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

Top Bar Hive Comb Orientation

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BBees:
Just out of curiosity, anyone ever build a TTBH with a front entrance and top bars that are oriented parallel to the side boards rather than the front board. I'm just starting this hobby because I'm try to save a colony I've discovered between the floor joists in an old house I'm demolishing. (So anything I know I've gleaned from this forum and have absolutely no experience yet!) In their present location, all the comb runs parallel to the floor joists. Hate to disrupt their mindset. There seems to be a lot of people a lot more clever than I am on this forum so I'm thinking if this was such a good idea, someone else would have done it already. Any thoughts?

Thanks, Steve

deantn:
Have built one but not like that.
It's fairly easy to cut the comb and tie it to the top bars, just need to be careful to put the brood comb in carefully especially if you get them in early spring before too many eggs are laid.

justgojumpit:
Basically, you can have the comb run in any direction that you want, relative to the location of the entrance.  Some people put their entrances on the ends, some on the sides.  The main reason that I can think of for running the top bars across the short side of the hive rather then lengthwise, is that the frames would just be enormously large, fragile, and heavy if you ran them the long way.

justgojumpit

BBees:
Just trying to think like a bee! (LOL) It's like my first attempt at logging with draft horses. I had an older mare that had some logging experience. I had none. Any horses I had driven for haying, etc.,  would just step straight out. No matter how hard I tried to drive this old mare straight once we hooked onto a log, she'd always take a a few steps sideways then go straight......figure it out yet. She was trying to teach me something. If she broke it loose first by pulling sideways, she could get it started easier and off we'd go! She could out pull most teams!

Anyway, since I'm just building the TTBH, wouldn't be any problem to put top bar supports from side to side so I can rest three sets of top bars parallel to the long sides. A potential problem I thought of was they would ignore the space created by the supports and just build 4 foot long comb. If I could just figure out a way to interrupt the long comb.....then they could keep building the way they like, and I could do beekeeping the way I like!

Thanks, Steve

deantn:
Don't think you have really thought this out fully.
A four ft. long piece of comb loaded with brood and honey is not going to easy to hold on to, to say the least, much less be able to pick up out of the hive to check. Even with supports you couldn't pick it up and bring it out of a TBH without tearing it up in some fashion.
Good luck trying this adventure but think you would be much better off building them side to side.

Really think you need to get with another experienced beekeeper when you go to try and get this hive out of the floor. Most would be happy to help you or at least give you some verbable or moral support about how to do this without killing the queen, even if you do get her she might not stay.

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