Building My First Top Bar Hive

so making your own bee hives...........

Most wouldn't or at the very least be hesitant to begin. However I have a few woodworking skills after a few decades of building almost everything "wood" I needed in life. Add to this teaching 100s and 100s of kids to do the same over the last 10 years as a materials technology and design teacher.

So making some hives, even Langstroth style would not be a problem for me given the equipment I have available. As for Langstroth hives - the making of a few custom jigs for table saws, mitre saws and routers would eliminate the issue of ensuring all parts exactly the same and precise.

But the cost and materials needed for some Langstroth hives were definitely beyond my current moth eaten wallet. So a Top Bar hive was to made this time.

But never one to make just one of anything -
My first goal was to make three hives!
The second goal was to spend almost no money doing so

For the materials, I had one 2400x1200x16 sheet of ply and plenty off-cuts from student projects. along with a heap of 3x2 pine I could cut to size and I was ready to go.

Firstly, I cut the sides and attached to a couple of purposefully shaped ends, then used a hole saw to cut the desired holes in all the right places - some for entrance holes others for ventilation

This was all glued and screwed together to increase indestructibility

I made the hives with gaps in base for ventilation through stapling aluminium netting over the base.

I also went for the access holes on one end (rather than the side like most I researched), same as the ventilation holes and a landing platform all being on one end of hive.

These three key design features and their locations where ones I picked up during my research and thus incorporated into my design - the logic of it seemed more insightful

The holes in the front allow expansion of the hive into the depth of the hive rather than expanding side ways. maybe pedantic but....

The ventilation holes at top of front panel I am told stop the bees building in the front top bar - but time will tell. the logic of this argument was lacking rational and supportive evidences but I felt why not! A gut feel it should work.

Another key design criteria was the width of the top bars being equal to a Langstroth bar so I can swap bars from mine to a Langstroth if needed (but the frame of Langstroth wont go other way due to rectangular shape)

Making these at my school's workshop had all sorts of student visitors during lunch times.
But all had  the same questions
         What is it?
         Why that shape?
         How's it work?
         Why you doing it?
                                etc etc etc

 I answered them all, showed some my design drawings and a few videos for the keen ones
Though my answers might of converted a few towards bee keeping

Even though I had to put up with all the questioning - it did get me heaps of volunteers to help
Especially the making of the 120 plus top bars

It was all a bit Tom Sawyerish (you know the Mark Twain story when Tom Sawyer was painting a fence and his mates ended up paying him for the privilege of doing his work for him!)

For me, at one stage I had 15 or so students gluing and tapping the ply into the slot I had cut earlier with a table saw on the bottom of the top bars

So instead of taking several days to complete by myself in between classes - it was done in under 20 minutes - awesome!

I designed the Top Bars to have a notch each end to stop the bars sliding off the top

I also cut a saw blade width slot in the bottom of each top bar and inserted a narrow strip of 3mm ply for the bees to attached their comb to

Later I will impregnate these strips with beeswax to encourage the bees to build their honeycomb on it

Next made were the lids

For these I cut some triangles for the ends, ripped up a couple of 3x2 pine studs to make four length basically 32x19mm or close to it - ripped off each side then cut/split down the middle the central piece left over form first two cuts and then used drop saw to cut all four to length of hive
A nail gun quickly attached these, then some glued 3mm ply on to the timber between the ends and finally used a staple gun finished off by pinning the lids to the timber
I placed a piece of Ply on each end of the hive to stop the lids sliding off.

So far the 3 hives have cost me nothing but time, the ply was a free packing sheet for 30 other ply sheets ordered for student projects, some off cuts from projects and the 3x2 pine for lids and top bars was left over from my rural house being built. the tools etc were already on hand.

The exact size and measurements are unimportant rather the function was more of a design criteria. The actual size of these hives was based on the materials I had on hand. Given a different sheet of ply and I might have made it different.

Each hive holds thirty top bars, and a feeder/following bar for the growing hive. That's the same number of frames as a Langstroth brooder box with two supers.

They are just over a metre long - and with nothing in them quite light. But robust enough to lift once a few combs have filled the space - well hopefully.

Now just a paint job on all exteriors needed - can't avoid spending money on that as the better the paint job the longer the hives will survive the harsh weather conditions here in the Top End - but then I could have more fun making a few more. (using an oil based paint for this is a must given the extreme humidity for four to five months of the year up here)

Next blog will be about building some feed supplement sections using a 'following' board.

Eventually I also have to make a few swarm traps, a couple of nucs and then weld up a few single post metal hive stands to concrete into the ground. I will screw the hives to these to secure them. To begin with I will place them on levelled old school table frames (more free stuff from junk pile at school!) These stands will have to be absolutely level to ensure straight comb making by the bees.

Until the next blog - maybe you do some research - maybe get into bees your self!
the breeding cycle and idiosyncrasies of how bees do what they do is fascinating!
Maybe find some scrap timber and build a top bar hive yourself