The topbar beehive isn’t a brand new concept. Historical reference to the top-bar hive date back to the 1600’s. Most of nowadays’s top bar bee hives are derived from work within the 1960’s. It was perfected for use in Kenya, Africa, and is usually referred to as the Kenya Hive. Nowadays it’s conjointly employed in several other developing countries for it’s straightforward design and value effective management methods. Lately it’s conjointly become more standard in the United States.
The ancient Langstroth beehive consists of many boxes (supers) and varied alternative components that are either difficult to build or expensive to buy. In addition to the beehive, the Langstroth hive requires many different items of kit to harvest honey and manage your bees. Not thus with the top bar hive as you’ll be able to read below.
Straightforward and Maintenance-Free
The top bar hive has solely a few components: the hive body (box), 20 to 30 top bars (frames), and a lid. That’s all you’ll ever need. Compare that to your Langstroth hive. Bees build their own comb which eliminates the need for expensive frames. The top bars are re-used when the harvest.
Non-Invasive Style
The top bar hive is healthier for bees. To check your bees, you’ll not have to take the whole factor apart. Hence, your bees will be less disturbed by your presence and checking of the comb.
Simple Harvest
To harvest your honey, you just take away the bars with honeycomb. Not like ancient ways, you will not have to require the hive apart and disturb the bees as much. Not solely is the top bar hive less stressful to reap for you, it additionally will not disturb the bees as much. Additionally to honey, the top bar hive has a lot of beeswax to harvest. You furthermore may don’t need a honey extractor/centrifuge or uncapping knife that saves you thousands of dollars. Smoking is completely unnecessary and several top bar hive users don’t wear protecting clothing either. (For the beginner I do advise to use some kind of protection, gloves and veil as the minimum!) Once you take away the honey comb, the bees can go about their business as usual. Try that on a Langstroth hive.
Healthier Bees
The top bar hive is intended for the bees’ optimal living conditions. This makes a colony abundant stronger and enables it to fight off pests and diseases on their own, a lot of higher than in a very Langstroth hive. Besides healthier bees this can save you hundreds of greenbacks in medication as well as disappointment.
Why doesn’t everybody use top bar hives?
The top bar hive is not designed for maximum honey production, although there have been reports otherwise. For the hobby beekeeper some pounds less honey are well price the convenience of management. You may harvest more beeswax with a top bar hive though. Any hobbyist should have additional of an interest in keeping healthy bees than in squeezing out some a lot of pounds of honey from a stressed, overworked colony. With simply one top bar hive, you may still have more than enough honey for your whole family and friends.