Attic For Top Bar Hive

With a top bar hive the combs can become very soft and fragile if the hive is overheating.

Attic for top bar hive.

A look at a beautifully made top bar hive made by paul macdonald. It is the affectionately called the attic. The top bar hive has emerged as a popular alternative to the langstroth for people who are looking to avoid heavy lifting and or enjoy a more natural approach to beekeeping. There are several different top bar hive styles.

Of course those were not identical to the top bar hives we have today but the basic concepts are the same. The number of top bars the hive will accommodate varies with the width of the box but as a reference a 42 box will use 28 top bars. Discover how our high quality top bar beehives can offer an economical option for beekeeping. With nine frames in the top box the vent is directly over the center top bar.

The top bar hive is the oldest and most commonly used hive style in the world. Each top bar hive comes equipped with all the essential components that help make beekeeping efficient. There are many ways to design and set up a top bar hive and until you have used one for a while it is not easy to see the advantages and disadvantages of di. It features individual bars laid across the top of the hive cavity.

Generally the bars are a wooden wedge or strip with a guide to ensure combs hang straight. Your top bar hive needs some type of roof to go over the flat lid of the hive. Nails are driver through the strips and clinched for extra rigidity. Immediately i increased the top insulation of the other hives and the result was a drop in dead bees to a quarter of daily number.

Each top bar is laid across the hive with one end at the front of the box and the other at the back. Many beekeepers will use top bars that have a small comb guide hanging down. Experts found evidence of its use dating back to 1686 in greece. As the temperature went lower other hives increased the number of daily deceased bees.

The bees build their comb down from these bars naturally without the use of a 4 sided frame or foundation. I moved a colony of bees into this hive using an unorthodox method that i had never tried b. Whether it is a cathedral hive or a regular top bar hive proper ventilation from a roof is needed. With a top bar hive you ll have a stress free set up and can avoid the labor of heavy lifting.

Half inch plywood is cut to outer box dimensions and a three quarter strip is added top and bottom. It is a horizontal hive enabling beekeepers to inspect the entirety of the hive without moving heavy supers. During the cold snap the hive that had the most insulated roof had less dead bees on the bottom screen.