top bar hive

First of all, please excuse my ignorance if I use wrong bee keeping terms. I really will try not to embarrass myself, although it will be hard. We received a small swarm of bees back on June 8th of this year. They had been in a nuc box for 2 weeks prior to us receiving them. The comb they had...

I have two top bar hives I built from kits and managed for several years before my employment took me away from beekeeping for a few years. Now I'm back and cleaned up the hives and bought two boxes of bees. 1. I dumped the bees in to a space about 5-6 bars wide, removed the cork from the queen...

Cypress Top Bar Hives $150 each OBO 3 and 4 foot lengths available All made from 100% rough sawn cypress - a great weather and bug resistant wood and the bees love living in it! Designed after plans from top bar hive guru and bee author Les Crowder - 120 degree angle on walls, 10 inch sides...

Greetings from Gold Star Honeybees! The Gold Star Deluxe top bar hive kit gets the Gold ⭐️ Star when it comes to easy inspections, quality construction, versatility, and in-the-field lifespan. Made of sustainable, long-lasting cypress, our Deluxe Hive kit will make your beekeeping journey...

I am about 2+ weeks into being a newbee top bar beekeeper. I originally applied petroleum jelly and cinnamon to the lower legs to deter ants and this morning I went out to check the sugar water and found ants on the bottom board below the 8 point screen. I cleaned up everything I could get at...

So, I accidentally caught a swarm of bees in a swarm box in my carport last Thursday that I had just stored there temporarily. So my (good) problem is that I need to transfer this colony to its permanent home which is an empty top bar hive in the backyard which is about 15 yards away. Does...

I do topbar to spare my back and my wallet, and because I mostly have bees to help the environment. I actually buy clover honey since the local honey my bees make doesn't taste as good to me (not much clover in my area, more tulip trees and mustard). I had not been in my hive since last year due...

Today I inspected my hive and noticed a very large number of dead bees in the bottom of the hive (I would guess around half to 2/3 of the entire hive). What happened? Can the hive be saved? What do I need to do? I installed a 3lbs package 3 weeks ago in my TBH. Last week we had a late spring...

Hello, all, thank you so much for hosting this forum. I really value everyone's contributions and wisdom! I am so glad this forum exists at all. I am going to post my day by day blog, see replies below. Consider this the newbie's guide to DIY, written from a newbie's point of view. Why...

Hey, I am a complete newbie. I built a top bar hive from the plans posted by Michael Bush. I installed a package of bees on Saturday, three days ago. That went mostly okay. The bees seem to like the hive. However, there is a huge clump of them on the right wall, I assume around the queen...

⭐️🐝🐝🐝 Next up on the Gold Star Honeybees Bee School calendar is our Valentine Sweetheart Top Bar Beekeeping Weekend Intensive. February 11 and 12, 2017 in Waldoboro, Maine. $125 per person, $225 per couple. Two full days of top bar beekeeping how-to and why-to and hands-on with a class full...

⭐️🐝🐝🐝 The Gold Star top bar hive comes in 4 versions: Deluxe - no woodworking necessary, assembly only. $495 DIY #2 - comes with all 30 top bars, the hardware, the construction plans. $325 DIY #1 - comes with the hardware - the antidote to "big box store syndrome". $75 Plans - Just the plans...

⭐️🐝🐝🐝 Gold Star Honeybees has treatment-free, 3-pound packages for sale: Naturally mated, unmarked queens Raised on 4.9mm 7 ship dates $175 Bees ship via USPS Priority Mail, insured. Free shipping to the lower 48 United States. Raised on small-cell foundation - especially ideal for top bar...

Hi everyone, I started my first hive last Spring, and I ended up with an empty hive by the end of the summer. I’d like to try again this Spring, and so I’m looking for some advice or thoughts that could help me be successful this year. I’m going to give some information about my set-up and...

I've been messing with some CRAZY TBH ideas and was hoping to get some input. Often TBH users end up wanting to expand, but find themselves with some limitations. One common solution is to install supers over their TBH. I think this is a great solution. While pondering this I came across...

I really like the Top Bar Hive concept, but keep on seeing time after time where folks end up with comb problems (i.e. cross comb). Another objection is the difficulty of extracting honey, while trying to save the comb. I had this idea of using some sort of wire mesh to provide a guide for the...

First time TBH beek. I've had nothing but problems with cross comb ever since installing my package on 5/16 & I'm almost at my wits end. They have 4-5 bars completely cross combed at this point, even after doing several manipulations in which a lot of comb was destroyed. I tried getting them...

Hi, I'm brand new to beekeeping and I plan to install package bees in a TBH in the next few weeks. Being brand new to beekeeping I had a few questions that I could not find answers to on the 1. How much space in TBH should I make available for the bees to live in when I install them (how many...

A few days ago we installed a package of bees in a new top bar hive. The worker bees have immediately gone about building comb from several of the top bars. The bees have released the queen from her cage. Assuming she's healthy and the bees have accepted her as the queen, about nine days after...

Hi Everyone, I'm hoping you can help me suss out what happened to my bees... On April 27, I purchased 5 packages of bees and installed them in my top bar hives. All of the hives were built of the same wood, same outer paint, no glues or adhesives at all. They were each given 4 bars of empty...