Anyone have top bar beehives?

[Ga Chicken Mom]

DH and I bought a top bar hive last fall, we are taking a beekeeping class Feb 19 and have bees on order for early April. My Dad kept bees while I was growing up and I often observed him at his chores. We are really looking forward to this new endeavor. Any help, advice, suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I think the apiarist teaching the class may be prejudiced against top bar hives but our reading has made us determined to try this method.

 

[thistlebloom]

I don't have bees yet but am hoping too , maybe by next spring. I'm also wanting to go the top bar route, especially after reading a book and reading a lot online about it. There does seem to be a lot of prejudice about them, and it seems like it's because of peoples experience with poorly designed hives. I would be very interested in your experience when you get set up. :bee

 

[vfem]

I'm in your spot. Hubby is building a top bar hive, we've just ordered 3 lbs of bees and a queen locally.

Won't be getting them until April 1st, and signed hubby up for the bee class locally that won't be until next month. So we're just getting started too.

 

[Ga Chicken Mom]

I'll be sure to post about our experiences. We have the hive and the bees are on order. The apiarist said Italian bees are the gentlest to start with so that's the type we will try. We are mostly wanting to get good pollination for our gardens and to help the bee population in the area. I saw one and only one honeybee last summer. We have other wild pollinators but I acctually had to hand pollinate the zucchini. We got fewer than a dozen squash!

 

[lesa]

You will be very pleasantly surprised at the difference having a hive, will make to your garden!! The results are quite amazing! If you don't grow borage already- get some. The bees love it, and it makes the most incredible taste in the honey...
Taking the bee class is the best way to learn. Our local club has "field trips" so you can actually go to a bee yard and work the bees. Very helpful!
I was thrilled to see our bees flying today- we had a quick warm up to the high 40's and they enjoyed it. Tonight, back down to 9 degrees!!!

 

[Ga Chicken Mom]

Thanks for the borage tip. I don't know the plant but will check into it. We are in the mountains and the sunlit patches we have are taken up with raised beds. Hope borage can do OK with partial shade.

 

[Ariel301]

I was given a bee colony in a top bar hive by a friend. He really likes the top bars because they are easy to build and if he is giving bees to someone he can tell them how to build a hive exactly like what he has and he can just stick a bar of his with bees and comb in theirs and it fits perfectly and a new hive is started.

I don't like it myself. The bees I have are not building right, so the bars are stuck together with comb built between them, and every time I lift a bar, I end up damaging the comb and making the bees mad at me, and then they attack me. (They're not the most well-behaved bees either...) I'm going to start over with a Langstroth hive.