Top Bar Bee Hive: Perfect for Backyard Beehives
Most of the literature and websites out there about beekeeping tend to focus on the traditional box beehives, known as Langsroth hives. However, a more appropriate hive technology for the backyard beekeeper is called a “Top Bar” bee hive. We chose to build ours, but you can buy one too.
What Is a Top Bar Bee Hive?
These DIY hives are low cost and simple – perfect solutions for backyard beehives. Top Bars have been used in developing countries for many years because of their ease of design, low maintenance and low cost. They can be made from salvaged materials, and even hollowed out logs.
Like the Langsroth hives, top bar bee hives also have removable frames so you can collect the honey, but the frames are added along a horizontal plane instead of vertically building up. And you don’t even need to include a comb to get the bees started. While it results in less honey, you do end up getting more beeswax – which has its own many uses.
The Top Bar Bee Hive is so named because its frames only a “top bar”. They do not have sides or a bottom bar. In other words, the beekeeper does not provide a foundation for the bees. Rather, the bees build their own comb so it hangs down from the top bar.
The hive body is V-shaped in order to keep bees from attaching the comb to the hive-body walls, which would keep the hive owner from being able to lift the bar out of the hive. The top-bar design is a single, long box with all the frames hanging in parallel. It looks sort of like a boat (think Noah’s Ark) when finished.
One drawback of a top bar bee hive is that honey cannot be extracted by centrifugal force using a honey extractor machine because a top-bar frame does not have reinforced foundation or a full frame. Also, bees have to rebuild the comb after each harvest, making the honey yield less than traditional hives, but the beeswax yield much greater.
Like the Langstroth hive, bees can be induced to store the honey separately from the areas where they are raising the brood, making it less likely that bees will be killed when harvesting from a top-bar hive than some other designs.
How To Build a Top Bar Hive
There are as many ways to build a top bar bee hive as there are beekeepers, so don’t be too bogged down in the differences. One thing is usually the same all-around, however, and that is the width of the bars. To the left you will see a picture of me with two of the top bar hives that we built as part of our Urban Homesteading Group in Denver, Colorado. They were based on a different design, but the dimensions for the bars were the same, as was the concept of the V-shape to keep much of the comb from being attached to the sides of the hive body wall.
Where Can You Buy Top Bar Bee Hives?
Sometimes people just are not comfortable with carpentry. Maybe they have no tools. Or maybe you just don’t have the time and would rather buy something that you know is built with high quality than to try and make due on your own. Don’t worry – Top bar bee hives are often less expensive than more traditional hives and you can buy them online and have them shipped straight to your house, along with all of the gear you’ll need to get started with keeping bees.
I’m a big fan of beeswax! Now I can build my own hives and ensure the safety of each individual bee.
Did you hear that they’ve found a cure for “colony collapes disorder” turns out it was some sort of bacteria and scientists are administering antibiotics to some hives now w/ success! Thanks for the plans. Happy Earth Day!
Beekeeping should be done by beekeepers, not scientists. Further, beekeeping should be done by small beekeepers, the words “industrial” and “beekeeping” should never be neighbors The cause of colony collapse disorder is more likely the use of anibiotics and mitecides in order to control the bacteria/fungi or mites that are affecting the hive. This can be eliminated to a great degree simply by using top-bar hives, but also the careful selection and breeding of gentle bees with mite and bacterial resistance can also help (honey production should be a tertiary consideration, simply because of the state of honeybee genetic diversity worldwide). Any hive that needs chemicals to survive should not be propagated and should most likely be re-queened. If more beekeepers were to follow this ethic, maybe we would see a more natural and lasting resistance begin to spread as the drones from healthy hives fly off and spread healthy genetic material to the queens in the area. Les Crowder and P.J. Chandler both deal with this in more depth. When we use top-bar hives we should commit to using no chemicals at all, we should commit to truly natural beekeeping, for how can we expect the bees to regulate themselves properly when we fill their hives with chemicals and antibiotics that disrupt the cycles of life they have evolved with over the last 40 million years?
But how do you get started? I would love to have a hive on my urban homestead, and will eagerly build a hive, but how do you populate it once it’s built? There are lots of inspiring sites by people keeping bees, but how to get started is still a mystery to me. Is there a good online resource to which you can direct me?
Melissa,
Once you have your hive built you’ll need to either order bees or catch a swarm. For a place to order bees see the “buy them online” link at the bottom of the post.
Good luck!
Melissa,
I populated my hive by capturing a swarm. BackYardHive.com has an excellent article on capturing a swarm. Also, do a search on YouTube to see videos of people capturing swarms. Then call some local pest control or bee removal places and ask them if they get calls to remove swarms and if they will let you take one of the calls. It only took me about a week to get a call.
Have Fun!
Hey, great website! The other day, for no particular reason, I decided that i wanted to have bees around me, and proceeded to explore the net. After researching, it has become apperent that the ktbh is the sustainable design choice for me. I will begin constructing mine soon with my 7yo step son, and the only main question i have (as i figure most of my questions will be answered by the bees themselves once i begin) is about keeping the breeding and honey production seperate, to minimize bee deaths. How is this achieved? I plan on build one similar to the PDF file posted above, where i will have an entrance low on one end, and i will make a couple follower boards. What is the function of the follower boards? Also, i understand the need to to make the top bars of a certain width, but i haven’t noticed anything about spacing.. Should the top bars be touching? I’m excited to begin, and appreciate helpful forums like this. Thanks in advance!
Peter
We just finished building two top bar hives and are now looking for swarms. I was looking for honey at first but am now excited about the wax and want to learn more about making soaps and other bee oriented products.
I am so hoping to get some help from someone here. For six years my husband and I have been trying to remove huge colonies/hives of honey bees in our house and barn walls. We did not want to kill them and we had one bee keeper after another say they would come and get them but no one ever has.
The bees are causing more and more problems and they have to go. There are estimated hundreds of pounds of honey in the walls and we realize we have to tear the house apart to clean up which is one reason we have just learned to live with them.
I have heard that the bees can be persuaded to move out by putting a hive nearby or something — but we don’t want to buy a hive. We could build this top bar easily.
Can anyone offer advice???
Thanks so much
Valerie Attina,
Hello Valerie I read your post and am pretty good at relocating bees. Let me know where you are and I’ll see if it is practical for me to visit your barn and move your bees out.
You can e-mail me or call my cell 303-619-5156
Marty Hardison
valerie did you get the bees gone. if not let me know where you live, maby i can help. thanks gerald.
I apologize for my late response… I could not remember this web site name for anything. So glad I found it again.
I live in northeast Ohio. It would probably be (bee
too costly for someone to come over and like everyone else we are low on funds. We may have to DIY. NOW my husband wants to keep bees also — but not in the house of course. Sooo guess who gets another job …
Marty, thank you I will call you to discuss.
my direct email is valtime1@windstream.net
So how do you extract the honey with these hives?
Some notes on the previous messages: 1. there is no cure for colony collapse disorder 2. to say that beekeeping should be done by beekeepers and not scientists shows a real disrespect for both beekeepers and scientists because anyone who keeps bees is in fact a scientist by nature. 3. beekeepers who are also professional scientists have been considering the problems of CCD and many are considering the lack of genetic diversity in commercial bees as the major contributor to CCD so if you do need to order bees (instead of capturing a swarm) it is in everyone’s best interest (hobby keeper, commercial enterprises, and THE BEES that you try to obtain bees from small scale apiaries that can give you outcrossed or hybrid bees and not requeen your hive every year (which some do to increase honey yeilds regardless of colony health)–that way, your colony and the drones it produces will help maximize genetic diversity in the wild bee populations as well 4. HOW TO GET THE HONEY FROM A TOP BAR: you simply crush the combs in a collander and let the honey run out in a clean pan or bucket…to remove small bits of wax from the honey afterwards, carefully pour it through a nylon stocking…but keeping some on the comb is a nice treat too.
try the Michigan Hygenic queens…theyre in demand all across the country
Why are some top bar hives built with a solid bottom and others have a screen on the bottom? Is there an advantage to either style? Should there be an entry hole and a seperate exit hole?
Thanks
Tom
O’Neil,
The bottomless top bar bee hives, or the kind from which the bottom can be removed, are thought to help with veroa mites and other pests because they fall through the holes in the bottom. It also helps keep the hive cool in the summer. However, the bottom should be installed for winter in most climates.
There is no need for separate entry and exit holes.
i was unable to bring up the pdf file if you could give me the address i would appreciate it thanks
May 8th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
[...] Me proudly showing off the Top Bar Bee Hives I built last [...]
Jan 22nd, 2010 at 1:29 pm
[...] frame style hive and you don't have to hotknife the comb to retrieve the honey from these. Top Bar Bee Hive: Perfect for Backyard Beehives I have talked to bee keepers here and they are reluctant to sell colonies because of the bee [...]