Your top bar hive needs some type of roof to go over the flat lid of the hive.
Top bar beehive roof.
Top bar hives and beekeeping supplies including top bar beehives with windows adjustable legs hinged roofs.
A top bar beehive is a single story frameless beehive where the comb hangs from removable wooden bars.
While this obscures some of the effort involved in manufacturing a top bar this simplicity is one reason it has been so popular.
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At a high level it is effectively a box on legs with a cover.
Instead of using frames like a langstroth hive top bar hives have bars across the top of the hive body.
A top bar bee box has bars from which the honey bees attach and hang the wax comb an array of hexagon six sides cells.
The spacer should be 3 16 to 1 4 wide and 19 long.
Warm air holds moisture and the warmer the air the more moisture it can hold.
The bees build their comb down from these bars naturally without the use of a 4 sided frame or foundation.
Since a summer beehive is loaded with moisture from both bee respiration and drying nectar the hive can quickly become a damp mold infested environment that is not healthy for bees or good for making honey.
With a top bar hive the combs can become very soft and fragile if the hive is overheating.
Top bar hives allow beekeeping methods that interfere much less with the bee colony allowing it to be more natural.
A ventilated gabled roof is one of my favorite pieces of beekeeping equipment.
Now let s begin with the first beehive plans.
Whether it is a cathedral hive or a regular top bar hive proper ventilation from a roof is needed.
Use shims of various widths for the other end of the hive to make a tight seal.
Typically the bars are tapered and beveled at the bottom encouraging the bees to build their comb straight along each bar.
Since each top bar accounts for only half of the bee space required between combs a spacer should be placed between the first bar and the side of the hive.
This roof had the right combination of purpose and esthetics.
I liked the idea of incorporating ventilation into the roof and the look of a gabled roof on top of a hive looked great.
Generally the bars are a wooden wedge or strip with a guide to ensure combs hang straight.
Warre hives are the middle ground between langstroth and top bar.
The top bar hive is the oldest and most commonly used hive style in the world.
It features individual bars laid across the top of the hive cavity.
This unique component is what gives the top bar hives its name.
Top bar hives are always rectangular in shape and are typically more than twice as wide as many story framed hives.
Now i just had to give it a few city boy extras in order to personalize my hive.
38 langstroth top bar and warre hive plans.
For accessories for your discontinued top bar hive see the discontinued top bar hive collection.
They re designed to provide the appropriate amount of bee space between comb sections as well as between the comb and the hive body.
