If you’re new to the world of the top bar beehive and top bar beekeeping, you are probably finding that there is a lot of information available to you via the Internet. This subject has garnered tremendous media attention since the advent of Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, in 2006. On the one hand, this is great – but on the other hand, it can be pretty confusing for the new-bee beekeeper.

Tips on Building a Top Bar Beehive

Here are some tips on building top bar beehives that work!

1. Put a really good comb guide on your top bar. The best comb guide we’ve found is a sharp bevel point - one that runs the entire length of the top bar, but with ends that angle in from the hive body – this serves to discourage the bees from attaching to the sides.
2. Don’t make the top bars too tall. The taller the sides of the top bar, the more space there is for bees to get squished between bars. The top bars do not have to support any large amount of weight, so they can be fairly thin, there’s no need for them to be built like I-beams!
3. If you’d like to have an observation window in your top bar hive – make it out of window glass. Other options such as Plexiglas can become cloudy, making it impossible to see into the hive, and Plexiglas often warps – creating gaps large enough for your bees to get in and out of the hive, and creating cold drafts – a very bad thing in winter!
4. Make sure your top bar hive is large enough and holds enough top bars to allow the colony to grow to a size that will survive the winters in your area.
5. If you plan on having more than one top bar hive – do make sure that they are all built to the same design. This will save you so much frustration! Most new beekeepers aren’t aware that when the bees lose a queen, that they are able to make a new queen – but that can only happen if the beekeeper can give them a bar of comb that contains very young brood. If your top bars aren’t interchangeable – you will not able to save a hive that suddenly goes queenless!

Top Bar Beehive Kits

Gold Star Honeybees offers top bar beehive kits that work for anyone’s level of woodworking skill, budget and time constraints. At $50, our DIY#1 hive kit is the least expensive of our top bar hive kits, but you must purchase, cut and assemble ALL of the required lumber, as well as the glass window, paint, and caulk needed to build the hive. The DIY#2 hive kit is $295, and it contains thirty of our quality top bars, you need only buy the lumber required to build the hive body, the roof, and the legs. For those who are short on time and tools, our Deluxe top bar hive kit ($495) comes complete – you need a screwdriver and a staple gun – that’s it! - to assemble the entire hive in a few hours. Visit our webpage at www.goldstarhoneybees.com for more information on Gold Star top bar hive kits.