# TBH's in cold climates



## Dpinmt (May 14, 2015)

I have a top bar hive in Helena, Montana. When I originally contacted my extension agent about top bar hive's in Montana. I was told they would not survive in our winter climate. He gave no indication that he had any experience with them. Just kind of tried to shut me down on it. However, all the research I did online indicated that people have great success overwintering. I have plans of building insulator boards but would like some experienced opinions. Any suggestions or ideas you can offer to help my new bees be successful into next spring would be greatly appreciated.


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## djjmc (Feb 6, 2015)

Check out this website - lots of info. 
http://www.bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm

Also - you can insulate the hive as much as you want. The easier it is for the bees to maintain a temperature, during the cold winter months, the less stress on the colony.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I had three Les Crowder sized hives winter just dandy here. Not as cold as Helena, I'm sure, but we get down into the -20F range fairly frequently. The TBHs did not start raising brood until March, and they are certainly much behind our Lang hives which had brood starting in January or earlier. As best we could tell they did not take a single cleansing flight either until it really warmed up. Two of them are in my brother's backyard so he had a relatively close eye on them. My Langs (wrapped in some sort of black hive wrap (not tar paper)), were having small flights every time it got to about 40-45 and sunny.

My suggestion would be to go with something containing much larger combs than the Les Crowder sized ones. Your cluster is very shallow and long when your combs are only about 6-7" deep and stretched out over four feet. They don't have the room to make a "ball" like they do in a Lang unless you give them some more vertical space. That said, these bees were very quiet all winter and maybe there is something to be said about that. Our first real inspections were March 15th this year and when the Lang hives had capped brood (some of them 4-5 frames worth), the queens in the TBHs had JUST started to lay egg sized patches.

We are planning on cutting over into Langs on all of our hives, but we'll see if that happens this year or not. I may use the TBHs to make up some mating nucs for queens.


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## Montyb (May 27, 2013)

I live in Marquette, Michigan long cold winters below zero many days. Have had tbh's survive last two winters. Both carniolan and Italian bees. Followed advice of info on backyardhive.com 
Mine are 48" long, 20" across the top, 66% angle. One has 1 1/2" walls, other has 3" walls. Left all the honey for them and harvested surplus in the spring. Also here is a pic of insulation I used. Purchased the roofing bags on backyardhive.com


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## cgybees (Apr 20, 2015)

In my climate, long, cold winters are the norm...it snowed this past Saturday, for example. We've got a fair number of people successfully running TBH up here... I am a new bee-keeper, and this is my first hive but I read and learned quite a lot and planned for winter issues as best I could before building. You can check out my build and a lot of my learning here:

Hive construction: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1603662446546924.1073741827.1603587486554420&type=3

Learning / blog: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Backyard-Buzz/1603587486554420

Some other advice / learning I collected specifically about starting TBH's in cold weather: http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?246530-h%29-How-do-you-install-a-package/page2

You'll notice links on the bee page to various really good threads on this board, useful info from Michael Bush's page & other experienced beekeeper resources etc, in the older posts. Hope some of this helps you!


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I have a couple I overwinter every winter here in Nebraska. 
http://www.bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm

Dennis Murrel has them in Casper, WY.
http://bwrangler.litarium.com/


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## Silverbackotter (Feb 23, 2013)

You will be fine in Helena make sure you insulate in winter( mine seems to do better if I do) and they can get rid of moisture. I use a top entrance to accomplish the latter.

The crowder hive can go into and out of a Lange with limited cutting of the comb but a steeper side wall seems to survive better for me....


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