Top Bar Beehive Maintenance - Cleaning the Area

This is a typical sight when we arrive at the apiary for our routine maintenance visit. This TBH is occupied by our 6th colony. Leaves are all over the place.

This is the environment after the cleaning. No more leaves underneath the TBH and also on the roof.

Close up photo of the TBH underneath. No ants ;)

Water container to prevent ants are also in good shape.

How to install a TBH?

Step 1

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Choose a spot where you can easily clean and shady. Look out for the presence of those ants. Clean the spot as shown in the photo below.

Step 2

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Place your TBH nicely.

Step 3

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Install the water container to prevent ants climbing the legs. Install the roof to ensure the TBH is kept dry from the rain.

That's it.

This was 1 of 2 TBH we installed last week 19/2/2012. How to catch new colony soon.

Top Bar Beehive Maintenance

This is the refurbished TBH. I managed to clean and chase away the ants.

I also added the legs to make it easier to install and maintain in the near future.

I hope I can bring it to the apiary the soonest and redeploy it.

Top Bar Beehive Maintenance

TBH is not maintenance free. We need to look after them. Example, a TBH being occupied by ants needs to be cleaned up. One of the extreme cases, we need to refurbish the TBH.

This is one example.

This TBH was cleaned and relocated recently. Unfortunately, upon our visit on 11/2/2012, it is occupied by ants again :(

I too the opportunity to refurbish the TBH. I need to clean it from the ants and also fix the legs for this TBH. Previously, we use a "table top" to place the TBH. I hope I can squeeze a bit of time this coming days and reinstall it next weekend.

Installing new Top Bar Beehive

One of our targets this year is to build more TBH to catch more swamp. Simple maths, the more TBH we have, the more chances we will catch the swamps.

I have been trying to find time to build more TBH. Over the weekends, I managed to build 2 new TBH. We were able to install them on 11/2/2012.

These are the new TBH. The spots where I placed them were once occupied by older TBH. I probably will relocate them soon should we are unable to catch any swamp.

The red water containers are filled with water. This is to prevent ants from climbing up the legs and occupy the TBH. Not an efficient way to prevent ants but better than using any chemical to poison the ants.
The roof is necessary to ensure the TBH is covered from the rain. A dry TBH increase the chance to catch the swamp. We once lost a new colony because we failed to put the roof after the occupied an empty TBH. From then on, we ensure we have the roof for all installed TBH.

Building a Top Bar Beehive

It is not that difficult to build a TBH. I normally used scrapped and used woods to build it.

I need about 1 hour to finish building a TBH including the legs. I sometime build a table top instead of the legs for the TBH.

You should go ahead and try to build one. You may have difficulties in the beginning. Once you have built 1, the rest will be easier.

Remember, there is no right or wrong in building a TBH. Just follow the standard design that you download from the Internet.

You may have to adjust the measurement but do not take this as a barrier to build your tbh.

Cheers.