Top Bar Hives Why Top Bar Hives? By Michael Bush Copyright

Why Top Bar Hives? Horizontal—no lifting boxes Natural comb—no contaminates and natural sized cells Can easily do natural spacing—1 ¼” bars will result in smaller cells Easy to work—minimal area of the colony is exposed Cheap to construct—no critical dimensions other than the width of the top bar

Horizontal You can get this with a long box that takes Langstroth frames.

Horizontal Hives Can use deep frames without cutting down Can reduce or eliminate the amount of honey supers lifted on and off to get to a brood chamber to inspect

Natural Comb No Contaminates Natural Cell Size Can do Natural Spacing

Wax is a sponge for many chemicals Many of the acaracides used are lipophilic (love oil) and they absorb into the wax. Many of them are already contaminating the foundation we use

Clean Wax Natural comb is really the only way to get clean wax in your hives The beeswax supply is contaminated and foundation, right out of the box, is contaminated with fluvalinate, coumaphos, amitraz and other lipophilic pesticides

Contaminated Wax Causes infertile queens Causes infertile drones Causes frequent supersedures Causes weakened bees

Natural Cell Size The only way to get natural cell size is to let the bees build their own cells without laying out the pattern for them—in other words “foundationless” beekeeping

Using Natural Cell Size Against Varroa? Either cell size helps with Varroa or it does not If it does, you have helped the Varroa problem If it does not, you have not hurt the Varroa problem

Cell Size and Bee Size Standard foundation has been upsized That upsizing has caused a bee that is 150% of it’s natural size The fact that upsizing foundation makes a bigger bee and that we now have upsized is well documented by Baudoux, Pinchot, Gontarski, McMullan and Brown.

A couple of References Recent: The influence of small-cell brood combs on the morphometry of honeybees (Apis mellifera)--John B. McMullan and Mark J.F. Brown Historic references are listed here: see near the bottom of the page (including a link to the above paper)‏

What is natural cell size? Reasonable Assumptions Can we assume that the bees know the answer to this question? Can we assume if we let them they will answer the question? Can we assume that doing what is natural for them is the most likely correct size for cells?

You can get natural comb without a Top Bar Hive

Foundationless Frame

Natural Comb Spacing Natural comb spacing contributes to natural cell size Bees naturally space brood 1 ¼” Spacing combs further apart leads to larger cells

Easy to Work Less exposed bees Don’t overestimate this—a Langstroth is not difficult to work but with very hot bees a top bar hive may become less defensive.

Cheap and Easy to Construct No Critical dimensions except the width of the top bar Langstroths require more precision to build

Kinds of top bar hives Kenya top bar hive (KTBH) –Sloped sides for less stress on the comb Tanzanian top bar hive (TTBH) –Square sides for ease of manufacture

Misconceptions/Fallicies Myth: Top Bar Hives are more natural –They can be, but you could make a Langstroth be just as natural Myth: The shape is more natural –Bees seem perfectly happy in anything from an old dry car gas tank to the soffit of a house

Reasons you might not want a Top Bar Hive Limited space requires the space be managed more carefully which requires more frequent interventions If your only reason for wanting a TBH is natural comb, you can do foundationless in a Langstroth

Reasons you might not want a Top Bar Hive If your only reason for a TBH is to get a horizontal hive and less lifting, you can just build a long Langstroth.

Typical Mistakes Buying a deep Langstroth nuc to install in a Top Bar Hive that does not take Langstroth frames (they probably heard or read that nucs are better) They hang the queen cage, to “be safe” rather than direct release and that messes up the first comb. One bad comb leads to another…

Typical Mistakes Once a come is messed up they do not set things right They build it too small and they swarm constantly They harvest too much honey and get a fall failure and there is no comb for the bees to store syrup and it’s too cold to draw comb

Typical Mistakes Blaming failures on the hive type –Bees colds starve sometimes in any equipment They won’t feed at all because it’s “unnatural” –Feed for the right reasons –Have a plan for how to feed them if you need to They won’t smoke the bees and think smoke upsets the bees

Contact Info: For more info, questions, or to discuss this further: bees at bushfarms com Book: The Practical Beekeeper