# Standard dimensions for the Kenyan Top Bar Hive



## Murdock (Jun 16, 2013)

By design, the Kenyan top bar hives do not have ESTABLISHED sizes as they were to be built out of "whatever was available". If you are interested in this type of hive I would suggest a long hive and set it up to accept Langstroth frames. You can use bars the same width and add side/bottom pieces if you wish. This is sometimes called a Tanzanian/Russian/coffin/... hive. I have a couple of pictures of one in my profile. They work really well as nucs; one in each end.


----------



## Murdock (Jun 16, 2013)

I see you are also interested in foundationless. My longhive uses bars 1-3/8 " wide and the length of a Langstroth frame. I set it up for deeps and I use 5/16 dowels for side pieces, popsicle sticks glued into a centered groove for starter strips, and two wires across the dowels to support the comb. On some bars I have added a bottom bar between the dowels. The bees don't care but I like the support for the comb so It will not break. For bars, they are touching each other. If I use standard frames I will use standard spacing (bee space) and cover this area with a thin piece of plywood or a cloth to keep the bees in the box.


----------



## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Therre is a thread on here about a year old talking about establishing a standard. I like mine from Beeline because their bars are the same length as a Langstroth hive, allowing for some interchange between the two types. My boxes are all 45" long, which is about right. Anything shorter, and you have issues with swarming. The depth of the hive is modeled after a standard deep box, 10" or so. That means I can take my fully drawn trapezoid shaped comb out of the topbar hive and insert it into a Langstroth without having to trim anything. Works really good for me and I sometimes use 5 frame Lang nucs to overwinter smaller colonies on only the topbars.


----------



## Hops Brewster (Jun 17, 2014)

The beauty of the KTB is that there is no standard size. This allows people of very limited resources to build them with whatever materials they have at hand. They are commonly used in Africa and other poor locales, and can be made of various scrap, such as used crates and pallets, barrels or tin roof sheets or whatever. The size is often dictated by the materials they have to work with.

You are free to build your KTB to whatever dimensions please you. Perhaps to fit Langstroth or Warre, or British National dimensions. What is the standard hive used in Spain?


----------



## Yunzow (Mar 16, 2017)

I used the Kenyan hive design that Michael Bush has on his website. In comparison to the other hive dimensions noted here, it has shorter top bars and not so compatible compatible with Langstrom dimensions, which if I had been thinking about it I might have considered. However, given the high heat here in Georgia, a shorter top bar would probably be more stable because the combs won't be as heavy.


----------



## friendlywithbears (Feb 6, 2017)

You will find that there are pocket groups of people who use common designs based of some of the early top bar adopters (e.g., Michael Bush, Les Crowder, Chandler, etc.). If you have a community of top bar users around you, probably good to talk to them and share a design if you want to share equipment ever. At the very least, I've found it incredibly useful to pick a single design/dimensions for yourself, as you will need to be able to interchange bars between hives to share food, brood, make splits, etc.


----------



## JeronimoJC (Jul 21, 2016)

You won't find a standard design for top bar hives. Having gone thru the 'proces' I recommend you make your top bars the same length as a the length of a Langstroth top bar. This way, if you later want to move bars to a long Langstroth or even a standard Lang you'll be one more step closer. 

Definitely consider a long Lang.


----------



## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

usually the outer way around 
the land sized bar alows you to "chop and crop" an lang nuc in to a KTBH
going KTBH to lang is simple as cutting the comb off the top bar and rubberbanding it in to the frame

I run a 16" bar and and feel it cuts down on the X-comb compared to when I ran 19"


----------



## JeronimoJC (Jul 21, 2016)

msl said:


> ...going KTBH to lang is simple as cutting the comb off the top bar and rubberbanding it in to the frame.


I've done this ^^ too, but transferring a top bar to a Lang without having to mess with comb manipulation is much easier. I never had issues with cross comb. The key is to place the empty bars between bars with drawn comb.


----------



## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

JeronimoJC said:


> but transferring a top bar to a Lang without having to mess with comb manipulation is much easier.


that works if you have thin top bars, outer wize it sits high and pushes up the inner cover or the next box and leads to propuils/bur comb issues.
in order 1" ruff stock bar, 1" nom (3/4" true) bar, lang top bar







it needs to come out at some point, I feel its better done up front 
If I am not in a cut mood (ie a bar with the queen on it), I staple gun on a few tongue depressor strips on a 16" bar and drop it between 2 frames to support it and do a fly away spit. 



> I never had issues with cross comb.


said no KTBH keeper ever....:lpf:


----------

