More on Top Bar Hives

It is time for the inevitable Wikipedia Reference. Apparently, one of the first recorded TBHs was found in Greece in 1682, though they are thought to have been used for thousands of years before that. More recently TBHs were used in Africa as a replacement for hollow log hives. Their ease of construction and low cost made them accessible to many beekeepers and the idea made its way to the US in the 1980's.

There are two main types of TBHs: the Kenyan - with sloped sides, and the Tanzanian - with vertical sides. It is said that if you ask ten beekeepers, you'll get at least eleven opinions. This is just as true for TBH beekeepers. Except that ten TBH beekeepers may come up with at least eighteen to twenty opinions. If my research into Langstroth hives was like discovering a long list of scientific multiple-choice questions, my reseach into TBHs was like a long list of philospohical essay questions.

Fortunately I found Michael Bush. His writings on top-bar hives and about beekeeping in general reminded me a lot of Masanobu Fukuoka and his writings on agriculture. I like the idea that bees have been bees much longer than humans have been beekeepers and that the best thing a beekeeper can do is to give the bees a place to do their thing and get out of their way.

So I picked a few core concepts and ran with them. I like a screened open bottom, like on an IPM bottom board but I didn't want it to be full-width, because of the cold winters here, so that calls for angled sides. But I wanted some compatability with Langstroth deep frames, which requires vertical sides. (compatability, platform standardization, old habits die hard) That's how I wound up with the beveled-box look of my TBH. The sides are made up of four 48" lenghts of 1 x 10" planks. The top pair is mounted vertically on edge and the bottom pair are paralled but canted inward to make about a four inch wide opening that I covered with hardware cloth. If I can figure out how to do it from here, or if/when I migrate to my own web space, I will put up drawings of my TBH.

Tee Bee What?

You might say, "I know what a beehive is; its one of those white boxes, about so big, that the bees live in and that the beekeeper stacks one on top of the other. What is a top bar hive and why would one use it"? And you should be forgiven for asking it because until fairly recently I would have asked the same thing.

With all due respect to Reverend Langstroth, his work, his contemporaries and his many, many followers, there is another way of keeping bees. But at first glance one wouldn't know it. Last Fall, when I first opened the door into the world of beekeeping, I found a tangible, if at first daunting world of multiple choice questions: "eight-frame boxes or ten-frame boxes"? "solid or IPM bottom board and with or without a slatted rack"? "wood frames with wax foundation or solid plastic frames"? and on and on and on. The catalogs are wonders to behold; every product you could ever need for beekeeping. If you have a problem, they have the products to fix it. And if that solution causes another problem, they'll sell you what you need to fix that, too.

I started wondering if I was going to be able to afford my new interest - and how the bees could have survived before the beekeepers and the catalog companies came to their rescue. Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against any of the companies that sell to beekeepers. I expect to buy plenty from them in the future. But a kludgey system is a kludgey system - whatever it is. The more I read about Langstroth hives the more they struck me as the products of a few key concepts (beespace, removeable combs, variable interior volume, etc) with many years of ad hoc, reactionary fixes to problems that cropped up along the way. I began imagining scenarios that might happen with my hives and what sort of solutions I might try to use - but always within the precept of a Langstroth hive.

Enter Conrad Bérubé. It could have been any of a number of beekeepers, but I encountered Conrad's work first so I credit him for introducing me to the Top Bar Hive.



Links to the whole film epic:
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 1 - starting a smoker
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 2 - smoking the hive
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 3 - moving hive for inspection
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 4 - propolis and medicinal uses of hive products
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 5 - handling comb (Seen above)
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 6 - comb and mild vs. wild strains of bees
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 7 - unwanted guests
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 8 - getting stung
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 9 - sealed cells
beekeeping with the Kenya Top Bar Hive 11 - thanks to Hubert