I just built my first top bar hive and was wondering if we have any other bee keepers or top bar beekeepers here. Would love to have an ongoing dialogue if possible. I understand that if you ask 10 beekeepers the same question, much like gardening, that you’ll get 10 different answers but am open to all suggestions, advice, and general dialogue.
4 Likes
Yes there are many beekeepers here. This is a few of the threads to get you started. Looking forward to this new topic.
Search results for 'Beekeeping ' - Growing Fruit
2 Likes
Thanks Clark!
2 Likes
Looks like you & I are the only two with honey bees in top bar hives - or bold enough to admit it. I might be the only one in the group where I took the class. I built a TBH with a relative & put the package in just half an hour ago. With a Bing cherry in full bloom across the street & maples blooming all over, I hope they can make a go of it & start drawing comb.
Your hive still active?
I decided to try keeping bees after reading “Fruitless Fall,” by Rowan Jacobsen. His book, “Apples of Uncommon Character,” was so informative and entertaining, I looked for any others he had written. The Bee book came out in 2008, when indications were mounting as to why so many colonies died each winter.
Appendix A was the impetus for me: Dennis Murrell, a 30 year bee keeper in Wyoming, saw photos taken by a friend of an exposed feral hive. The cell size in the combs were graduated, drone at top to quite small at bottom. Why?
Murrell built 8 TBHs with observation windows & took notes 4 years. He learned the differing sizes were used for differing purposes throughout the season.
In late winter/early spring the queen laid eggs in the small cells. (Other observers have found small workers can be produced in two days less time than the big girls in high summer.) The small cells also come into play near the end of the season, making small workers that can live a year (!), so the length of winter is never an issue. In my part of the world winter is very long & a colony needs more honey to keep going than in most of the rest of our fair land.
I hope by this time of year in '26 I may remove a couple combs of honey they can easily spare. At this point, I pray they may get enough energy & nutrition from the neighbor trees - especially that Bing cherry - to survive & thrive.
The apples in this yard have yet to open, while cherry blossoms produce as much as 30 mg of nectar per day (Jürgen Tautz: "The Buzz About Bees.) Apples only 2 milligrams per day each.
Can you tell I am excited about the prospects?
4 Likes
The Better Half took pictures, since I had no other beekeepers at hand to coach me in this first dumping of bees.
The entrance is on the left to catch morning sun, so numbering was reversed for the bars. I put the follower board outside bar #8 for the time being. I had no bars with ready-made comb, but am reassured to see bees swinging over the hive & fence towards the cherry tree.
Yes, you find a line of Scripture on the face. I have other lines, literary & sacred, to put to other hives when or if they get built & filled. Each will be known & recorded by the line(s) on the face.
Now I must study calligraphy, to do justice to these hard-working critters.
10 Likes
I need to try making a top bar hive. Maybe next year if the bees do good after splitting them this year.
1 Like
I keep bees, but have no experience with top bar hives. Best of luck to you all.
1 Like
Thanks for sharing all of that fascinating info. I haven’t read any of those books, though the apple one was on the to read list. You will clearly see the different kinds of comb they build throughout the year.
The past 2 years are my only experience beekeeping and I’ve only used to TBH. In year 1 my bees slowly built comb early but get going in early summer and I had issues with cross comb that I fixed but it was a mess and plenty of nectar and wax were lost in the process. I don’t think the bars in mine are wide enough. They eventually absconded in the fall because of small hive beetles (SHB) but we’re otherwise healthy with zero varroa mite issues. I assumed I had weakened the colony from all the cross comb destruction. Bees became clearly more aggressive as the beetle population increased. I had sprinkled diatomaceous earth on the ground beneath the entrance to try a kill the beatle larvae as they left the hive to pupate in the ground but it’s unclear if that did anything.
In year 2 the existing comb from year 1 really helped the bees hit the ground running and the colony seemed to expand much quicker and fill comb more rapidly as a result. I drilled holes in my follower board and in the unfilled portion of the hive put down Swiffer pads and baited hive beetle oil traps. These worked and did capture many beetles (especially oil traps baited with apple cider vinegar) but I only emptied and re-baited them a few times. I also made that crisco/DE murder sauce you may have heard of on YouTube and smeared it in the bottom creases of the unfilled portion of the hive twice. Ultimately colony 2, which also had no other pest/disease signs absconded mid-Fall due to SHB.
I get my nuc next week for year 3 and plan on using the oil baits again and changing them about every 2 weeks, importantly they will stay beyond the follower board so I don’t have to disturb the bees every time. I’ve also seen many people swear by peppermint oil or candy as a detergent to SHB so I’ll try that too. Most of my bars have straight drawn out comb but this has taken 2 years since I’ve removed a decent amount of cross comb (again my bars are too narrow for comb later in the season).
If I can solve the SHB problem I don’t think I will have problems.
Since it’s your first year I’d check them more regularly especially in early-mid summer when they are drawing a lot of comb before the dearth. Maybe you won’t have SHB, I believe they are coming from other hives in my neighborhood but they can travel miles. The bees pick at and eventually get trapped in Swiffer pads too and the oil traps always caught a lot more so I’ll probably skip those this year.
Excited to hear I have a TBH comrade to compare notes with!
2 Likes
Additionally I am going to reduce the entrance to about 1.5-2" (based on wild honeybee entrance size preferences, research by Dr. Thomas Seeley who has great books if you want to learn about his research/experiments). This should help them be able to better regulate who enters the hive
3 Likes
@NuttingBumpus also that’s a beautiful TBH. Did you make this from a kit or are you handy with a saw?
We’re going for a Layens hive. My husband has done bees successfully in Langstroth hives, but they don’t appeal to me. I wanted to do top bar, but everyone says it’s not good for beginners, so Layens seems like a compromise.
1 Like
@Jujube: Thank you. My brother-in-law cut the top bars for me, but the rest was handwork. Slow, several false starts; plenty of scrap wood. The legs I detached from a 4’ square pallet. The sloped sides are double wall, with a layer of bubble wrap & a mylar sheet for reflecting heat. 1 1/2 inches thick to help with the great difference between outside temperatures in winter & summer with the level of comfort required of workers, and especially brood in Feb/March or June-Sept.
There is the beginning of another hive, which I hope to improve in light of experience from the first. I will ask my bro-in-law about the best way to create some slope to the roof, away from the front. (First improvement: rough wall sides go inside so bees can seal 'em with propolis, just as they do inside tree trunks.)
Phil Chandler (Barefoot Beekeeper) used furring strips to build his TBHs, & that seemed a simple solution to getting things attached in two directions.
I went with 1 3/8" width bars, which might be a bit wide for the brood section but may be the ticket for honey comb. This queen has Carniolan bloodlines, which I think may be of use when summer dearth comes on. This area can be hot & dry for weeks or months. Carniolan bees will shrink the work force when summer dearth comes on & build numbers again quickly with smaller cells.
I wanted to cut two 3/4" entrance holes, but had some difficulties with the bit, so tried to start the second hole with 1/2" bit & decided to just drill a third that size. The smaller holes let traffic in one way at a time, but I find workers taking turns - in, then out, at those openings. Two way traffic works for 3/4".
@newfredoniafarms: Top bar hive has many of the features I value, so that is why I went with it, and this is my first. Shifting bars to keep combs straight will be both good experience & minimally invasive.
I watched a 20 year veteran beekeeper handle 7 hives last week (one afternoon) & noticed many aspects resulting from using Langstroth frames and foundation - both wax or plastic. He used smaller cell comb foundation & had quite a time scraping away drone cells being built anywhere the bees found room. (I kept my mouth shut a lot - hard for me.)
Best books so far?
Rooftop Beekeeper, Megan Paska. Barefoot Beekeeper (-ing?) Phil Chandler. The Buzz About Bees, Jürgen Tautz. The Idle Beekeeper, Bill Anderson (proof I read opposing points of view; he is dedicated to Warré hives). The Lives of Bees, Thomas Seeley. Top-Bar Beekeeping, Les Crowder. What Bees Want, Kuilans/Freeman. The Mind of the Bee, Lars Chittka. A Sting in the Tail (about bumblebees) David Goulson. Beekeeping Naturally, Michael Bush. The Thinking Beekeeper, Christy Hemenway. Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden, Jessica Walliser.
1 Like
I am an apprentice beekeeper. I have had two hives of which both didn’t make it through the winter. The false spring did them in from what I could tell.
The year before last a swarm moved into my vacant hive on their own. There was such a small population. They only filled half of one brood box. Got some mite treatment and food. Come spring they
were gone.
I’ve since moved the hive from my parent’s house to mine and have it set up, cleaned out as best I can. Hoping someone will move it.
I am convinced I am in a bee desert though. I’ve been at this house going on three years and I think I have seen two honey bees.
It is sad but I’m planting a lot of stuff to hopefully attract them.
3 Likes
In my yard are 8 young apple trees, three plums, four black currants, a clove currant, two Douglas hawthorns, a Scouler willow male (pussy willow), thornless raspberry patch, winter savory, yarrow, saffron, one sagebrush (hoping for a second) & a rue. I want to try sowing buckwheat in an unused place, maybe two sowings two weeks apart, maybe sow Dutch clover for another weedy spot.
1 Like
I have been doubling down on berries this year. 3 types of blackberry, 4 types strawberry, 2 types blueberry, currants, goodeberry, jostaberry, 4 or five types rasberry, 3 types grapes… lots of herbs and lots of fruit trees.
2 Likes
Goodeberries: I want some oddem! (How many typos have snuck by me?)
Reading your first entry on this thread, I wonder if you need to be more careful to retain enough honey & pollen stores to feed the workers that get started before spring. They need plenty of energy to bring brood cells to optimal temperature.
Nice to see you are contributing to a balanced diet. You must have more room than I - or no grass.
1 Like
Rookie move: I didn’t hang the queen cage between bars once dumping the other bees into hive. Days later I check: they are essentially swarmed over her on the hive bottom; she still in the cage. So, brush lots o’ bees from queen cage with turkey pinion, dig the rest of the candy out of the surprisingly long (only) exit with a crochet hook borrowed from the Better Half & hang it between bars, as per instructions.
Two days and two nights of poor sleep later, I open the hive to check for an empty queen cage - to find 2 workers inside. Lotsa bees hanging in curtains from the bars! What a relief.
1 Like
My opinion is that most colonies that die during the winter is from a shortage of winter stored food reserves. Prior to the spring Honey Flow the queen will rapidly attempt to increase the colony size which uses mostly food/Honey from existing stores. The best method for winter survival is to make sure you leave enough honey in the hive for them to survive until the conditions are such that they can bring in more nectar than they are consuming. If in doubt you can lift the back of the hive during to cold months and get an estimate of food remaining by how heavy the hive is.
2 Likes
I never harvested anything from the bees because I wanted to make sure they would have enough.
I like the tip about lifting the hive to feel the weight. Just like with potted plants. 
The first two looked the same when the hive died. Appeared to have small population, and I think false spring and late cold snap, they just couldn’t stay warm enough and pull through.
The queen could have died in the winter, which is not super uncommon. Also varroa mite weak colonies will die just as soon as it starts getting consistently cold.
1 Like