Top Entrances

Reasons for top entrances

You can keep bees fine without these, but they do eliminate the following problems: mice, skunks, opossums, dead bees blocking the exit in winter, condensation on the lid in winter, snow blocking the exit in winter, grass blocking the exit the rest of the year. It also allows you to buy inexpensive and very nice Sundance II pollen traps.

How to make top entrances

The first two pictures are regular migratory covers with tapered shims to make top entrances with the opening the long way. My current ones are the next three pictures. These are 3/4" plywood cut to the size of the box (no overhang or cleats) with shims to make the opening the short way. I just started making them out of 1/2" plywood. The next two pictures are me making the top entrances. The idea of using shims was presented to me by Lloyd Spears who says he got it from a man named Ludewig

Typical vs Alternatives

On the left is a "typical" hive as recommended in the books. From bottom to top it is: a bottom board, two deep boxes for the brood, a queen excluder, two shallow supers an inner cover and a telescopic cover. This is NOT what I typically run. A ten frame deep full of honey weighs 90 pounds. A medium full of honey weights 60 pounds. An eight frame medium full of honey weighs 48 pounds. The one on the right is more typical of my vertical hives. It's a slatted rack with some #8 hardware cloth for a bottom, four medium boxes for brood and honey (no excluder) and a migratory top with a shim on both sides to make a top entrance. Using all the same size frames greatly simplifies management as any honey can be used for winter feed and any brood found in the supers can be moved back down since the frames are all interchangeable. Leaving out the excluder helps prevent a honey bound brood nest and doesn't restrict the bees working the supers. It also saves having to have a bottom entrance because the drones can get out the top (no excluder to stop them). Most of mine now are eight frame boxes with the entrance the short way so I can put them up against each other for winter for warmth.

Top Entrance Frequently Asked Questions:

Question:

Without a bottom entrance, don't they have trouble hauling out the dead bees and keeping the hive clean?

Answer:

In my observation, no more than with a bottom entrance. Either way dead bees accumulate over winter. Either way they accumulate some in the fall. Either way they usually. keep it pretty clean in the middle of the year. I've watched a house keeping bee in my observation hive (which has a bottom entrance), haul dead bees all over the hive from top to bottom before finally finding the entrance at the bottom. I don't think it matters at all.

Question:

Do the returning foragers get irate when you're working the hive?

Answer:

I haven't noticed any difference. Whether a top entrance or a bottom entrance, while you're working the hive you're disrupting things just by standing there. You always, in both cases, have confused bees circling and with both bottom and top entrances you have bees who just go back into the hive while you're working. With the top entrance they just go in the top.

Question:

When removing supers don't they get confused?

Answer:

The most confusion is when you remove them from only one and it's right next to a similar height hive. Then they do get confused about which hive is theirs. But I think they do the same with a bottom entrance for the same reason except you don't notice. They use the height of the hive as one of their landmarks so they continue to fly into the tall white hive nearest where they remember it instead of the short one next to it. In a day things go back to normal.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures,

Michael Bush

Copyright 2006 by Michael Bush

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