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Top bar hive top bar supplier?

6K views 14 replies 9 participants last post by  Keefis 
#1 ·
I have seen the beveled topbars on the net but for some reason the people selling them are anti lang and make them shorter than 19 inches on purpose so lang frames dont fit. We bought a top bar hive that takes a 19 inch top bar, we dont have a table saw to make our own. Does anyone sell beveled top bars 19 inches long? I also want to use them in nucs to form comb and then put in the top bar hive, it would be great to have them interchangable. Regular Lang tops dont seem to be wide enough to allow for bee space, I could just glue the bottom to the side but them I am creating nice places for SHB to hide.

WVMJ
 
#6 ·
Perhaps you could find a neighbor with a table-saw, or even rent one for a day at a Home Depot or somesuch. (Portable saws used by contractors for that matter aren't that expensive ...) We made many dozens of bars in just a couple of hours:
  • Cut to length.
  • Rip to width.
  • Run a shallow kerf-line down the middle (so a popsicle-stick sits about halfway in).
  • Run a perpendicular shallow kerf-line on one end at the place where the bar would normally sit on the edge of the side-panel, so that the bar naturally "clicks" into place and tends to remain properly perpendicular until the bees glue it down. (This last bit was our improvement. Putting a kerf at both ends isn't necessary.)

As you can see we used popsicle-sticks wood-glued into the slot as our guide, and kept the carpentry as simple as we could figure out to make it.
 
#7 · (Edited)
Home Depot sells 8' 1" x 2" boards that are actually 3/4 x 1 1/2, the size you need for honey after you cut them to the length you want. You will also want bars for brood, so you cut a 1/8 inch strip off the 1 x 2 and you end up with a board that's between 1 1/4 and 1 3/8 depending on the width of the saw blade. That 1/8 x 1 1/2 inch strip can be cut in half (1/8 x 3/4 inch wide) and used instead of the "popsicle stick" after you make the "kerf line" mentioned in the post above.
 
#9 ·
THanks for the helpful DIY tips, I like my fingers, getting stung is enough of a sacrafice to the bees for me. Already have a voulunteer to craft them for me, cant wait till they get here. Our bees build on the flat spots of the bars like in honey bee habitat, I think using the beveled bars might encourage them to stop doing that so much. WVMJ
 
#13 ·
I am a woodworker and can make whatever you need .
The angled bottoms work very good. My first TBH has angled bars but the second has a spline hanging down...My results are better with the angled ones. No crooked combs in first hive but second hive(which is from a recent split) I have two of three new combs that are little askew.
I live in NC, so if I am close enough let me know.
 
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