Episode 91: The Top Bar Hive Project

Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 91 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

Here it is, as promised, Well, I’ve finally started my Top Bar Hive Project by getting into the workshop and watching Pete do all the woodwork! This week I’m discussing what the Top Bar Hive is all about, why I’ve chosen to give them a try and how we’re getting on building our very first hive.

So the Top Bar Hive or TBH as I’m going likely abbreviate it to, is not totally new to me as I’ll explain but I’ve never used one myself to keep bees in and have always wondered what the fuss was all about.

The TBH seems to generate a lot of heated and passionate debate wherever it is used and that in itself is quite interesting to me because as most of you know I’m very much about letting beekeepers keep bees the way they want to keep bees. Whether it be in Langstroth’s or Nationals, Warre hives or Plastic Beehaus constructions, surely it’s down to the individual beekeeper to decide how he or she wants to keep bees and get the maximum amount of pleasure out of it they can.

Now, I’m a beekeeper with a small commercial outfit, barely commercial with around 80 colonies going into the Winter but even so I can’t see myself continuing to be a commercially productive beekeeper if I were just using a Top Bar Hive as my main hive type. I could, of course, be totally wrong and find it works out perfectly so I’m not going to close my mind to any outcome at the outset but I do have reservations about the practicalities of moving bees in a TBH.

Before I get stuck into the nitty-gritty of the Top Bar Hives, In today’s podcast I want to talk about what they are, how they work and think about some of the practical pro’s and con’s of using one. Back at the workshop Pete and I have started to construct our very first hive and it seems to be going quite well. I’ve posted some pictures and there’ll be videos to follow in the next few weeks.

On the subject of videos, I made one of those terrible cock-ups this week, I went over to the workshop at the weekend and we started to prepare the wood for the Top Bar Hive and I shot some very lengthy videos showing, in details, the steps we’d taken thus far.

I got home, had dinner, a glass of wine and started watching the Eagles playing football and while I was watching decided I could catch up a little by uploading the photographs to my google photos account. I didn’t need to upload the videos as I was going to download those to my computer to edit. It looked like I uploaded all the pictures and videos at the same time so, wait for it, I deleted all of the videos from my google photos app. The next morning I sat at my computer ready to download the videos anatomy computer and they were nowhere to be seen!

Yep, I’d deleted the lot! About twenty minutes of HD video. It was one of those, NO, I haven’t, moments. A brief but pointless attempt at trying to recover them and then the realisation that I’m going to have to do it all again!

On the bright side, at least we have another pallet and plenty of wood to be able to recreate the shoot!

Anyway, Top Bar Hives. without trying to sound too patronising, these are beehives, which have top bars for the bees instead of frames. It really is as simple as that. There are a variety of types, which I really don’t want to get into, the internet is awash with claims of who is supposed to have invented them, well, the one me and Pete have created is a version of the Kenyan Top Bar Hive and plans are freely available on the internet and I’ll be posting a blog showing our TBH journey over the coming months and no doubt we’ll post a plan and cutting list there for anyone who wants to follow us.

I’ve been considering why a Top Bar Hive would be so good? Well, for a start it’s a super easy hive to build and as I’ve mentioned we’re using pallet wood which was free, so they can be super cheap. Of course, you can go out and buy a read