Top Bar Hive feeder

I do like my top bar hives, but they do have drawbacks.

My first top bar hive

The first is trying to persuade the bees to build their comb in a straight line, along the bar, rather than curved comb that crosses two bars, making inspecting them very tricky. In my first hive I made bars with a groove routed along the centre, filled with wax. It didn’t work, several of the bars are stuck together with comb. For the second hive I made bars with a 1/2inch square moulding attached along the centre and so far this has worked much better. Just one comb is curved and attached to a second bar, but this was fairly easy to separate.

 The second problem is in feeding them. I tried making a frame feeder as per Brosville’s top bar feeder on www.biobees.com, but trying to get it water tight was a big problem and the plywood split after just 1 season of use. I think I’ve sussed it though. It’s the same principle as Brosville, but made from plastic so it doesn’t leak. It was also very simple to make – I knocked up two of them in 1 hour, and that included time spent trying to find a suitable drill bit.

First, buy one of those click-lock type containers, of a suitable size for your hive. I bought 2.4l pasta containers:

2.4l container

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These ones even came with a suitable hole in the lid, the cover of which is easily prised off.

Find a suitable plank of wood, wider than the container and cut to the same length as your top bars. Screw the lid of the container securely to the wood. Remember that it will get quite heavy when full of syrup, so use plenty of screws.   

screw the lid centrally to the wood

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find a suitable cork (I used one from a port bottle) and drill a hole to fit. (This is where you find you have every sized drill bit except the one you want.) Cut access slots in the top of the container. The easiest way to do this was to drill holes next to each other and join them up using a stanley knife. Make sure that the clips on the lid don’t get in the way of the holes. If you want to, scratch the outside of the container with some sandpaper, to make it easier for the bees to climb. Put something inside the container for a raft – Brosville’s raft is excellent,

et voila

Two feeders

              

 

 

 

 

 

   View of the feeder in the hive

the feeder in position