Jimmy Mahuron
I attended The Beekeepers Institute At Ocala Florida back in the 1980's which was the beginning of my formal education in beekeeping. Halford Potter gave me two bee hives of the Langstroth design and these were the meanest bees that I have ever seen. At the time I really had no concept of mean bees. I do now though. I was a Bee Inspector for the State of Indiana for two summers and I got to see a lot of bees.
I am retired from the City of Salem, Indiana after having worked for the City for 28 years. I worked in the Water Department. I worked in the Water Plants John Hay and Salinda and read water meters for 13 years. I retired as the Superintendent of the Water Plants. My Wife Ellen is a Medical Technician at Washington County Memorial Hospital. We are the parents of four children, Winn, Laura, James and Nathan, and now we have five grandchildren; Katy, Caleb, Tiffany, Jacob, and MaryEllen.
I learned of the Top Bar Hive through Apis and the American Bee Journal and have just one Kenya Top Bar Hive at the present. At one time I had 17 colonies of Langstroth two story colony bee hives. It is my hope and goal to raise my own queen bees. I think that the TOP BAR HIVES are wonderful tools in working with the bees.
Jimmy and Ellen Mahuron of Salem, Indiana USA
Top bars with combs partially drawn.
Jimmy and the completed hive
The completed hive hangs under a catalpa tree
I first learned of the Top Bar Hive from the publication APIS.(1) Apis is a monthly newsletter published by Dr. Malcolm T. Sanford from IFAS/University of Florida Department of Entomology and Nematology. In the November 1996 Apis Volume 14, Number 11, ISSN 0889-3764. The article is titled "USING THE TOP-BAR HIVE A KINDER, GENTLER, BEEKEEPING?"
After reading this article I decided that this would really be something fun to do and I sure liked the concept of the Top Bar Hives as discussed by various individuals who had built or made one or more of these hives in the article in Apis.
I went to see if I could find my back issue of American Bee Journal to
see and read the article by Conrad Berube in the August 1989 issue. I was
able to find the article. So this added fuel to the fire and I was ready
to build one of these hives. I based my hive dimensions on the Hoffman Top
Bar which is 19 inches in length and 1 1/8 inches wide and 3/4 of an inch
thick. I had some plywood that I had left over from some other projects
so I used the plywood to make a hive. The plywood that I used is 3 ply plywood.
I made the hive long enough to handle 30 Hoffman Top Bars. The overall length
of the hive is 34 3/4 inches and the hive is 19 inches deep. I made a Kenya
Top Bar Hive (KTBH) so the sides of my hive are angled down to an 11 inch
width bottom.
KTBH with cover removed, top bars in place.
I selected 30 Hoffman Top Bars and I got several sheets of 100% Thin Super Foundation for Comb Honey and I got a wooden board and cut 1/2 inch strips of foundation to secure in the Top Bar Saw Groove with a Kelly Copper Wax Tube Fastener, Cat.No. 165 Price...$3.50 plus shipping and handling. (2) I got a tin can that was 3 3/8 inches in diameter and 5 and 3/4 inches tall. Then I melted 5 inches of wax foundation in the tin can. I then used the Wax Tube Fastener to secure the 1/2 inch of foundation in each of the Hoffman Top Bars for the (KTBH).
Top bar with a starter strip of foundation attached.
I used an electric circular saw with a carbide tip blade to cut the sides of the hive for the (KTBH). The hive is easy to build and every thing went together very easy. I used the same nails that you would use in a Langstroth Hive for nailing the sides of the hive together. I used the Hoffman Top Bars for the correct spacing of the hive at the top of the hive from side to side in length and width.
I made an entrance in the side of my hive at the bottom 14 inches in
length and 1/2 inches in height from a landing board attached to the bottom
of the hive 18 inches long by 1/4 inches thick times 1 3/8 inches wide.
I also nailed to the sides of the hive two timbers 8 feet long by 2 and
1/2 inches wide by 5/8 inches thick. The hive can be carried and it can
be hung in a tree if you wish to hang it in a tree so that the Top Bars
are at waist level so that you don't have to bend over to check the Top
Bars and see how the bees are doing. I used a 35 inch by 20 inch sheet of
the 3 ply plywood for a cover and I secured the hive cover by using two
bungee cords secured to the timber and pulled up over the top of the hive
cover so that the cover won't be blown off by the wind. I painted the hive
exterior with clear polyurethane varnish to seal the plywood from weather
and rain and that will add some extra life to the wood.
The completed hive.
Conrad Berube's hive plans can be found at http://nanaimo.ark.com/~cberube/ktbhplan.gif
If you have questions, I would be happy to try to answer them.
(1) Back issues of APIS are available on the World Wide Web at:
For an electronic subscription to APIS, send a subscribe message to:
(2) The address for the Walter T. Kelly Company is:
(comment from Jim Satterfield) Jimmy has submitted drawings for 1 3/8" wide Hoffman top bars to Kelly Company. Kelly indicated that they might be able to make a production run this fall. The bars would be 19" long and 3/4" thick. Perhaps these bars will be stocked by Kelly. Meanwhile, Jimmy plans to see how the bees do with the standard Hoffman Bars which are a little less than 1 1/8" wide. He says, "The bees will tell me what they like!" :)
January 29, 2000: I have built three top bar hives to date. The # 2 hive was built from 5/16" particle board and the #3 hive was made from 1/4" plywood. I used a couple of 2 X 4 to straighten the sides of the hive to a straight shape rather than a bowed shape! I nailed the 2 X 4 on the outside, about the middle of the hive, and the hive came back to straight shape. I like the 5/16" particle board because of the price of the particle board as compared to marine plywood or plywood in general.
Bees are doing fine in hive #1 and #2. Hive #3 will have to be started over because of loss of queen. This hive was built for friend who wanted a TBH.
Jimmy G. Mahuron email: jmahuron@blueriver.net James D. Satterfield email: jsatt@gsu.edu