by Jason Akers from http://www.theselfsufficientgardener.com. The Self Sufficient Gardener is a blog and podcast about growing your own food and living off the land.
For several years now I’ve wanted to keep bees
by Jason Akers from http://www.theselfsufficientgardener.com. The Self Sufficient Gardener is a blog and podcast about growing your own food and living off the land.
For several years now I’ve wanted to keep bees. However the price of equipment and the bees has been prohibitively high for my taste. Combine that with the fact that I always found myself with neighbors somewhat close and I have sufficient reason to not want the trouble. Now that I have a small piece of land with a little acreage and fruit trees, I not only am able but also actually need to keep some bees for pollination.
I had to find some way to offset the costs a bit in order to get me into this interesting hobby. After a ton of research on the Internet and in books I’d borrowed from the local library I found a way to accomplish that goal.
I discovered an alternative to the expensive commercial type artificial beehives. I found the top-bar hive. The top-bar hive is nothing new. In fact, this type of hive is actually thousands of years old, much older than the Langstroth commercial types in use today. In ancient times these hives were built from baskets with small holes and bars were laid across the top that allowed the bees to build their combs.
These types of hives are exceedingly simple to build and maintain which makes it ideal for the use I intend, as I will not be on this piece of property full time. In fact, there is at least anecdotal evidence that top-bar hives are more resistant to colony collapse disorder. As a big plus, they are cheap to build. Makeshift ones can be built from plastic or metal barrels sawed in half and with some limited hardware and a lid.
In fact, in all of my research I could only find one drawback to this type of hive. The top bars without frames do not allow for honey extraction without destruction of the comb. I don’t find this to be a huge problem as I may not even get to extract the honey the first year or so. The problem is that destroying or harvesting the comb requires the colony to spend time and energy rebuilding it to store more honey. Because I’m not a commercial beekeeper it really doesn’t bother me much.
So as a winter project I decided that I would build my own top-bar hive (TBH for short) and I would do it in the most economic way possible. That meant scrounging materials, making use of what was available in creative ways and resisting the urge to run down to the hardware store to buy things.
To build one like I built there is a simple material list that I will provide. Almost anything on the list is optional even the lumber. This can be built in so many different ways that I won’t even give detailed drawings besides just some crude line sketches. Looking at my pictures and researching on the web will show that no one builds two alike and even though I am happy with mine, I’d build the next one differently.
Wood (sizes are dependent on what you want) – Free
Hinges - ~$4
Exterior coated screws (dependent on wood thickness) - ~$3
Metal screen (commonly called hardware cloth) - ~$5
Some type of roofing material (I used corrugated plastic) – Free
Carriage bolts, nuts and washers -~$5
I had some wood in my workshop but I knew where I could get tons of good solid oak 