BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > TOP BAR HIVES - WARRE HIVES - LONG HIVES

Recommended books or blogs etc for top bar hives?

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crmauch:
'Top-Bar Beekeeping: Wisdom & Pleasure Combined' by Wyatt A Mangum, PhD.  Author at one point had a small commercial operation w/ 400 top-bar gives.  Book is pricey, I read it through interlibrary loan. My hive design is his with one change.  My long boards are on the outside of the end boards.

Robo:

--- Quote from: maggie_lee on February 16, 2020, 07:17:06 pm ---Hi all is there any book or blog or you tuber etc you?d recommend for learning about top bar hive beekeeping?

--- End quote ---

Best top bar hive book in my opinion is "Beekeeping for Everyone"  by Abbe Warre and it is free -> bit.ly/warre

Can I ask why you decided to go top bar hive?

maggie_lee:
Thanks to everyone for the advice!!!

I think my next hive is going to be a Wyatt Magnum design; I like the idea of having a kind of "tray" underneath with a sticky pad to catch mites & beetles.

Robo: I chose top bar hive like this:  I had decided I wanted to try beekeeping and I went to this introductory one-day class that the metro atlanta beekeepers association puts on every winter.  They introduced the different kinds of hives ... and honestly I thought the langstroth hives looked confusing and a lot of trouble with a lot of fiddly little parts .  I was like "well I don't understand a stack of boxes but I can understand a trough."  Also they said that top bars are cheaper because you can build it yourself easily out of miscellaneous wood (cough, cough or get your stepdad to, which I did.)  And I'm a backyard beekeeper, I don't need to move my hive so I don't care if it's unwieldy.

The class didn't spend much time on top bars.  I don't remember if they even had one to show us or if they just showed a picture of one.

I have broken some combs on inspection but I'm learning to do it better and so far I'm happy with my decision.

Edit: I thought of one more thing: At that first class, I didn't understand that you could have frameless(?maybe) or foundationless langstroth, and if I had understood that, I might have done that.  No shade on the class, I'm sure they talked about it.  but it was a lot to take in and I didn't quite get that.

Robo:
Hi maggie_lee,


The reason I asked is because a lot of people choose top bar hives because they believe top bar hives are "more natural" and in reality they are confusing more primitive with more natural.   In nature, feral bees in a tree work in a vertical manner.   They start spring at the top and as they bring in nectar and make honey they drive the brood nest down.  Going into winter they are at the bottom with their stores all above them.   As they consume honey and move up the honey above them is preheated by the heat they give off.   This is a smooth progression upward throughout winter.  In a horizontal hive they need to break cluster and move around combs to get to additional stores as winter progresses.  This can be an issue if the temperature is cold.

That is why I recommend the Warre top bar hives as they better replicate the feral tree environment and it accounts for heat retention with the quilt box.

Hopefully your winters aren't too harsh in Atlanta and the bees can cope with the horizontal configuration.   

maggie_lee:
Nah our winters are not bad. We freak out if it stays freezing for more than 24 hours.

But yea, I've read that honey toward the back of the hive can be too far away in the cold and I'm wondering if on a warm winter day I can rotate a full frame closer to the brood.  A 70-degree-day in February isnt out of the question.

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