On Getting Started with Your Own Top Bar Hive

 The logical first step, (after reading this book, of course!) toward becoming a top bar beekeeper is to obtain a hive.Here I will talk about ways of obtaining the hive of your choice.

Doing It Yourself 

The number of plans for building a top bar hive that you can download from the Internet today (2012) is nothing short of amazing. Many of them are quite effective—but some of them aren’t much more than ideas sketched on the back of an envelope. Look for testimonials speaking to the effectiveness of a hive built from such free downloads. I may be a little more obsessive than some about using non-toxic products in a hive, but there are some things I think it’s very important to avoid using in the construction of a top bar hive. They include •plexiglas — it warps and off-gasses •laminated wood products—the glues off-gas and most contain formaldehyde •silicon caulk—it is toxic and off-gasses

You won’t find any of the above in Gold Star Honeybees’® equipment. Also remember the old adage “you get what you pay for.” It’s great and it’s smart to save money—but if you build a home for bees, put them in it and then discover a problem with the design of the hive, it can be very difficult to change the box once it contains bees. If the flaw is serious enough, it can cost you the bees and a full year of beekeeping. Some top bar hive suppliers have years of experience with their product in the field and have refined their design to a high level. If the do-it-yourself route is the one you prefer to travel, check into what’s available from an established company in the way of DIY kits. You will not regret the extra leg up an experienced supplier can provide with a well-thought-out kit. Each cycle of discovering and then implementing a hive design improvement takes a full beekeeping season—an entire year—so it’s great to be able to take advantage of others’ mistakes and learn from them. This learning speeds things up for you considerably, and there’s little sense in reinventing the wheel when honeybees need help and protection.

Buying a Ready-Made Top Bar 

Hive As of this writing, there are at least half a dozen small businesses offering top bar hives for sale. Their prices, quality, effectiveness of the hive and customer support services all vary. Carefully consider all of these things when making your decision because here again, once you’ve committed to a supplier, is isn’t

easy to make changes once the bees are in the hive. If the hive you’re considering sounds too good to be true, you can be pretty certain that it is. If the price seems unbelievably cheap, there’s a reason. Look for an established company who is in business for the long term—someone who will be there next year to answer your second- and third-year beekeeping questions and one who is willing to talk with you and help you learn when issues come up, whether with the bees or with the equipment.

Where Do the Bees Come From? 

A hive can be can populated in a number of ways. One way would be to collect a swarm. Another way is to purchase a package of bees. Or you could split a thriving top bar hive — your own or another beekeeper’s (provided your equipment is interchangeable). Then there are some more extreme methods, such as cutting up a nuc (nucleus colony) designed for a Langstroth hive — or by relocating bees from inside the walls or roofline of a building.

A Swarm 

In an ideal natural world, hives would all be started from a large, healthy swarm. Since swarming is the bees’ natural method of reproducing their colony, it has all the strength and vigor that nature can provide. A swarm is a complete, turnkey, start-up colony. It consists of approximately half of an original colony that has left home in search of a new beginning. Swarming bees are well organized and seriously motivated, with their hive mind consensus, to find a new cavity and begin building honeycomb as a place for their queen to begin laying. The bees in a swarm are all the right ages to do the tasks needed in their new home. A swarm can make wax and build comb at an amazing pace—some have been known to make more than one full bar per day when they are getting started.

Capturing a swarm is not always an easy task and never predictable, but it can be an inexpensive way to populate a top bar hive. One thing to consider is that the bees may have swarmed from a hive that had been treated with chemicals—but that is tempered somewhat by the fact that they were strong enough, and vigorous enough that they swarmed. However, swarms are an event of nature, and you may or may not be able to connect with one.

A Package 

Another method of obtaining bees, less natural but still effective, is to purchase a package of bees. Package bees can be ordered, along with a queen bee, from a honeybee supplier. You can locate package bee suppliers on the Internet, through your local beekeeping association or through your personal beekeeping mentor. One thing to be aware of when ordering package bees is that, as of this writing, many of the apiaries supplying package bees in the US do use multiple chemical treatments. You can ask them about that. 

In addition, some of the hives used as source hives to make packages have been on the pollination circuit earlier that year, so they may be very worn, stressed bees. You can ask them about that, too. Don’t be shy about asking these questions when purchasing package bees; the paradigm is definitely

shifting toward sustainable, chemical-free beekeeping. As thinking beekeepers, we can best support and promote that trend by patronizing treatment-free apiaries as this trend grows. 

When ordering packaged bees, plan well in advance. January is not too early to be shopping for bees! Most suppliers will be sold out by March or by April at the latest. The delivery date of your bees will coincide with the growing season in your area, which is dictated by the local climate. For example, in places where it snows in winter and the growing season begins in late April or early May, these months will be the likely arrival time. Conversely, if the growing season in your area begins much earlier, bee arrival will be earlier as well. 

The package may have traveled some distance to get to you—perhaps a couple of hours, perhaps a couple of days. So it’s important to pick the package up from your local supplier or your local post office as soon as it arrives and to have your top bar hive ready and waiting to install them as soon as is practical. The bees will be anxious to fly and to start foraging. Treat the bees like you would a new puppy: Put the package in a safe place, out of the sun — not too hot, not too cold—with good ventilation. Don’t open the package until you have thought through the installation procedure described later in this chapter, gathered all your tools and are ready to follow all of the steps.