Top Bar Hives and Sustainable Beekeeping

Last night, I began preparing for my 10 minute presentation for the Knowledge Acknowledged series. I will be speaking about top bar hives and sustainable beekeeping. The following are my notes for this talk. Even though no references are provided with these notes, I recognize that very little of what I will say is of my own creation. Much of what I will say comes from the ideas of Phil Chandler and all the great people who participate at biobees.com, as well as the information I've read at Michael Bush's website. Thanks all.

One of my chief concerns when I took up "bee having" last year was how to do it sustainably. When I speak of sustainability, I'm not speaking only about my own bees but all bees. Bees and humanity are currently involved in an enduring conflict. Bees produce products and do services we want. Yet many of the bee management techniques we use in the name of efficiency and productivity stress the bees. How do we gain these benefits without placing honeybees on a "production treadmill" that hurts them in the long-term?

One sustainable approach I've been exploring is the use of top bar hives. Top bar hives have their origins in ancient Greece and are now primarily associated with development projects found mostly in Africa.

The chief differences between top bar hives and the box hives most people associate with managed beekeeping are:

* Bees build comb on bars rather in frames surrounding beeswax foundation.
* The beekeeper guides the bees in expanding their colony horizontally rather than vertically as in box hives


A top bar hive looks simply like a long trough with 35 mm bars suspended across the top of it. (Kenyan beekeepers have nicknamed the hive: Honey Cow) The bees draw comb down the middle of each bar using either a wax starter strip or a beeswax covered popsicle stick as a guide on where to start. As the bees fill the bars, the beekeeper expands the colony area by moving movable walls (called follower boards) out and adding more empty bars. You harvest capped honey by simply pulling out the bars when ready.

Top bar hives offer some advantages over the regular box hives:

1. They are significantly cheaper and easier to manufacture than the entire set-up needed to start a box hive colony. When you add up all that's needed for a box hive, you could spend as much as $300. Material-wise, our first top bar hive cost us $80. This might've been significantly less had Monta and I done what others have done, built the hive using found, and recycled materials. You can make a fine hive from an old bureau draw, pieces of an old pallet, or even a large clay pot. One individual I know has weaved together old stalks from last year's sunflower plants, allowing the bees to fill in any gaps with propolis. Another person has made hives from papercrete. As long as each comb in the colony can be removed individually, these hives are completely legal in the U.S.
2. Except for the width of the top bar which must be 35mm wide, there are no other crucial measurements to follow.
3. Bees are easier to work with in a top bar hive. They behave less defensively, primarily because you only disrupt the brood nest one bar at a time. With boxes, you not only examine the bees frame by frame but also separate boxes, stressing the whole colony in the process.Many beekeepers I know work their top bar hives without protective clothing or a smoker
4. Bees build cells to whatever size suits their needs, not according to the dimensions demanded by the foundation the beekeeper uses. This may also eliminate another possible stressor.

The beekeeper considering top bar hives should recognize that there are some distinct disadvantages as well.

1. Because top bars are often built from found, recycled objects, there is no uniformity in bar length or comb depth from top bar hive to top bar hive. This means that bars may not be interchangable between these hives.
2. A comb filled with capped honey in a top bar is fragile and cannot be extracted in an extractor. The beekeeper is left with either cutting honeycomb into squares, or using a crush or strain system which may not be efficient for larger honey producers.
3. Because the frameless comb is fragile, the transporting of top bar hives is very difficult and dangerous for the colony. Migratory beekeeping would not be very easy with top bar hives.
4. Hives tend to produce more beeswax and less honey, which is not really a problem if you are an encaustic painter.
5. Winter preparation of the hive is a bit more involved for a top bar hive compared with a box hive.
6. I have personally found feeding a top bar hive during dearth a little more difficult than a box hive.
7. There is little face-to-face mentoring available for the beginner. I have depended on websites and internet forums for support and help.

Bearding on Metpropolis

Wednesday and Thursday we had some pretty severe thunderstorms with high winds, rain and the usual lightening and thunder. The hives got through it fairly well except that on Friday night there was a great deal of bearding at the entrances of Metpropolis, the top bar hive. My initial reaction was to panic, "Ah, they are about to swarm!". Instead, I did some research, ending up at one of my more reliable sources of bee information: Michael Bush's website. Michael's site reassured me that the bearding was not necessarily a sign of swarming, and that, in any case, it did indicate that Metpropolis was a strong hive. I took his suggestions and increased ventilation that evening by removing the bottom board. Saturday morning I checked inside the hive to see if the bees had enough space and if there were any queen cells. No queen cells were found and I added one bar to the hive. By this morning (Sunday), the bearding had stopped. Next time, I will not panic.

Week 6: Tale of Two Hives

It's been 8 days since I inspected inside either hive. This past week's weather has been stormy. rainy and windy, not very conducive to foraging the white clover that I've caught a few bees exploring.  Yesterday, we had storms all afternoon until early evening. Finally, today, it was partially cloudy and in the high 70s; a nice day to open the hives.

I always go into each hive anticipating certain things, extrapolating from what the state of the hives were the week before. I expected the inspection of  Bee Glad... to be pretty straightforward with few surprises; Metpropolis would be another story, I imagined, with a continuing battle with cross-comb. Both hives surprised me.

Bee Glad..., the langstroth hive, was opened first. The upper box had bees working on three frames. One is halfway drawn, the other two are in their beginning stages. I removed the top box to discover a bottom box brimming with bees which was a little intimidating at first. What had been a box that was easily inspected last week became a box filled with sticky frames, burr comb, and some interconnected frames. Taking frames out was a job. It was as if the bees forgot how to draw straight comb. I did not want to cause comb failure, nor kill or roll bees in the process of removing and returning frames. I was very slow and focused in my actions, scraping burr comb here and there, and trimming comb off  a few frames. 

The health of the hive is great. Plenty of eggs, larvae and capped brood. I decided to "pyramid" two frames up to the top box in effort to get the bees to draw some straighter comb and to get the queen to begin laying in both boxes. I closed up and went on to Metpropolis. I was a bit discouraged with the work I had to put into Bee Glad..., almost regretting using foundationless frames. What kept it all in perspective was that fact that my friend, and  colleague who is also starting to beekeep this year, has been having the same difficulties and he is using foundation.

Metpropolis was a real joy to work. I am so glad Gerry Gomez Pearlberg at Global Swarming convinced me to try out a top bar hive as a beginner. Most all the comb is straight, bars come out easy, and, with care, I have yet to have a comb break while examining it. I did a bit of comb trimming, using my handy cradle. (Gerry, I promise, I will upload a photo of it soon!) The cross-comb problem I reported the last few weeks is slowly, with judicious trimming and new bar placement, working itself out. The best thing is that the bees seem to tolerate my work in Metpropolis more than in Bee Glad... Thank you, Gerry, Phil Chandler and Michael Bush for introducing me to this approach to beekeeping.

Metpropolis looks healthy as well. Plenty of brood in all stages, pollen stores seem fine, and honey is coming in.

Overall, the honey bees are doing much better then I anticipated, especially given the poor foraging weather we've had.

(Sorry about the lack of photos in today's blog. Monta was at work during the inspection.)

Week 1: the First Inspection

Late this morning I did my first inspection of my two hives. As usual, my faithful photographer, Monta May took pictures. I am still feeling the adrenalin rush.

Silly enough, my chief anxiety this morning was whether I could get the smoker lit and not have it go out on me. I am pleased to report that my anxiety was unwarranted. I used a crumbled page of the New York Times, some pieces of a paper egg carton from Bluff Country Co-op, and, finally, woodchips as the fuel and had absolutely no problems my first time out.




I first inspected "Bee Glad...", the Langstroth hive. With a little smoke, the bees were extremely gentle and calm, more concerned with their labors building comb than in my interference. What surprised me was that, only after a week in the hive, the bees were building comb on each of the ten frames. I could not find the queen and had difficulty seeing if any eggs were laid. One interesting discovery was the bees habit of dispensing with the starter strip, once they had a "sense" of where a comb should be drawn.





After closing up "Bee Glad...", I moved on to "Metpropolis", the top bar hive. This proved to be slightly more difficult only because the bees drew cross-comb between 3 bars. I surprised myself as I carefully cut each comb apart with no disasters nor casualties. The exciting, surprising event in this inspection was that I actually found the queen (see photo below). I went into these inspections with the goal of simply looking for eggs and hadn't really expected to find the queens. So you can understand my excitement and surprise when I took out the largest comb, glanced at it, and there she was. I guess I have to thank Michael Bush for his "Can you find the queen?" photos on his website.



In all, I am very happy with the bees, and somewhat proud of myself. The inspections were done at a slow, deliberate pace with no harm to the hives. Unexpected occurences were handled smoothly and I saw the queen of "Metpropolis".