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While top bar hives are by no means a new technology, they are a significant departure from the conventional square-box hive which has dominated the US beekeeping landscape since the Civil War. So there could be said to be two camps, if you will. One camp carries a belief in a long-standing tradition, and the other a desire to do something different because what we’ve been doing for the last 150 years doesn’t seem to be sustainable.
This has led to a swirling morass of information marked by strong feelings and high passion. Emotions confuse the matter for the novice, who has no basis for comparison and often finds it difficult to understand why people are so adamant about their own personal choices in beekeeping. In this chapter I will do my best to explain top bar hives clearly so that you can compare and choose the beekeeping method that makes the most sense for you.
Top bar hives have been made of all sorts of materials and containers—from baskets and flowerpots to recycled scrap wood, slabs of trees cut from logs, thin branches lashed together, even plastic barrels cut in half. A top bar hive can be elegant in its very simplicity. It takes advantage of the bees’ natural cavity-nesting behavior; it requires little else but a space of adequate volume to suit the bees and bars of some type from which they are willing and able to hang their comb. The bars, by being removable and inspectable, make a top bar hive a movable comb hive, desirable since it allows the beekeeper to check on the progress of the hive, permits the diagnosis of pests and diseases and allows for the removal of honey without destroying the balance of the colony. In some places in the world where beekeeping is regulated, movable combs are also a legal requirement.
Of course, some containers and some top bars are more effective than others. Lots of folks have experimented with the shapes and sizes of spaces that bees will willingly occupy.1 Some tendencies and preferences have been identified, but not to the extent that the bees’ behavior can be predicted with any consistent accuracy—in fact, the many wacky places where bees have been found living are the stuff of many a bee story — not unlike a “fish story.”
All this is to say top bar hives need not be precision-built pieces of woodworking — after all, beekeeping is not rocket science. There are plans available to download from many sources on the Internet; there are plans in books; there are hives built from scratch and from imagination by creative beekeepers; and there are currently hives being commercially produced by several small businesses, including my own, Gold Star Honeybees®.
The Important Elements of a Top Bar Hive
The three crucial elements of all top bar hives are the cavity of the hive body, the top bars themselves and the type and location of the entrance.
The Cavity
The volume of the cavity that the bees will occupy has to be large enough to house a colony of an appropriate size for the climate of the locale. It must allow for a large enough brood nest and adequate food stores for them to survive the region’s winter conditions. A top bar hive containing 30 bars seems to work well for most climate scenarios in North America.
The Top Bars
The top bars rest across the top of the hive cavity, and from them the bees will draw their comb. The top bars should be designed in such a way that they can be removed from the hive body easily, examined and returned to the hive without crushing bees.
The most important requirement of a top bar is that it must offer a good comb guide for the bees. I’ve examined and experimented with many different ways of making top bars, and how the bees have built on them, and I’ve concluded that the most effective comb guide is a beveled point.
Extending the length of the guide for the entire working portion of the top bar also helps to prevent the bees building comb that curves sharply off the bar when they reach the end of a shorter guide.
Granted that the bees may choose to completely ignore all our best laid plans in any case, but a beveled point that runs the entire length of the working area of the top bar has worked best the majority of the time.
A comb guide of this type can also be an integral part of the hive design and serve to center the bars— preventing them from sliding back and forth over the edge of the hive. This helps to keep them from getting in the way of the roof when it is being put back on. Be aware though, that the guide portion of the
top bar, the pointed edge of the bevel, where the bees will attach their comb, should angle in from the hive body, so that it does not touch the side of the hive, as the bees need that all-important ⅜ of an inch of bee space at each end, so that they can walk between the sides of the comb and the inside of the hive body.
The width of the bars inside a top bar hive have much to do with the success or failure of the bees to build their combs in such a way that it can be removed for inspection. In general, the width needed for brood comb is between 1¼ to 1⅜ inches. But bees will build honeycomb up to two inches wide.
This leaves the top bar beekeeper with a dilemma. In the interest of allowing the bees to build natural comb, it would seem prudent to create different widths of bars, but this can be frustrating since it’s difficult to predict how many bars of what size a colony would utilize, and where and when they should be placed in the hive.
A compromise is reached by making all of the bars suitable for brood comb — 1⅜ inch—and then utilizing thin wooden strips called spacers, designed to be placed between the bars in order to move the bars apart to accommodate the bees building wider honeycomb. Spacers measuring ⅛ inch by ½ inch offer two options—inserting them into the hive skinny-wise adds an additional ⅛ inch of space, inserting them flat-wise adds ½ inch—essentially creating three different widths of top bar, which solves this problem reasonably well.
A bee-saving design feature concerns the vertical height or thickness of the bars—i.e., the vertical sides of each bar, which touch the bars next to it. This dimension should be fairly small; ⅜ of an inch is plenty. The thicker the bar from top to bottom, the more difficult it is to keep from squashing bees when returning the bars to the hive during an inspection.
Another design feature that my experience has caused me to appreciate is that the ends of the bars should rest across the top of the hive body’s sides and extend beyond the sides a bit. Most especially, they should not be set down inside any kind of surrounding lip or frame.
This “across the top” bar placement allows the beekeeper to separate each bar with a quick twist of the hive tool, and then to pick up each bar easily by its ends without having to dig down inside a frame to pry the bars up and out.
The Entrance
Generally speaking, there are two different styles of top bar hives—those with a center side entrance and those with an end entrance. The biggest consideration when choosing between the two is probably the beekeeper’s personal preference, but the two styles require different management techniques mentioned below.
An advantage of having the entrance in the center of the long side of the hive is that the colony can be installed on eight to ten bars in the center of the hive, between two follower boards. This offers some protection from the elements on each end due to the air space created between the follower boards and the hive ends.
This is beneficial during a cold spring, when weather is often unpredictable. The size of the entrance to the hive should be adjustable by some method. It must be able to be made large enough to accommodate the for-aging activities of the busy colony at the height of the season. It needs to be able to be made small enough to be defended easily when the colony is young and small. In a center side entrance hive, round holes, which can be plugged by corks when not in use, work well. A slot that can be blocked by a square piece of wood with a small hole in it works well with an end entrance hive. The entrance should also accommodate the installation of a mouse guard.
It is my experience that the bees don’t seem to care much about placement of entrances, but entrance placement definitely affects the beekeeper’s management of the hive, and particularly the use and placement of follower boards.
Management Differences due to Entrance Location
Bees in a center side entrance hive will build their colony in one direction, like those in an end entrance hive—beginning against one follower board and continuing toward the opposite end of the hive. But when they’ve done this, it leaves one third of the hive cavity empty—the one third on the other side of the follower board next to where the brood nest was started, the space where the feeder was originally installed.
To encourage the bees to continue building in the same direction and storing their honey at one end of the hive, the beekeeper does a mid-season shift: the empty bars above the feeder are removed; the entire hive is shifted into that space; and the empty bars are moved to the opposite side, so that the bees can continue to build their honey stores in that direction. The follower board with the feeder access hole is also moved, and the feeder as well.
It’s important to manage any top bar hive so that the honey is stored only on one end of the brood nest. This is a winter management concern. If the honey stores are located on both sides of the brood nest, then, during the winter when the bees have consumed all the honey in one direction, they may be unable to cross the empty space to get to honey on the other side of the hive. This can cause a colony in a cold climate to starve.
Follower Boards
An end entrance hive will usually have only one follower board, which is set eight to ten bars back from the entrance when starting a colony, giving the bees eight to ten bars of space to build in, and then moving toward the back of the hive one or two bars at a time as the colony expands.
Center side entrance hives typically have two follower boards which act as false ends of the hive and follow the size of the colony. When the bees are installed, the follower boards are set eight to ten bars apart, centered over the entrances, again giving the bees eight to ten bars of space to begin building in, and expanding the hive one or two bars at a time.
Roof A top bar hive needs a roof that protects the top of the top bars from the elements. This has been accomplished by many diverse methods. I’ve come to appreciate both the look and the practicality of a gable roof, because it sheds rain and snow and creates an attic space above the top bars. This space is useful for storing spare top bars and spacers, and even your hive tool. In the winter the space can be filled with insulating material, and in the summer, a gable roof allows for air movement above the bars, cooling the hive.
Landing Boards
End entrance hives typically have a landing board, while center side entrance hives typically do not. Usually the first comment made in any discussion about landing boards is that trees don’t have landing boards.
I don’t know that the bees care one way or the other, but my observations have been that a landing
board’s biggest effect is on the appearance of the activity at the entrance. At a hive with a landing board, it is fun to watch the bees come in for a landing and walk in.
But it is also fun, in the case of a center side entrance hive with no landing board and where the entrances are drilled directly through the side of the hive body, to see the bees hover gently outside the doors and then suddenly zoom straight into the hole. They are also quite capable of landing on the side of the hive body (think: tree!) and then walking into the entrance that way. So while some beekeepers have strong feelings about the need for a landing board, I think this is another matter where the beekeeper’s personal preference holds sway.
Observation Windows
While this is not a requirement, it is simple to install an observation window in a top bar hive. A window is educational, fun to have and so helpful in making preliminary checks of the hive that it almost seems silly not to have one. Be certain that there is also a shutter to cover the window when you are not peeking through, as the bees prefer dark cavities.
Other Significant Features of Top Bar Hives
The most significant and sometimes controversial difference between top bar hives and conventional, square-box hives concerns the use of wax foundation. A top bar hive is a foundationless hive. It does not require or support the use of wax foundation—in fact, the typical thinking beekeeper abhors the idea of wax foundation, as it thwarts the bees’ ability to craft their nest according to their own instincts where cell size is concerned — specifically as pertains to the bees’ ability to build worker-sized cells and drone-sized cells.2 Additionally, since the advent of the varroa mite and the heavy chemical treatments used by conventional beekeepers in an attempt to control them, the foundation commercially available today has been contaminated (due to recycling of chemically treated combs) with miticides and other toxins that go against the green and natural focus of most top bar beekeepers.
One further note on the bees’ building of comb: The existence of a midrib, created by sheets of
foundation inserted vertically in frames, causes bees to have to build out from the center. They do it, but it’s not the way they would do it naturally, as in nature there would be no center point from which to start. Another controversial difference between top bar hives and conventional Langstroth hives, at least in the US, concerns the orientation of the hive, i.e. horizontal versus vertical. Bees are cavity nesters and in nature are well able to utilize whatever cavity they occupy, regardless of its orientation, starting their comb at the top of the space and building down. It has been said, quite emphatically by some folks, that “bees must move up.” But in fact, bees occupying a cavity in nature attach their comb to the ceiling of the cavity they occupy and then build down —lengthening the comb by hanging in a catenary curve shape to fill the space available. So while they may be found in a vertical cavity, they build their natural comb down from above. But the Langstroth hive and others like it, are made up of a series of stackable boxes, with new boxes being supered, or added to the top. This causes the colony to have to move vertically inside the hive in order to build additional combs. The movement of air and moisture inside the hive differs between conventional hives and top bar hives. In a conventional hive, the frames are purposely spaced apart because the bees must be able to move vertically between the boxes. This also affects the movement of air inside the conventional hive. Air enters the hive at the bottom entrance at the front and travels upward, where it can be vented by leaving an entrance open at the top. In the winter, this has a specific effect on the movement of moisture as well. Moisture travels upward to the top of the hive and condenses at the top of the hive. In winter it freezes there. It is common practice for the conventional beekeeper to insert an insulating material of some sort above the inner cover of the hive to absorb this moisture. The danger lies in having moisture drip down on top of the brood nest in spring—this moisture can chill and kill the brood. It is often said that the biggest dangers to beehives in winter are not from the temperature, but from moisture. But in a top bar hive, the top bars all touch each other—forming a solid surface above the bars, similar to the top of a cavity found in the interior of a tree—with all the bees below. No air moves upward between the top bars; air circulates horizontally throughout the hive. This is a major difference! The type of moisture problems experienced in a conventional Langstroth hive do not occur in a top bar hive as there is no opportunity for moisture to condense above the colony or over the brood. Moisture may sometimes condense on an observation window if there is one—but as bees need water inside the hive, this does not present a problem, and in fact may be helpful.
The Gold Star Top Bar Hive
The length of the top bar, the volume of the hive cavity and the appropriate ratio between the weight of a full bar of honey and the amount of attachment of the comb to the top bar—all these concepts were taken into consideration in the design of the Gold Star top bar hive (shown on the next page).
On Interchangeability among Top Bar Hives
In the interests of thinking beekeepers being able to support each other, and to help to proliferate this sustainable, natural, chemical-free method of beekeeping, it behooves us to improve our ability to interchange equipment—especially the top bars—between hives. Interchangeability
•matters when we need “a hive to save a hive;” we move bars of open brood from a queenright hive into a hive that is queenless or has a laying worker problem.
• matters when we need to share honey to feed bees—honey from top bar beekeepers whose treatment- free mindset and methods are similar to yours, so that the honey is safe for your bees. See Chapter 5 for more detail about feeding honey to your bees. •helps more green beekeepers get started by populating a new hive with a nuc (starter colony) of bees from an existing top bar hive, instead of using package bees.
A Brief Note regarding Warre Hives
Before moving on, I’d like to quickly address Warre Hives. Developed by Abbé Émile Warré (1867– 1951) and sometimes known as “The People’s Hive,” a Warre hive is often described as a vertical top bar hive.
Warre hives do indeed have top bars (bars that rest across the top of a cavity), and they do allow the bees to make their own natural beeswax—the most important feature of any beehive, in my opinion. However, the practice of lifting the entire hive in order to nadir or add a box to the bottom of a vertical stack strikes me as impractical if not impossible. I’ve seen some ingenious ways of accomplishing this feat, but they mostly seem to require some fairly elaborate equipment that represents a significant departure from the low-tech simplicity at the heart of top bar beekeeping. Two other features make a Warre hive very different from a top bar hive:
1.The top bars in a Warre hive do not touch but are spaced a little less than ½ inch apart. This causes a significant difference in air movement and in management style, and mimics the Langstroth hive more than a top bar hive.
2.The bars are often nailed or otherwise anchored into place, making the hive a fixed comb hive. This removes the beekeeper’s ability to inspect the comb, which to me seems imprudent in the interests of following the progress and health of the colony, not to mention that fixed comb hives are not considered legal in many places in the US.
I appreciate that both Warre hives and top bar hives fall into the alternative hive category and that both are considered foundationless hives — and this makes them similar. However, I’ve got no personal experience with keeping bees in a Warre hive and since they are also significantly different in important ways, I would encourage interested readers to seek in-depth information about Warre Hives from a source more familiar with their specific management.