Greetings from Norway

And I, being from a warmer climate, am fascinated by how beekeeping functions in colder climates like yours. Looking forward to your posts!

Welcome. I am also facinated in how you do with your top bar hives and beekeeping in general in your climate.

I will have some experience to share by next year.

Check out this link (in Norwegian) http://bikuben.mulebakken.net/topplistkube/

Not sure how popular it's to post links to other forums, but at this one is dedicated mainly to top-bars and have many users from England and some from Scandinavia. http://www.naturalbeekeeping.org/

Welcome, best wishes!

I think you will find the top bar hive will work just fine in Norway. Bees will try to survive in whatever hive you put them in and they will die in those same hives. What bees really want is a large store of honey over their heads in the winter. But if they built their hive in a floor space of say 8 inches tall and do just fine; they didn't do much moving up. Healthy bees will find their stores no matter which direction they have to move. A giant space above them for winter that some Beekeepers would say won’t work is best demonstrated at http://www.oscarperone.com.ar/. Wait for the translate bar to drop down and then you can translate to English. If you are playing around with methods perhaps you could try the Perone hive as well. You may be able to modify one of you Nationals or even adjust present procedures to simulate the principles he uses.

Thanks Dave I will check it out. Beekeeping eqpt is very standardised in Norway but it would be fine to try something new.
Kamil

@Dave: I am thinking that those hives are best suited for hot climates, as the hot air rises. It should even help them to keep the brood-nest cool.

In a cold climate, it means that the heat will disappear into the void during winter. In turn this will require lots of energy to keep the cluster warm.

Bees really don't want to move laterally....particularly in cold weather.

Do a survey of folks that run TBH's in northern climates....good luck finding many that are successful on any significant scale

@JPG: Forgive me, as I am a novice. But don't the bees move sideways from comb to comb in all hives? I would imagine that in a Langstroth hive, they go up to the top on one side, and then move slowly towards the other side as the honey is used. In what way is this different from bees moving from the end of the broodnest and towards the other end?

I think it is pretty hard to find people running TBH at a significant scale in temperate climates aswell.
There may be reasons why TBH will not work well in a cold climate, but without trying, it's hard to know.

I have heard that the vikings were using similar types of hives, only that they were called trough-hives or something along that order. I have not gotten it confirmed, so it might be wrong.

Hi, I'm going to be following your posts with interest. I am just starting in Minnesota, and it's also pretty cold here. Hopefully both of us will be successful as northern beekeepers!

Cindy