It can’t be denied, I’ve had bees on the brain all Spring. The neighbor’s honeybees buzzing over to pollinate the flowers in my garden are helpful and lovely, but I couldn’t help but pine away for a hive of my own. There are those times in life where pining pays off, and this was one of them. For my birthday last week, my husband and son surprised me with a handmade honey cow. Maybe it was all those links I sent out about this simple design for a do-it-yourself top bar bee hive that motivated this excellent gift, or maybe it was the promise of farm fresh honey. Whatever the case, I was very happy to receive it. This is my kind of birthday present. Right up there with farm equipment and manure.
I saw this design on one of my favorite places to go for homesteading inspiration, Jenna Woginrich’s Cold Antler Farm blog, and decided after watching the instructional video that we could absolutely build this with materials around our place. For this particular design, a rain barrel would have to be sacrificed, but all for a good cause. Rain barrels come and rain barrels go.
This type of hive is over a thousand years old, and is thought to have originally began as woven baskets with sticks laid across the top as the bars. Today they are commonly found in non-industrialized nations and areas where resources are limited because of the low cost to build and ease of construction. It is also a very manageable way to keep bees, thus an excellent way for backyard farmers and beginning beekeepers like myself to get started. Since this is a top bar bee hive, there are no frames, foundations, or excluders involved. The bees simply build their combs hanging from the top bar, just as they would naturally in a fallen log. This design allows for better ventilation and pest control and makes for a less intrusive way to check on the combs, which also benefits the bees. Since the combs can’t be centrifuged to extract the honey and re-used, honey production may be lower, but the quality is higher and in-comb honey is just way more fun.
For those of you who are interested in taking up beekeeping yourself, or just plain curious, here’s that instructional video that Jenna shared on Cold Antler Farm:
And here’s a materials and tools list from that site:
55 gallon plastic barrel, preferably food grade (makes two hives)
22 feet of 1”x2” nominal lumber
46 feet of 1½”x1” lumber
2 X 8 foot of 2”x4” nominal lumber
A 3 feet by 4 feet piece of tin
20 – 1½” wood screws
10 – 2” wood screws
8 – ½ “ screws
Bungee Cord or tie wire
45 feet thin moulding OR natural fiber string and beeswax
TOOLS
circular or jig saw
drill
tin snips
tape measure and marker
That’s it! I hope this helps some folks out there to bee inspired!
Wow, that is fantastic, love it!
How wonderful! I saw remember that post of Jenna's too, and thinking, "Hm, I think I could do that." I love the simplicity of the hive. I have two co-workers with hives, so I haven't bought honey since we moved here, but I really do long for my own. Can't wait to hear about how yours is doing!
Hooray! What a fabulous present. We just got a top bar hive (homemade by a fellow in town) – and this week I'm getting bees! So, so excited. I'll be buzzing along with you… 🙂
I'm excited to see it in person!! What a wonderful gift. Bless their hearts!
That's so impressive! I like the idea of the bees doing their own thing to make the comb. I'd so love some bees…some day…
how is your hive going? have you gotten bees?
I wish I could say "It's great and populated with bees!" The reality of life has been a divorce and two moves over the past year, so that I am now set up on a farm again and just getting poultry situated. I contacted someone who does Warre beekeping this Spring when I found a swarm, to see if he could help me capture it and move them in, but he had concerns about my hive being plastic and not well enough insulated for winter. I decided to wait until next Spring for the bees. I am trying to figure out if I do, indeed need to modify my hive with some sort of inlaid wooden liner? Ideas anyone?