# Is there any reason not to use 'shallow' TBHs?



## Duboisi (Oct 7, 2009)

AFAIK - Deeper hives are recomended in colder areas, while wider/shallower hives are recomended in hotter areas.


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## honeybeekeeper (Mar 3, 2010)

Then it sounds like your wanting a Tazanian top bar hive! You can pretty much use frames and foundation or foundationless if you want! I built one thats deep enough to take deep frames!


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Tara,

I agree with Honeybeekeeper. If you're going shallow, then you'll need the rectangular shape to get enough volume in the hive. That seems to be an issue with tbh's - size. They need enough room.

I went with 18" bars with sides that sloped 72 degrees - eleven inches deep. I like the angled sides for two reasons - appearance, and the idea that the clustering bees in the winter will use the food more effectively and not leave as much in the corners you get in rectangular combs.

Adam


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## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

Queens prefer to lay in deep combs. Overwintering bees seem to find it easier for the cluster to move vertically rather than horizontally.

If you want to be able to swap frames with your medium Langs, it sounds like you want a Tanzanian long hive (which uses regular Lang frames). On the other hand, you talk of angled combs, which sounds like the standard top bar hive.

Another thing to think about is comb structural integrity with 18 inch long combs. A long straight comb is not very strong withstanding side forces. Bees know this, and don't like to build long, straight sections of comb that are unsupported. Bees start trying to curve the ends of the combs so the comb starts to take on a C shape when viewed from the top. (Bees prefer a round hive over a square hive.)

I have started packages with a couple drawn frames and the rest foundationless. The foundationless frames near the center of the box the bees drew out just fine. The combs in the outer foundationless frames started to C shape. I have even seen a few foundationless frames where the comb ends curved and jumped over onto the next frame.

Just keep in mind that if you make a top bar hive with 18 inch bars, you may have to keep a close eye on it so the bees don't curve the combs and attach to the next bar.

I built a Michael Bush style top bar hive. I only had one bar that the comb was messed up on - the very first bar by the entrance. (They were trying to attach it to the end wall too, and had the comb all messed up.) Every other comb they drew out perfectly.

There may be a benefit of a shallow top bar hive though. You may be able to extract honey from the combs without crushing combs. When I pulled honey from my top bar hive, I laid the combs in a large metal pan. On several combs, the bottom 3 or 4 inches at the narrow end broke off, but the upper 6 inches remained intact. Just to see if it could be done, I carefully uncapped the combs with an uncapping fork (you have to be very gentle on fresh combs) and carefully put the combs in my 3 frame tangential extractor. The comb was supported by the basket pretty good. I had to flip the combs a couple times to try to extract the sides evenly without blowing out the combs, but I was able to extract the honey from the combs and return drawn combs to the bees. If you have a tangential extractor, you may be able to extract shallow top bar frames and give the bees back the combs to reuse.

I think the biggest problem you would have with shallow frames would be overwintering, but bees have been known to survive just fine in shallow spaces in floors, so who knows.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

When I was designing my hives, I went back and forth with Michael Bush on issues of dimensions. He told me that anything over 18" bars tended to be too much, as the comb would begin to wander at the ends. So I went with the dimensions he suggested.

In practice, the comb can only span about 15 inches or so of that, if you account for the hive sides and bee space. So I wouldn't go much narrower, or you'll be less than that. To me, an 18" bar is perfect.

Adam


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

http://bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm#ttbh

This one is a one by eight deep (the same as a long medium hive with the bottom space added) and it has done well for several years.


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## Tara (Jun 17, 2010)

Thanks Michael--yours was the ONE I'd seen with those dimensions, which made sense to me, but everyone else went with deeper combs so that's why I was asking.

What do you mean by 'with bottom space added? The standard 3/8 or 3/4 that's usually on a bottom board? If you added more space, wouldn't they make it too deep to put back into your normal supers (swarm cells, redistribution, etc)?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

A standard medium box would be 6 5/8". When you put it on a reversible bottom it has either 1/2" or 7/8" space (depending on which way you put the bottom board). My long hive is a one by eight which is 7 1/4". This I put the rabbet 3/4" down so there is 1/4" at the top and 3/8" at the bottom. But up to 7/8" at the bottom would be fine. The one by eight just came out right without ripping anything...


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## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

_If you added more space, wouldn't they make it too deep to put back into your normal supers (swarm cells, redistribution, etc)? _

The bottom of a hive is the one place you can get away with a bee space violation. You can have a one inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the frames above it, and the bees don't fill the gap with comb. Adding extra space under a hive usually just adds more air space.


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## Tara (Jun 17, 2010)

Then... if you have top bars, how close to the floor will they build down? I thought they just kept going till they had enough room for all activities....if backfilling the top with honey shrunk brood space and the queen still wanted to lay, they'd extend down.

In my mini top bar right now they built combs along the bars and filled out that way, but now that I'm feeding and they're capping a lot more, they're slowly moving downward from the initial 5 inches or so. Lol...proportionally, capped area to # bees, that nuc is the best of my hives right now!


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Sometimes they will build all the way to 1/4" of the bottom, but usually they leave 7/8" or so. Anymore than 7/8" they would definitely fill with comb. The space from 7/8" to 1/4" they might fill with comb if they were crowded.


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## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

On my Kenya top bar hive, there were a couple combs the bees made a small attachment to the bottom. (It was more common to attach to the sides.)

On most combs that were drawn out all the way, they probably left a 3/8 gap between the comb and the bottom of the box.

Keep in mind that this is a Kenya top bar hive, and not a Tanzanian top bar hive (long hive) which uses conventional Langstroth frames. The comb stops at the bottom bar. Using Langstroth frames, bees don't seem to want to build comb underneath the bottom frames even if it is a bee space violation of an inch.


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## Tara (Jun 17, 2010)

Whether I go sloped sides or straight, I wont' be using a frame. I just need the top bar area to match a standard medium--that way I can take a bar of comb and put it in another hive, or chop the sidebars and a little of the lower corners to fit it into the TBH. 

So... you're saying if the bees have room to expand out to the sides, they most likely won't go lower than 7/8 from the bottom?


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## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

In my Bush style Kenya TBH with no frames, the bees drew usually drew comb to 3/8 an inch of the bottom. Some combs may have had a 1/2 gap at the bottom.

In my Langstroth framed hives, I can leave an inch gap under the bottom frames, with no comb drawn.

I do have some styrofoam hives with screened bottoms, and the screen is installed at the bottom of the 1 1/2 inch thick styrofoam. The area with the screen is like a 1 1/2+ inch pit in the floor of the hive. I have had bees draw combs from the bottoms of Langstroth frames down into this area.

In cutouts I have down in trees and walls, the bees built their combs all the way out to the sides of the cavity before they drew the combs all the way to the bottom of the cavity. I take that back....I did one cutout of a hollow log that was laying on its side. The bees built the combs parallel to the log. They had some combs 4 feet long and were not to the end of the hollow log. But the combs were only 8 inches tall, and was securely attached at the top and bottom of the comb.


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## Tara (Jun 17, 2010)

I'm totally gonna make a log-observation hive someday. Cut off a third (sideways) of some old log, hollow it out, put in three bars in a row, 2 deep, and glass over the cut off section. Be a great conversation piece!


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