# First TBH built in 2015, in Texas-Scrap Wood Top Bar Hive



## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

congrats on starting. beekeeping is very addictive so I'm sure you will be making more beehives this year. Your hive is probably fine to house 2 colonies for this spring, but you might find that they both need room by June. They will definitely need their own hive the following year. I like to put windows in all of mine. It just makes it so much more fun to be able to peak inside.

As for the bar arrangement, you don't want to give your bees all those bars to begin with, so be sure your follower boards can be moved around (leaving the extra space in the middle as a buffer between the 2 hives). My bees didn't read the books about which bar should be used for brood vs. honey. You will just want to be sure to give them a few of the skinny bars to start with and then be adding the wider ones on the "end" for them to store the honey. 

I found myself cutting the 1/2" and 3/4" filler bars as mine won't fit a full bar once the humidity and propolis build-up change the shape of the bars in the summer. I also had a piece of screen to fill in a gap as that allowed some of the heat to dissipate out of the hive in the summer.

As for my floor, I like the screened bottom board that I keep closed off with the IPM board. It just allows all the trash, mites and beetles to fall through the hive and I feel it is cleaner. (I don't have any experience with the eco floor). I have been using diatomaceous earth on the IPM board and that really cut down on the small hive beetles. I also found that if the topbars are not pushed solidly together (so that the bees add tons of propolis), the SHB can live above the bar and make a real mess. Once I got the bars tight, the bees drove the beetles through the screen bottom and they died in the dust.


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## thylton48 (Dec 29, 2014)

ruthiesbees said:


> congrats on starting. beekeeping is very addictive so I'm sure you will be making more beehives this year. Your hive is probably fine to house 2 colonies for this spring, but you might find that they both need room by June. They will definitely need their own hive the following year. I like to put windows in all of mine. It just makes it so much more fun to be able to peak inside.
> 
> As for the bar arrangement, you don't want to give your bees all those bars to begin with, so be sure your follower boards can be moved around (leaving the extra space in the middle as a buffer between the 2 hives). My bees didn't read the books about which bar should be used for brood vs. honey. You will just want to be sure to give them a few of the skinny bars to start with and then be adding the wider ones on the "end" for them to store the honey.
> 
> ...


Please excuse my ignorance but what is an IPM board.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

thylton48 said:


> Please excuse my ignorance but what is an IPM board.


Sorry, sometimes I abbreviate stuff that not everyone knows what I'm talking about. IPM=integrated pest management. It's a removable board that beekeepers can coat with a sticky substance to trap the varroa mites that fall through the screen. Or they use it to monitor whatever falls through. 

This is Randy Oliver on the topic http://scientificbeekeeping.com/fighting-varroa-reconnaissance-mite-sampling/


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## Jon Wolff (Apr 28, 2013)

It's looking good! My first hive is 4' long with 20" bars and originally had a screened bottom with a board that could be raised and lowered, but then I began to experiment. I tried Chandler's dimensions (17 1/2" bars) and built two with eco floors. American ****roaches found the extra space and hiding places convenient, and then I worried about SHB thriving in them as well. I replaced the eco floors with screened tubs of mineral oil (too messy) and then diatomaceous earth (hive humidity and condensation eventually caused it to crust and become less effective over time). I have returned to my original hive's dimensions and rehived my colonies, removed all tubs/eco floors/screens and put on solid bottom boards with screw-in bottle traps (bee-safe, clean, easy to use, effective), and gone to all 1 1/2" wide top bars, gradually replacing all the narrower "brood" bars.


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