Organic Landscape Design

Top Bar Bee Hives

Top Bar Bee Hives were developed as a simpler structure to build and maintain than the hives generally used in commercial honey production.  The original top bar designs were for undeveloped rural communities without the financial resources to acquire the more efficient models.  The main benefit to the top bar is that they are inexpensive to build and easy to maintain.  The main draw back is that there is no way to exclude the queen from the honey "supers", meaning that there can be bee larva in any comb that is harvested.

We think that Top Bar Hives can be useful in a suburban setting because they fulfill two needs of the system where making money on sale of the honey is not the primary goal.  Those needs are, 1) increasing pollination of suburban gardens and 2) increasing the stock of bees that are not exposed to agricultural poisons.  If you would like to assist in fulfilling those two needs, and have a space appropriate for bees, we offer this model of Top Bar Hive:

The dimensions are 17" X 391/2" X 18"

Here is our prototype mounted in the forest area of the Applewood Permaculture Institute.  The top is a light weight polycarbonate with expanding foam insulation over a 1/4" plywood top mounted on a 2"X3/4" frame.  It is sturdy yet easy to remove.

We put a window in this prototype so it can be used for introduction to bees classes at the Institute.  The same model without a window is less expensive.

Don and I built two hives in about 7 hours with about $100.00 in materials.  We are offering these first two hives for $150.00 a piece.  With the experience we have gained, we will take orders for additional hives, although, the price will probably increase some as we refine the design.