarily a good thing but it will allow us to force them through my trap door.

So you build a small box with a hole the same size as the opening in the bee door. You will add the bee door later. Attach that box to one of the tops that will become the bottom. By attaching this to the bottom it will hang just below or down into the topbar hive when the Langstroth is placed on top. Now drill a hole in the top and down into the box that is attached. This basically creates an exit to the Langstroth that is lower than the bottom of the topbars.

You may also want to create a hole in the hive body then cork it up so you can apply smoke later.

So the move from Langstroth to topbar should be in several steps.
1) Place the modified top on your topbar hive in position to become the bottom of your Lanstroth hive. This should not take the entire length of your topbar hive so complete the rest of the length with prepared topbars. This is just like you would for a package of bees.
2)Grab the Langstroth hive and set it on top of the modified top. Put a normal top on it.
3) Leave the hive for a week or two until the bees figure out how to get out of their new entrance and start producing again. In a perfect world they would feel crowded without honey supers and start to build comb on the topbars. In a more perfect world the queen would start laying in the new comb. Since those are both highly unlikely the next steps will most likely be needed.
4) Add the bee door to the entrance or exit as the case may be of the modified top and then close the topbar hive.
5) Smoke the Langstroth hive body real good. This should drive the queen and most of the bees into the new topbar hive. You may want to add a queen excluder to topbar hive entrance / exit so you will not drive the queen all the way out of the hive. Thus trapping her in the new topbar hive.
6) Over the next few weeks continue to check the brood. As they hatch they should move on thier own into the topbar hive to be with the queen. If not add smoke if necessary to encourage them.
7) When all brood has hatched and moved into the topbar hive you can remove the old Lanstroth hive, harvest what you can and add topbars in place of the modified top.
8) After the topbar hive is queen right remove the queen excluder from the topbar hive entrance.

I will only know if this works when someone builds this and reports back. I hope between my instructions and the drawing you will understand what I am trying to accomplish. If you have questions please ask.

I took about 20 minutes out of my work week to stop by the Walker Honey Company in Rogers Texas.
http://www.honeylocator.com/profiles/244600.asp

Cool place. They have been in business for 3 generations. I tried to pick their brain as much as I could in the time that I had. Bottom line they said the business is not easy and I should reconsider trying to make a business out of it. It is a nice hobby and could make a little money but that is about it.

They said they do not treat for SHB mostly because they don't see much of them and he thinks it is due to the soil not being good for the beetle. He said he can take a hive void of beetles closer to the water (coast, river bottoms) and it only takes hours and you can see the beetles flying into the hive. However, for the most part the bees keep them at bay.

I asked about mites. He said that queen selection is the solution. Basically some bees are less prone to mites and those queens are the ones to select. If mites become a problem re-queen.

I guess this is the normal with all businesses they do not produce all of their products. Plus they have a T-SHIRTS. I almost bought one. The quotes on the shirts "Drone: Eat, Mate, Die" "Queen: I RULE"

Reflections and solicitations for help

My real job has been keeping me busy about 60 hours a week one so not much bee keeping has been done lately. I remember reading something way back when, it really put some perspective to my hive design and was from a prominent beekeeper in the late 1700s I think it was around 1780 who said something to the effect that if you were to get a room full of beekeepers you would find that everyone of them had a different idea on the best hive design and best way to keep bees. So I took that to mean that for as long as man has been keeping bees each one has had the best hive design ever. I therefore figure I am in good company.

The biggest rush this spring was mostly due to timing, I didn't want another year to go by without putting my design in use. I wanted to have them across a large climate range but that is all gone now. This year is almost over for starting new hives.

So maybe in the winter when people are building new hives for next year someone will ask and I will share and we can start this project again.

Another website last spring posted a request for hive designs in conjunction with a conservation project. So I designed another little hive I called B cubed or B3. This was nothing like "The Best Hive EVER!" The B3 was just something I put together to trying to conform to the requirements of that project. In areas where you want a strong wild bee population I think it is a wonderful idea. "The conservation Hive" should do just that, increase the wild bee population. The biggest problem with the project here is that the law makers and general population are trying their best to reduce the wild bee population in fear of the AHB (Africanized Honey Bee). The local beekeepers are trying to keep a low profile because they know that the AHB is hybridizing the total bee population and they are not as big of a threat as the general population fears. If there were several of these conservation hives around that were discovered or worse someone got hurt by a hive that had been taken by AHB then there would be a public outcry and it would become open season on bee keepers.

It is too early to really say but I think my "The Best Hive EVER!" will address many of the issues surrounding AHB and keeping them. So in the long run if the AHB does adapt and move further north, people will be able to keep them with similar risk factors as the current breeds. I don't think they will ever get as passive as our current bees but with proper management and continual breeding they will calm down and better suited to deal with the common ailments of today. This is an area that really needs study from research types.

It is not that I think my design is the last word nor will it turn out to be an overwhelming success. In fact I don't think I have any part that is completely revolutionary by its own merits. I do think the combination is unique and should be enough to make a nice profit if produced in mass. Plus I think that the bees will at least as healthy if not more so than with any other designs that has been put forward. In the end it is really about enabling the bees to be healthier and more productive. Being able to mange them and harvest honey is a bonus and making a profit in addition to honey sales would be tops.

The two main issues I face have not changed.
1) I don't have the skills to easily turn my ideas into reality and my hives suffer from poor workmanship. The good here is this means even ppl who have little skill can still make something from these plans that will actually work. Maybe not as good as what a professional can build but good none the less.
2) I don't have much experience with keeping Honeybees so many of my mistakes are associated with this and not the hive design. It is hard to sort out the differences sometimes but there are many good sources that help keep me from totally messing things up.

I am doing the best I can with what I have to work with. I sure wish I could talk someone into helping.

Glass or Plastic

As I am preparing for harvest a decision must be made. This year will only be a small harvest but I still hope to sell a few jars.

So glass or plastic. Personally I like plastic. I live on tile floors and the longer I live here the fewer glass items I have in my house. I watched as one of those supposedly unbreakable glass cooking bowl exploded by my foot a while back. This was an impressive site especially considering that it only fell from about 12 inches off the floor. However, there is mounting evidence that plastic leaches into food and some people do not want their food in plastic.

So are we back to glass? Glass is almost twice as expensive as plastic. You do get discounts on bulk purchase but at the volume I think I will buy some of the jars with lids cost a dollar. That will add a dollar to the price of a jar of honey. The comparable plastic jar is about 50 cent.

Then what about comb honey? I don't see any glass containers that are fit for comb honey. I could put a chunk of comb in the jar but that is not the same.

Decisions decisions, anyone have an opinion?

Bees vs other animal husbandry

I have been either on travel for work or working with family issues for the last 3 weeks and have not even looked at my hives. This is the best kind of animal husbandry I could imagine. I don't have to feed them or do much at all. Things may change in the winter but with only 3 hives I can say that keeping many tens of thousand bees is much better than keeping a single horse or cow or goat or any barn yard animal. I have kept them before and BEES are BETTER.

It is about time time harvest honey so I need to start getting ready. As this is my first harvest year I am not sure how many bottles to get. I will just have to guess. Expecially since all of my beekeeping friends know nothing about topbar hives. I do know that there are at least 4 bars full of honey in my #1 hive that weigh at least 10 pounds each. I still need to work out a system to filter and bottle but this is where it gets fun.

New and best bee hive ever

Not sure it I posted this on here before but I have known for a while that I need to redesign the legs and top of the hive. I have made many sketches to resolve these issues and then the other night I had a brain wave and bam! The legs came in to my mind's eye. I was amazed at how close it was to the original design it is. The roof has been harder fought.

I did sacrifice the permanent topbar frame holder that has been useful during hive inspections but that can be accomplished in other ways.

I am still not completely satisfied with the roof but it is much better than before. I need to build one or have someone build one to work out the finer details of this design.

Another good news item is that I have been working through a modification to this design that can be built with wicker or other grass weaving. This should be extremely useful in developing areas where lumber is expensive or hard to get. I wish I could get in contact with someone in some place like Honduras or other developing country who would be willing to give it a try.

Small Hive Beetle update

The thought of those SHB running around in the hive in back yard has kept me up a couple of nights lately. I think I have come up with something. I will use their main defence against the bees as a way to get rid of them. Their best defense against the bees is that they are smaller and can get into the crevasses of the hive where the bees can't go. It was the fact that I had to leave my follower board in the hive that gave me the idea. Glue boards, they work really well for so many other insects that I bet the SHB will be no match for them. The problem is that neither will the honey bee. But the bees can't get behind the follower board in the hive now and the SHB is running amok. I will just have to be extra careful to get to the glue board as soon as I open the hive and cover it, clear plastic wrap should do the trick, and then put a new one back after the bees are secure and can't get at it.

Hive inspections

I did inspect my other hives last weekend just did not post. It would seem that they other hives are not doing as well as the one in my back yard. They do not have nearly as much comb build. They also build more comb across the bars and it is almost impossible to get the bars out for inspections. In fact I didn't get very deep into them before I stopped. I decided I would do more harm to them than any good I would do by opening them. I am worried that I may have damaged them too much so I am going back tomorrow just to check. All I need to do is take a quick peek to make sure that none of the comb has fallen completely off the topbars. If not I will just leave them alone. I really think the difference between my back yard and the other location is rainfall. The grass and trees around the other hives was all brown and dry. With so many people around my house who keep their yard watered there are always trees and flowers in bloom.

Hive Inspection part 2

Well I had a nice nap now I am back at the blog. I have some pictures they are at http://picasaweb.google.com/curtis.hensley/JulyInspection# I put plenty of comments in there.

You will see that the bees left one end of the hive completely and gathered to the other. At first I thought they were coming to defend the hive as this was the area I was working. The thing was that they were not buzzing like they were angry. And they were not flying around. Both signs that they were defending an attack. Then when I opened the other end I saw that it was full of smoke. I had put the smoker under that end of the hive and it had filled it like a BBQ smoker. The bees just ran away from it. So when I was done there I closed it and moved the smoker to the other end and they all ran back. I thought it was cool. Especially when they lined up like school kids and marched off away from the smoke.

I only got one sting and it was on my hand, after I was done. I walked away from the hive and didn't see or hear any more bees so I took my gloves off, then my hat and veil. I put them in my storage bin and BAM! I got hit on the hand. It really hurt too!! Poor girl, she must have been stuck in my hat and I didn't see her.

Well I still have the other hives to inspect. Probably tomorrow.

Fist Hive Inspection

About mid-afternoon I decided today was the day for the inspection of the hive in my back yard. Then I got distracted by work and almost let the day slip away and I was rushing up against the dark to get the hive put back together.

The first think I noticed was that the hive has not grown much in the last month or so. I suppose this could be due to the lack of rain but as this is my first year with bees in my back yard I just have no real idea if they are growing at a normal rate. I know that the professional bee keeper placed two honey supers on his hives about 6 weeks ago and he is expecting them to be full. But bee that as it may I decided to spread the honeycomb out and give them more room.

My original idea of giving the bees a "more natural" setting to grow at a natural rate seemed to work well enough but I think I have a bigger problem that has caused them to become "honey bound" or locked into their current size. The issue is that I did not account for the humidity when I made the top bars. I knew this was a problem after the first week or two but there was really no going back and so I let nature run its course.

If there is one thing that I learned from all of the reading I did on top bar hives it is that the only measurement that is important is the width of the bars. For European bees, the ones that I have, the top bar should be 1 3/8 inches wide or 35mm, no more, no less. So I was very careful to cut the top bars to the exact measurement. The problem is that the wood I used, top quality pine, is kiln dried and kept in a temp and humidity controlled setting so it will keep its shape in human homes. So this wood is intended to be used inside of human homes. When it is kept out side, especially in Houston, it soaks up the humidity and swells. I don't know how much but I do know that I have had to remove one of the top bars or they swell so tight I cant get them out. Now the top bar are covered so there is no direct rain on them but they are exposed to good ventilation so when the humidity gets high there is plenty of water to make the swell. To add to this, the process of making honey is basically dehumidifying nectar. So a hive full of bees and honey generate a ton of moisture on their own.

So where is this whole thought process going? What happens when you put all those top bars side by side and they all swell? You might not be able to answer this without another hint. The reason the top bars must be exactly 1 3/8 inches is because that is how far apart bees build honeycomb, regardless of their surroundings. So if your bars are not exact, and sometimes even if they are, the bees will build what is called cross comb. Or in other words they will build honeycomb across the bars and not along them so you can't take the bars out to inspect. And even though the top bars only swell a little over the span of the hive, and just about where they stopped building comb they get to a place that they build almost exactly on the space between the bars or join two bars together. So this is lesson number one.

Allow the wood that is used in the making of bee hives "cure" outside until they have reached their "outdoor size" before cutting into top bars. I did read this some place on the internet but it was after the fact. No real worries. The bees tried to keep the comb on the bars. They made deeper comb and made them a little wavy at top until they finally got to the point that they just could not build along the starter strips of wax that I made and they just made it up and built right down the middle and effectivly glued two bars together. The bar just before it was way off center. So I decided to move them as a 2 bar unit, that worked well. It just will make it hard to get the rest of the hive filled with comb. This may be why they have slowed in their comb building.

One of the things my commercial beek told me was that in the old days it was said that a queen will not cross a honey barrier to build brood cells. But he also added that if I were to keep bees long enough I would realize that bees have a mind of their own and they always break the rules.

A honey barrier is the first full bar of honey without any brood cells. So with this information on this inspection I was looking for my honey barrier. With the hive entrance in the middle of the TBH there should be two honey barriers, one on each end.

I started the smoker, something that is optional and many beeks don't use a smoker at all or very little. The smoker discussion is one the most interesting discussions that I have read with opinions that range from it is essential to it is useless or harmful to the bees. So I am still experimenting with it. Some things I have noted so far: 1) The smoker is tricky to get a fire started in it. 2) it is easy to forget about it and let it go out. 3) No matter where I put it I always end up with a face full of smoke that chokes me. 4) It is supposed to calm the bees but I notice that the minute the smoke hits the bees they start to buzz really loudly. 5) Bees don't seem to like the smoke so they tend to run from it. 6) If for no other reason than the bees are concentrating on the smoke they don't seem to be as aggressive when there is smoke. So since I knew I was going to take this hive as far apart as possible I started the smoker.

When I took the top off the hive the first thing I noticed was that there were Small Hive Beetles skampering about on top of the bars. I also saw that there were gaps in my hive that allowed the bees to get through, as well as the SHB. So at the end of the day I plugged the holes with paper, I hope this keeps them all in where I want them. The other thing I noticed. Because of the top bars swelling I had to remove on of them and this left me with a empty spot that was not big enough for a top bar. I thought I was clever when I saw that the follower board would fit in that spot so I left it in the hive against the end. The problem is that I think this is a perfect place for the SMB to get away from the bees. The next inspection I will take the follower boards out. Not sure what I will put there but I have to reduce the hiding places for those pesky SHB. The good news is that the bees seem to be able to keep them on the run as I didn't see many running around in the hive, only on the ends.

Well there is a lot more to write about but it is late and I am sleepy. Good night.

Hot Hot Hot

I have been out of town through the week all month and it has been record breaking hot. Not much if any rain and there are patches of brown vegetation all around. Do wish I had help from a researcher or someone who could set up a real test to see just how well my hives perform. But what I have noticed is that the bees are not "boiling" out of the hive.

What I mean is that last year when I had a Langstroth hive the bees would have hundreds of bees on the outside of the hive all day and night when it was hot. Many people said that was normal and that is one of the ways bees keep cool in the summer. One of the features of my hives should be better ventilation. Even in this heat I have never seen any bees on the outside of the hives. I hope this is because of the ventilation system.

I will open the hives sometime over the holiday weekend to see just how full the hives are. I have been told that the first year not to expect much honey to harvest but I have high hopes.

WiFi

WiFi, Wireless Fidelity, 802.11, and many other terms are all I have been thinking about lately. Take a look at my employer's website. www.xirrus.com

I did get a chance to look into my hives the other day. Just a quick peek, they are growing and making honey. It has been hot the last week and I wish I had a monitor to keep data on the inside of the hives but I don't. The fact that the hive is growing would indicate that they are doing well enough, I hope. Well there is nothing I can do about it anyway I am back on the road building WiFi networks. It pays the bills.

I still hope to get a mass production version of my hive by next season but not sure if I can make it.

I stopped by the farm that is looking for bees and as of yet no one has brought any over and the guy I found who had hive for sale has not delivered. I guess I will have to invest in late season packages and get them installed in August. I need to make one more stop to insure seal the deal.

This is the nice part of bee keeping. Unlike keeping other animals I don't have feed or water them daily. For the most part the best think you can do is just leave bees alone. Give them a proper hive box and they do the rest.

Small Hive Beetles (SHB)

The SMB is a new parasidic insect that makes a total mess out of a hive. There are plenty of resources that will give you all then information you can handle on them but I got them, in one hive. It is isolated so if I get SMB in the other two it will be from cross contamination, or a wild infestation. I hope I not cross contaminate so I hope to keep SMB out of those hives.

There are chemical treatments for them but at this point I don't want to put much of anything in my hives. I want to keep them as organic as possible. They sell traps and I may get a few but I will wait until the bees have a gard time controlling them. Some hives can ward off the SMB or at least keep them under control.

Only time will tell.