top-bar hive

This beehive was made out of scrap materials lying around.

These planks that make up the top bars are from an old closet door.

The wood came from the scrap pile scavenged from a few spots in town with mostly pallets and some cuts of osb.

a simple frame

sizing up the top bars on the frame

pallet boards and cuts of osb to cover up the sides and bottom

some screwing, some hammering

the box portion, finished

entrance for the bees

the box with top bars

Half of the top bars have sticks screwed or nailed in to help seed the combs in a good orientation, and the other half are spacers. Fancy top bar hives use triangle cuts of wood for this purpose. I will find out if my method has the intended effect.

Inside the box. I put gaps for the floor to breathe. Some hives go so far as to have a mesh floor.

painted with some paint we had lying around

the roof is 2 pieces of roofing scrap

the stand is all pallet wood

leaf litter, moss, and sticks to help create a floor more similar to a dead tree where bees would likely make a hive in the wild

the hive sitting on the stand with the roof on

Next I'll get a piece of comb from the neighbors to help seed this hive with a colony. There are lots of visiting bees in the garden already as we have a large quantity of flowering plants.