Top Bar Hives

Kenya Top Bar Hive

The object of a Top Bar Hive (TBH) is to be easy and cheap to construct, easy to work and having natural sized cells. A Kenya style (sloped sides) is so that the combs are more naturally strong and less likely to break and collapse when they are full of honey. This hive worked very well with no comb collapses. The small combs are easy to handle and not nearly as fragile as large free hanging combs. The pictures are, from left to right:

1) Kenya style Top Bar Hive being constructed. The sides are one by twelves 46 1/2" long. The bottom is a one by six 46 1/1" long.

2) The ends are one by twelves 15" long. None of the boards is ripped or beveled. They are just cut for length and nailed together.

3) The sides are spread to where they fit the ends and the ends are nailed. I ended up using deck screws on the end because when I pried the bars over I would pry the end off of the hive.

4) With bees. The top bars are ripped from one bys with a beveled comb guide glued and nailed on. You can see a bar on top of the hive on the right end. The brood nest is 1 1/4" wide bars and the honey is 1 1/2" wide bars These bars are 15" long.

5) Comb from the KTBH. Can you spot the queen?

6) a close-up of the queen on the KTBH comb.

7) See through drawing of KTBH (thanks to Chris Somerlot).

The entrance to the KTBH is just the front bar back from the front at least 3/8" The top sets on top of a 3/4" top bar so the entrance is 3/4" high and 3/8" wide and is really just the gap in front of the first bar.

Parts List:

2- one by twelves 46 1/2"
2- one by twelves 15"
1- one by six 46 1/2"
Any kind of lid 15" by 48"
16- bars 15" by 1 1/4" by 3/4"
18- bars 15" by 1 1/2" by 3/4"
34- triangles cut from the corner of a one by 3/4" by 3/4" by 1" by 13"
2- four by fours 16" long cedar or treated for stand.
All cuts except for the triangles are square cuts.

Tanzanian Top Bar Hive

Long medium depth hive. This one has top bars in it instead of frames. On the right is comb from long medium top bar hive. The entrance is just a propped up migratory cover and the front bar back 3/8" from the front. The advantage to this one is that standard medium frames fit in it so if it needs resources from one of my other hives I can get a frame of brood that fits. Also, I can start one with some frames of brood from one of my other hives (which are all mediums). I haven't seen any more attachment with this hive than the sloped sides.

Comb Measurements

Just to show some measurements. Here is a brood comb from my Kenya Top Bar Hive. To measure, start at the 10mm mark and count over 10 cells. Looks like 4.7cm for ten cells to me. That's 4.7mm. The second one shows how to measure cell size across ten cells. Notice I started at 10cm because it's hard to say precisely where zero is. Left to right: natural comb, blowup of natural comb, Dadant 4.9mm, Dadant normal brood.

FAQs

Question: Some people say that TBH's don't winter well in cold climates. Do they?

Answer: I have them in Nebraska and others have them places as cold as Casper Wyoming. I have heard only one report from anyone keeping bees in top bar hives that they don't overwinter well in cold climates. Other than that, I have only heard it from people who have not attempted it. It is a good plan to get the cluster to one end at the beginning of winter so they can work their way to the other end over winter. If they are in the middle they may work their way to one end and starve with stores at the other end. The bigger problems are having top bar hives in very HOT climates and yet people seem to do that as well. I have the most problems on the over a hundred degree F days when I have comb collapses.

Question:Top Bar Hives were developed in Africa right? So it's a tropical hive?

Answer: Actually they were developed in Greece thousands of years ago, and then used in many other places. But the real concern seems to be that there is a belief that bees won't move horizontally. Obviously this is not true. I've seen hives in hollow horizontal branches, I've seen them in floors, and I've overwintered them in Horizontal hives, both TBHs and Langstroth frame hives. Bees do tend to only move in one direction when clustered and have trouble changing direction in a cluster in the cold. But they don't seem to care if that direction is horizontal or vertical. Trough hives (chest hives, or whatever else you wish to call a horizontal hive) have been kept in Scandinavian countries for centuries.

Question: Without a queen excluder how do you keep the queen out of the honey?

Answer: I don't use a queen excluder on regular hives either. The queen is not looking to lay all over the place. When you end up with brood in honey supers in a Langstroth hive it's because one of two things has happened. Either the queen was looking for a place to lay some drone brood, which you didn't allow in the brood nest because of either culling it or using only worker foundation; or the queen needed to expand the brood nest or swarm. Would you rather they swarm? The bees want a consolidated brood nest. They don't want brood everywhere. Some people try to have some capped honey as their "queen excluder". I do the opposite. I try to get them to expand the brood nest as much as possible to keep them from swarming and to get a bigger force to gather the honey. So I add empty bars in the brood nest during prime swarm season.

Question: How do you harvest the honey from a top bar hive?

Answer: You can either do crush and strain or you can cut it for comb honey. If you really want to, Swienty has an extractor that will work with top bar hives. But if you only have a few hives an extractor is seldom worth the expense.

Question: Some people say a top entrance lets the heat out. How do you do your entrances?

Answer: In any hive (top bar or otherwise) I think a top entrance in the winter is always a good plan. It lets out the moisture and cuts down on condensation. Heat is seldom the problem, condensation is the problem in winter. A top entrance will let it out. Mine are all JUST top entrances. The reason I went with them was the skunks. My first TBH have a bottom entrance and the skunks were a serious problem. After going to the top entrances they have ceased being a problem.

Question: Does a KTBH have less attachments than a TTBH?

Answer: In my experience no. I only know of one TBH beekeeper who actually seems to think so. Most have had the same experience as I have, which is that they do little attachment either way.

Question: How do you treat for Varroa in a top bar hive?

Answer: I don't. I depend on the smaller natural cell size. But you could put a hole in and use oxalic acid vapor or you could drizzle oxalic acid or you could use powdered sugar.

Question: How do you feed a top bar hive?

Answer: Since I usually only feed for emergencies, dry sugar on the bottom (if it's not screened) works fine. Spray it with a little water to get them interested in eating it and to get it clumped so the house bees don't carry it out. You could use a baggie feeder on the bottom or, if you build it to take Langstroth frames you could put a frame feeder in or, if not, you could build one to fit. The long mediums I can use most anything that could be used on a regular hive. In the long medium I've usually used frame feeders with floats in them.

Question: What is different about the management of a top bar hive or long hive?

Answer:

• The need for frequent harvesting to keep space in the honey area open.
• The need for empty bars in the brood nest during prime "reproductive" swarm season to expand the brood nest more and prevent swarming.
• The need to have the cluster at one end of the hive at the beginning of winter (at least in Northern climates) so they don't work their way to one end and subsequently starve while leaving stores at the opposite end because of indecision. This is easily done by simply moving the bars containing the cluster to one end and putting the bars they replaced at the other.
• The need to handle combs more carefully. You need to be aware of the angle of the comb with the earth. Anytime you get flatways with a comb that is very heavy it's likely to break. Keep the combs "hanging" in tune with gravity. You can flip them over but you have to rotate them with the flat of the comb vertical and not horizontal. You also need to check for attachments to walls, floor and other combs before you pull a comb out. Cut these attachments first if they are there.

Question: Which makes more honey? A top bar hive or a Langstroth hive?

Answer: It comes down to management differences. If you have the TBH where you can get to it easily and you check it weekly during a heavy flow and manage their space by harvesting frequently, I think it's about even. If the TBH is in an outyard and you don't get there often or even if it's in your backyard and you don't get there often, the Langstroth will probably make more honey.

While a TBH takes more FREQUENT manipulation it does not take more labor as you don't have to lift and move boxes around when doing inspections.

Question: Can I put a screened bottom board on my TBH?

Answer: You can. But I wouldn't leave the whole thing open as this will be too much ventilation.

Question: How can you have too much ventilation? Isn't ventilation a good thing?

Answer: Of course in the winter, too much ventilation means too much heat loss. But even in the summer the bees are cooling the hive by evaporation, so on a hot day the inside of the hive may be cooler than the outside air. So too much ventilation could result in the bees being unable to maintain a cooler temperature inside. When wax heats up past the normal operating temperatures of a hive (> 93 F) it gets very weak and combs can collapse.

Question: On Langstroth hives you often have a top and bottom vent to get sufficient ventilation. Should I provide cross ventilation in my TBH?

Answer: Bees seem to have more trouble ventilating a vertical hive with no vent at the top. They have to force dry air (which wants to go down) up to the top and hot moist air at the top (which wants to go up), back down and out the bottom. It's sort of like walking 20 miles to school, uphill both ways. So a top vent or top entrance in a vertical hive seems to be very helpful as it allows the hot moist air out the top which sucks the dry in in the bottom. With a horizontal hive, this is not an issue. They just move the air in a circular fashion in one side and back out the other side and out the door. Sort of like a nice level walk with no hills. This seems to work well. With cross ventilation (such as a front and back vent or entrance) the wind may blow through the hive and that may be a bad thing.

Question: Don't I need a landing board on the entrance?

Answer: No. Have you ever seen a bee tree with a landing board? Landing boards just give mice a place to jump on to get in the hive. It's not needed at all for the bees.

Question: What's the optimum length for a TBH?

Answer: In my experience, something around four feet seems to be good. Less is difficult to keep them from swarming. More is hard to get the bees to occupy the whole length. Brother Adam's research on bees and hives shows the maximum long hive he encountered was five feet long.

Question: Why can't I make all the bars the same width?

Answer: You can. But regardless of what you do, the bees won't build all the combs the same width, so it's difficult to keep them on the bars. If you want to build them all the same width, I'd make them all 1 1/4" wide and make a lot of 1/4" spacers to put in between when the bees decide to make fatter combs to get them back in the center of the bars.

Question: What's the best comb guide?

Answer: There's nothing wrong with any kind of commonly used guide from wax in a groove to a triangular guide, but there are advantages and disadvantages. In my opinion the one with the most advantages and least disadvantages is the triangular wooden guide. The bees follow it the most reliably and attach it the most solidly. I like a wax starter strip the least as it's fragile and hot weather can cause them to fall off.

Question: Do I have to put wax on the wooden guide?

Answer: No. I not only don't put beeswax on the wood comb guides, I don't recommend it. The wax you put on the guide will not be attached as well as what the bees will attach the comb. So it actually weakens the connection to dip the edge of the guide in beeswax. In my experience, the bees will not follow the guide any better or worse with or without the wax.

Question: Can I build a slatted rack into my TBH (or any other fancier piece of equipment)?

Answer: Of course. But to me the most attractive thing about a top bar hive, aside from not having to lift boxes, is it's simplicity. I prefer to keep it as simple as practical.

Michael Bush

Copyright 2006 by Michael Bush

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