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Posts Tagged ‘Topbar’

The Beehaus

The Beehaus is the most modern beehive having been launched in 2009. It is based on similar principles to a Dartington. The top-bar or Kenya-hives were developed as a lower-cost alternative to the standard Langstroth hives and equipment. They are used by some devotees in the United States, but are much more popular, due to their simplicity and low cost, in developing countries. Top-bar hives also have movable frames and make use of the concept of bee space.

Warre Hive Description

The Warré hive was invented by Abbé Émil Warré, and is also called “ruche populaire” or “The People’s Hive” . The Warré hive is a modular and storied design similar to a Langstroth hive. The hive body is made of boxes stacked vertically, however it uses Top Bars for comb support instead of full frames. Popularity of this hive is growing among sustainable practice beekeepers. The Warre hive differs from other stacked hive systems in one fundamental aspect: when the bees need more space as the colony expands, the new box is “nadired”. i.e. positioned underneath the existing box(es). This serves the purpose of warmth retention within the brood nest of the hive, considered vital to colony health.

Top Bar Hive Description

The top-bar hive is so named because the frames of the hive have only a top bar, not sides or a bottom bar.

The beekeeper does not provide a foundation (or provides only a fractional foundation) for the bees to build from.

The bees build the comb so it hangs down from the top bar

This syle of hive is also known as the Kenyan Hive

The hive body is often shaped as an inverted trapezoid in order to reduce the tendency of bees to attach the comb to the hive-body walls.

Unlike the Langstroth design, a top-bar hive is generally expanded horizontally, not vertically.

The top-bar design is a single, much longer box, with all the frames hanging in parallel. Unlike the Langstroth hive, the honey cannot be extracted by centrifuging because a top-bar frame does not have reinforced foundation or a full frame.

Because the bees have to rebuild the comb after each harvest, a top-bar hive yields more beeswax but less honey.

However, like the Langstroth hive, the bees can be induced to store the honey separately from the areas where they are raising the brood.

Therefore, bees are less likely to be killed when harvesting from a top-bar hive than when harvesting from a skep or other traditional hive design.