Contents
What are the advantages of a top bar hive?
Top bar hives have some advantages over traditional hive designs.
- Simplicity of DesignEdit. …
- Price of ConstructionEdit. …
- Ease of OperationEdit. …
- StorageEdit. …
- Bees Wax ProductionEdit. …
- Comb Honey ProductionEdit. …
- Natural CombEdit.
Are top bar hives better?
Top bar hives allow bees to build comb in a natural way. … This will help reduce the likelihood of wax moths overwintering in your hives. The bees inside a top bar beehive overwinter better than bees inside a Langstroth hive. In order to stay warm, bees need to exert energy, in order to do that they need to eat honey.
How do you set up a top bar bee hive?
Place a strip of bee foundation inside each of the top bar grooves. Using wood glue (or melted beeswax for a nontoxic option), fasten the foundation into the grooves. The bees will build their comb onto this foundation, which will hang down into the body of the hive.
Do top bar hives need ventilation?
Your top bar hive needs some type of roof to go over the flat lid of the hive. Whether it is a Cathedral Hive or a regular Top Bar Hive, proper ventilation from a roof is needed. With a Top Bar Hive the combs can become very soft and fragile if the hive is overheating.
Do you need a queen excluder in a top bar hive?
You lift a bar, look at it, and decide if it is ready to harvest. If it has brood it is returned and left for another time. During harvesting the whole comb is cut from the bar, before being returned to the bees. There is no need for a queen excluder in such a system.
How do you extract honey from a top bar hive?
Harvesting honey using a honey press
- One by one, slice the comb off each top bar using a serrated bread knife or an electric uncapping knife. …
- When the hopper is filled, put the lid and screw mechanism in place. …
- Remove the crushed wax, clean the filter, and repeat the process until all the combs have been processed.
How much does a top bar hive cost?
Top Bar Hives
- Top Bar Hive Plans And Hardware Kits. Sale. …
- Golden Mean Top Bar Hive. Golden Mean Top Bar Hive from $452.00.
- Top Bar Hive. Top Bar Hive 12 reviews from $500.00.
- Standard Top Bar Hive. Standard Top Bar Hive $412.00.
- Top Bars. …
- Top-Bar Hive Nucleus Box. …
- Side Comb Stand.
- Cozy Cover Hive Insulation Wrap.
How much honey does a top bar hive produce?
In 2016 established top bar colonies produced about the same, 62 lbs (28.1 kg), on average. However, if the top bar hive was empty enough (had plenty of storage room), some colonies gained 80 90 lbs (36.3 40.8 kgs), provided the colony was ready for honey production.
Should a beehive be in sun or shade?
The hive should be placed in early morning sun. This gets the bees out of their hive earlier in the day to forage. In the Northeast, hives can remain in the full sun for the entire season. However in places with warmer climates, hives should receive some afternoon shade.
How high should beehives be off the ground?
approximately 18in How high should my hive stand be? A. While this is heavily dependant on your stature, an ideal height for a hive stand is approximately 18in off of the ground. Unless you are 6’5, this height will be ideal for working your hives without destroying your back.
How long should a top bar hive be?
The length is important. The box itself should be at least 3 feet long, but larger is preferred. Any less and our bees face the risk of filling the box before they have a chance to cap any honey. This means you don’t have the chance to harvest any honey, to free space which, in turn, means your bees may well swarm.
How do you inspect the top bar hive?
When should you vent a beehive?
How do I stop condensation in my beehive?
Many beekeepers will place an empty hive body above the inner cover for added protection against the cold. Some beekeepers will place different substrates within the space above the inner cover to soak up the humidity. I have heard some using compressed cardboard or even hay.
How do I stop condensation in my bee hives?
You may use an empty beehive box to hold the absorption filler material in place over the top of the beehive. When there is a lot of moisture in the beehive, the absorbent material takes some moisture in and prevents condensation from happening. During dry weather conditions, the air in the beehive gets less humid.
What happens if you don’t use a queen excluder?
Not using an excluder means that you run the risk of the queen laying drone brood in the Flow frame cells. The likelihood of this happening can be minimised by placing an empty (foundationless) frame in the brood chamber and allowing the bees to build their drone comb.
Will bees build comb above a queen excluder?
The bees won’t build or build the wax poorly above the excluder. You’ll need to wait until the comb is fully built out. Yes, the queen may and probably will lay some brood in these supers before they get built out. Here’s ‘one weird trick’ if you have honey supers with ten built out frames.
Do commercial beekeepers use queen excluders?
Many perhaps most commercial beekeepers do not use queen excluders, believing that by restricting the movement of the honeybees, the queen excluder inhibits the maximum production of honey. Old-timer beekeepers laughingly refer to queen excluders as honey excluders.
What month to harvest honey?
Most nectar flows end by the end of the summer. It is a good idea to harvest honey at the end of summer, sometime before September. Don’t wait too long, though. If you let your hives sit until early or mid-fall, your honey will become cold and thick, and it will be much harder to extract.
Are top bar hives legal in Australia?
Top Bar Hives are accepted in Australia for keeping bees.
How much honey is in a Warre hive?
In the photo below, you can see how much honey comes from just one Warr hive body (about 10 quarts or 25-27lbs.). In most areas, carefully managed hives could easily yield two or three boxes each season.
What does a top bar hive look like?
Top-bar hives are rectangular in shape and are typically more than twice as wide as multi-story framed hives commonly found in English speaking countries. Top-bar hives usually include one box only, and allow for beekeeping methods that interfere very little with the colony.
Can you put frames in a top bar hive?
You will need to cut off the ends of each Langstroth frame as it is normaly longer than the top bar length. Langstroth frames are normally 19′ in length. Our Golden Mean top bars are 18 in length. So transferring the Langstroth frames into a Golden Mean hive can work.
What is a Layens hive?
The Layens hive is a horizontal hive holding 20 large frames (13 long by 16 deep) on one level. (The number of frames can be smaller or greater depending on your local honeyflows.) It is loaded with frames during the spring inspection and then opened in the fall for honey harvest.
How much does a top bar hive weigh?
Their average hive weight was 128.6 pounds. By inspection, the 2016 average weight gain of 62.4 pounds seemed similar to the gain observed in 2015 of 60.75 pounds (using the lower average).
Are Langstroth hives good?
It is arguably the best hive design for honey production due to large box sizes. It does require heavy lifting, with boxes ranging from 30-100 pounds, so it’s not the ideal hive if you’re limited in mobility.
