How to Build a Top Bar Hive

Overview

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Top Bar Hive Assembly

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, I'm Jake Klingensmith. In this video, I'm going to show you how to assemble your top-bar hive. You should have all the pieces here that you cut out, or that came in the kit that you got from me. Let's go over a few of the tools you're gonna need to assemble this top-bar hive. You're gonna need a drill. You'll need some exterior wood glue. You'll need a pencil, and also you'll need a counter sink and a 1/4-inch nut driver. OK, now let's start by assembling the hive body. The first thing we'll want to do is to get out our two hive ends. We'll set them to the side. We'll need to shift a few pieces around here. Let's set our tin back here at the back of the shop. Next, we will meet our hive sides, those two boards with the 22 and 1/2-degree angles on them. Lay them out. The next step is to attach the side rails onto the side of the hive. We're going to want to mark on the side rails down-- we're gonna want to mark down an inch. Put a mark on there, on both ends. Measure down from the top. Now, if you look, we have an angled piece here, an angled side, and we have a square side. You're gonna want to mark down from the square side. Mark down an inch and put a mark. On the other side of that inch mark, you're gonna want to run a bead of glue the length at that hive side rail. All the way down. The next thing you're gonna want to do is line the hive side with the hive side rail right onto those 1-inch marks. Make sure it's flush, both ends. So now you're gonna want to make sure these two angles, this one here and this one here, are parallel with each other. OK, with your inch and 1/4 screw, you'll wanna put one about 3 inches. You don't have to measure. It doesn't have to be exact. One at about 3 inches from the end of the hive. Now one at the other end at about the same distance, 3 inches from the end of the hive. And then one about in the middle. OK, there you go. You have your first side assembled. Now we're gonna want to do the same thing to the other hive side rail. We'll measure down from the square edge. We'll measure down an inch. At both ends, we're gonna place a mark, measure down an inch. We'll run a bead of glue on the other side of that 1-inch mark the entire length of that hive side rail. Again, we'll place the side board right onto those marks. We'll wanna make sure they're flush. Then we'll use three more inch and 1/4 screws. And we will screw it together. And then one screw right in the middle. Now, the next thing you'll wanna do, put these hive sides back onto the bench and measure from the end an inch and 3/8 mark. Inch and 3/8. Both ends, inch and 3/8. Come to this end. We'll do the same thing. From the edge of the hive in, inch and 3/8, two marks on each end of each side. The next thing we're going to want to do is we're going to want to attach the ends of our hives to that section right there. First, we'll apply a bead of glue down the edge of the hive end. We'll want to place the end right onto those marks. Now, one important thing to do is to line the top edge of the end right up here with this here. It needs to be one plane, from this angle all the way across. Down here, this is gonna be your entrance. This is where the bees are gonna come in and out of the hive. So you'll want this flush right with this here. Now I will take some 2-inch screws. This is where it becomes a little awkward, but you'll hold it with one hand. You'll hold it flush. And with the other hand, you'll put a screw through the side, into the hive end. Make sure the bottom part stays on that mark. Here we go with another screw. I always put three screws into each side of the hive end. Now we'll repeat this process at the other end of this hive side. Apply a bead of glue to the edge, and line it up with those marks. Again, make sure this plane comes in right with this plane here. Line it up. Make sure it's on the marks, flush with the top. All right. Placing this just like this here, we'll take the other side and we'll lay it here. First thing we'll want to do is run a bead of glue down this edge, this top edge here of the hive end, and then a bead of glue at this end here. We'll line up this plane here with this plane over here. And we'll screw one screw into the end. We need to make sure we're still on the marks. If we're still on the marks, we'll put our second screw in, and then our third screw, right in the middle of those. Now we're ready to finish up the last end. Line up our hive end with the marks, making sure the top plane comes right into this angle. Put our first screw in. We'll have to do some tweaking here to bring the bottom of the hive right up into this angle. We need to make sure we're on the right marks over here. And put a screw in here. OK, there we have it. We've got three screws into each end. And now we're ready to put the bottom board on. Flip the whole hive over. Place it upside down. And we'll take the bottom board, and we'll set it up here. It's very important at this time to countersink the holes that we're gonna put the screws in. The bottom board tends to split out with the screws so close to the edge. So we're gonna countersink all the screws we put in the bottom board. Now, we want to keep the drill at the same plane as the side of the hive. See my plane of my drill? It's gonna go right in. And then we go on this side. We'll want to go at the same plane again. Here we go again, down at this end. Remember, we're keeping it at the same plane. Keeping it at the same plane. And then two holes in the middle, one on each side. Now, before we screw it in, we'll want to glue it. I glue every part of my hive together, because it's gonna be out in the weather, and the boards tend to warp if they're not glued together. Here we go, a bead of glue the whole length of the hive. Make sure it's flush. Now using our 2-inch screws, we're gonna screw the bottom board onto the hive. OK, there we go. OK, now there's the body of the hive. We're ready to assemble the rooftop. OK, to assemble the roof, we're going to want to lay out our roof ends. We'll want to pre-drill two holes at the end of each roof end. If we don't pre-drill it, they tend to split out. So here we go. I'll pre-drill it about 3/8 of an inch in and 3/8 both directions. Another role 3/8 from the edge, 3/8 from the top. We'll repeat this on all four. Now we'll take our hive side rails, and we will put glue on the first one. Take two 2-inch screws. Now we'll attach the other roof rail onto the other side. Now let's flip the whole hive roof over. We'll start by gluing the first rail here on the end. And place it right on the edge. Make sure the end lines up with this edge. Come over here, place some more glue on the end of this hive rail, and attach the end right on there. OK, that's the main frame. Now we're ready to put the tin on. We'll want to line this point right up here with this point here. That's how we'll start. Align point to point. Now with our 1/4-inch nut driver, we have our sheet metal screws. I'm gonna put four on each end, making sure this peak is lined up. I'll start here at the bottom. Still lined up. Put another one on the side here. Now we'll put four screws on the other end. We want to remember to line up our two peaks with each other. OK, now that we've got our tin on, we're ready to start installing the Styrofoam. It really doesn't matter whether we have the shiny side in or out. It's just a bee hive. And the Styrofoam is placed in there to keep the hive from getting too hot in the summertime. Press that Styrofoam in. Next thing we'll do is we'll put our Styrofoam stops in. But before we place them in there, we're gonna want to pre-drill them. We want to pre-drill three holes along the stops, one about 3 inches from one end, 3 inches from the other end, and one in the middle. We'll do that to both stops. Put our first stop in, and then our second one. Then we'll take three inch and 1/4 screws, and we'll screw that stop in. Making sure it's tight against the Styrofoam. Three more screws for the other Styrofoam stop. All right, now your roof is done. There you go. You've got your Styrofoam that keeps them cooler in the summertime, then you've got your tin on the top. Let's set this to the side and go ahead and assemble the legs onto the hive body. First thing we'll do is turn our hive upside down again. We want to make two marks an inch and 3/8 from the end of the hive in. Inch and 3/8. That's where we're gonna place our legs. Now, before we start screwing our legs on, we're gonna pre-drill a hole about 2 inches down on each leg, right on the pointy end. 2 inches down, and we'll put a mark. Using our pre-driller, one hole there. Next thing we'll want to do is get out our 2-inch screws. Place them into the end here. Now, on our legs we're not gonna use any glue, because treated wood doesn't really glue to wood glue. It's still usually pretty moist, and the wood glue doesn't stick. So the next step we're gonna do is line up the side of our leg with our two marks there. We'll take the point and place it right onto the hive side rail, lining the side of the leg up with our two marks. We will then screw it in. Still lined up? Go to the other end. Put the next leg on. We've put the point right onto the high side rail, lined up this side with the marks. Make sure to get it nice and tight. Now let's come onto the other side of the hive and make some inch and 3/8 marks there also. OK, now we'll place our next leg on. We're gonna want to make sure we get this plane here lined up with our two marks. And the point is gonna sit right onto the hive side rail. Make sure we line back up with that mark there. And then we'll put our last leg on. OK, now we're ready to assemble our leg brackets onto the legs. They're gonna go onto the back side of the legs. And we're gonna use two 2-inch screws into each leg. Next, we'll put our next bracket on this side over here, using 2-inch screws. All right, now let's roll the whole hive over. And from the inside, we're going to put screws into both the bottom bracket and into the legs. We're gonna put two screws into each leg. And then two screws down through the bottom board, into the bracket. We'll do the same on this end. Next, we need to place all our hive bars into the top of the hive here and put our hive stops on the end. OK, we'll start by placing all the bars in one at a time. We have not yet glued the foundation in them, but that will be the next step. Now let's place our divider board right in the center. This is just gonna follow the bees as they grow in the hive, so we can place this just anywhere in the middle. We'll pull our boards together. Now, our last two top bars that go into the hive are going to be the stops. They're gonna keep our top bars from falling off the other end. So we will drill a hole in either end of this, and we will screw this hive stop tight. So let me go ahead and do that real quick before we put them in. I'm gonna put one hole at each end of the bar, about an inch in. Now at the other end, an inch in. On our second stop, an inch in. The other end, an inch in. OK, now we'll place this stop at the end of the hive here. We're gonna put it pretty close to flush to this edge. This plane of the end of the hive will come up the same plane as this stop. Now we'll use the inch and 1/4 screws. We'll attach that in. At this end of the hive, wherever this stop lands, that's where we're gonna put it. It may be a little bit over the end, but that's OK. It's just here to keep these bars from falling off. Using two more inch and 1/4 screws, we'll put them into this last top-bar stop. One screw at this end, one screw at the other end. All right, that's the assembly of the hive, but we have one more thing to do. We need to glue in all the foundation pieces. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take out all the bars, and I'm gonna turn them upside down and place them back in the hive right here. All the bars. There we go. Now let's take our foundation strips. And we're gonna want to center the foundation strips right in the center of those bars. Place them all in. Now, I always place my foundation strips in before I glue it. I'm going to glue these foundation strips in, but I want to place them in first. If I put my foundation in first and then apply my glue on the edges, as it's running down into the groove, some of it will also run into the cells. It'll act like grips. And when stress comes on it, it won't come out. So let's finish placing this in, and then we'll glue it. Centering them. Here we go. Got it, perfect. Line them all up. And we'll start gluing then. We'll start our first bead of glue. Right. Give it a good amount. Down one side. Let it flow into the crack and into the cells and down the other side. Don't be shy. Put plenty of glue in there. You don't want these starter strips coming out when the bees build their combs on them. OK, now you're gonna want to wait till the glue dries at least 12 to 24 hours. Now that the glue is dry, we'll begin to flip these bars over. OK, now let's put the lid on. There's your finished hive. You can either paint it or use some linseed oil to finish the outside. I recommend putting some sort of sealer on it to help your hive weather. It'll last a lot longer. But it's ready for bees at this point. To learn more on beekeeping, watch our other beekeeping courses. We will teach you how to start a hive, the biology of bees, how to harvest honey, and much more. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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Top Bar Hive Layout and Milling

A vast majority of Americans no longer have any direct connection with the source of their food nor have the knowledge to produce it themselves. Join the movement to take the provision of our daily bread back into our own hands. Hi, I'm Jake Klingensmith, beekeeper and instructor at the plowshare. In this video, I'm going to show you how to build your own top-bar hive. I've been keeping bees in the top-bar hive for over 14 years now, and I've found it to be the most simple and sustainable hive for the family farm. This version of the top-bar hive is my own design. I've developed it specifically for the warmer climates of the south. Although, it's a superior hive and works well for any climate or location. First, we will start by going over the parts of the top-bar hive. OK, we've got the legs, the leg braces, the roof, and the hive ends. Then the hive sides, side rails. Then inside the hive, we've got the top bars. And attached to the bottom of the top bars, are the starter comb, and then the divider board. Now, let's go over some of the tools you're to need to build a top-bar hive. Most of your cutting is going to be done on a table saw. So you'll need a table saw, a drill to put together the hive, a counter sink and a quarter inch nut driver, you'll need a skil saw for most of your square cuts, of course, you're going to need a tape measure. You'll need two types of squares. You'll need your framing square to do the straight marks and a combination for your angled marks. Then you'll also need a straight edge of some sort. I just use a four foot t-square. You'll also need a razor knife for cutting out the Styrofoam, a pencil, and a black magic marker. Now, if you don't have all the tools necessary for cutting out a top-bar hive, you can purchase an unassembled top-bar hive kit from me at TexasHives.com. So let's go over the different supplies we're going to need to build this hive. We're going to need four 1x12x8 untreated pine or cedar boards. We will also need two 2x4x8s. This is going to be for the legs, so we're going to want it to be treated wood. You'll need a piece of tin, 5V crimped metal roofing. It's two feet wide. That's a standard width by four feet long. You'll also need one sheet of half inch Styrofoam roof sheathing. As far as the smaller hardware goes, we're going to need two inch screws, an inch and a 1/4 screws, we'll also need some sheet metal screws for holding on the tin. You're going to want to get some exterior Titebond wood glue, and then four sheets of starter foundation. Now, let's begin by laying out the parts of the hive. OK, first we'll lay out the leg assembly. We'll start by setting our combination square to 12 and 1/2 degrees, and then this will mark the bottom of the leg. We'll measure off of that from the long point of the bottom of the leg. We're going to measure off of 30 inches and, put a mark. Then we'll set our combination square to 58 degrees. This makes the angle for the next leg, and we'll measure off of the long point of the next leg, 30 more inches. We'll reset our square to 12 and 1/2 degrees. Now, that'll be the same angle we're going to use for our leg brace. OK, now, we'll measure over 21 and 1/4". Make a mark. Now, we'll change the combination square to 12 and 1/2 degrees the opposite direction, and we'll mark that on the two by four. That makes your first two legs, and then your leg support. We'll have to lay out the same thing onto the next two by four so that you'll have your four legs, and then your two braces. OK, first we'll lay out the hive parts on this first board. We're going to start here by laying out the two hive ends. First, I set my combination square at 22 and 1/2 degrees. I start from the corner and I mark down. Then from the corner of my board, I measure over 16 and 1/2 inches, and I put a mark there. And I change my combination square to go 22 and 1/2 degrees the other direction. Put a mark there. That's my first hive end. Now, I'll have to measure down 7 and 1/2. And then I'll come over here and measure 7 and 1/2. Draw a line with our square in between those two. That creates my end piece right here. Now, from this mark, we'll leave an eighth of an inch here for our saw blade, and we'll start our tape measure right on that mark, and we'll go over 16 and 1/2 inches. We'll measure again, 7 and 1/2, put a mark there, and make a mark. I'll take my combination square and change it to 22 and 1/2, now going in the other direction again. I come from that mark, and I draw down. I'll use the square to finish the line out. OK, that's my two end pieces for the hive. The next thing I'll lay out on this board are my two roof ends. They will go in this next blank space. I will start by putting a two inch square line. I'll square it from the end of the board, I come up two inches, and I put a mark. Then I measure over 22 inches, that's the width of my roof end, and then I'll need a center mark at 11 inches. From that center mark, I measure up five inches, and put a little x. At my 22 inch mark, I measured up two inches. Put a mark. Now, from my five inch mark, which is the peak of my roof end, draw a straight line down to the two inch mark, and that creates the angles of the top of the roof. Here we go, we've got our first roof end. Now, starting over here, we'll draw out our next roof end. We'll leave an eighth of an inch, that's going to be our saw blade width. We'll measure over another 22 inches. We'll come and put our 11 inch center mark using our square. We'll measure up five inches and put a little x where the peak of the roof end is. Next, we'll come over to our next 20 inch mark, go straight up, square up, and put a mark at two inches. And from there, we'll start from the peak, that five inch center mark, and we'll draw down to our two inch mark. OK, now we've laid out our two roof ends. Next, we need to lay out our divider board in this empty space here. We'll want to change our combination square to 22 and 1/2 degrees. We want to lay out this divider board all the way as close to the end as we can get. So we'll start right here again on the point, and we'll draw mark across. We'll measure over 17 and an eighth, and put a mark there. Here we go again. Change our square to 22 and 1/2 degrees going the other direction. We'll want to measure down nine and a quarter. That'll be the bottom of our divider board. And we'll square across those two lines. OK, now we've got this empty space here that we will mark out our roof rails and our Styrofoam stops. First, we want to square off a section seven inches down. Our roof is going to be 46 and 1/2 inches long. We'll put a mark right there, and we'll square that off also. Our first rail is two inches. Then we'll leave an eighth of an inch for our saw cut. We'll go another two inches, that's four and an eighth. Then our first Styrofoam rail starts another eighth inch for another saw blade width. It's a 3/4 inch stop. Leave an eighth for the saw, and that puts it right at five and 7/8. So we've got our first rail, our second rail, and our two Styrofoam stops. We've got to mark that out on both ends of this board. Two inches, leave an eighth, go two more inches, leave an eighth, 3/4 of an inch, leave an eighth, 3/4 of an inch. Now we'll grab our long square and draw lines across here. Now, we need to draw a line between-- for the second one. And here's our Styrofoam stops. We'll draw a line across there, and then our second Styrofoam stop. OK, there are some of the hive pieces. Now that you've laid out all of your little pieces, this is what your first board should look like. You've got your two ends, then you've got your roof ends here, your two roof rails and your two foam stops, and then your divider board. Now we're ready to lay out the next piece, which will be your hive sides. We will set the first board on top of those legs over there and draw out the hive sides next. And we will start with our framing square down at this end, we will draw a square line. You should always square off your boards. You never know when the factory cut them a little bit crooked. So we'll use the square, we'll square off the first end with a line, and then from that line, we will measure our 45 and 1/2 inches. And we will make a mark right there. This creates the first side piece. We'll square it down to that mark. Then, we'll start at this end, we'll square the end off again. We'll measure over from that line our 45 and 1/2 inches. And another mark. That's our other side. This piece here, is going to be both our hive sides and our hive side rails. We'll cut out our hive side first with a 22 and 1/2 degree angles on it. And our cut off right here, is what's going to be our hive side rails. So that's our second board. OK, now let's set the two hive sides over here, and let's lay out our last piece, the hive bottom. Again, we always want to square off the end. And from there, we'll measure our 45 and 1/2 inches. Our sides and our bottom are all going to be 45 and 1/2 inches. Then we'll mark down and square that off. This here creates the bottom. We'll set that to the side, and we'll begin to lay out our first set of top bars. We'll square off the end. We will make our measurements as we cut out the individual slabs. First thing we want to do, is set our skil saw to 22 and 1/2 degrees. Next, we'll want to set the depth of our saw blade to just below the width of our board. OK, we're ready to make the first cut. Now that we've cut our 22 and 1/2 degree angle on the end of this board. We'll want to flip it over and measure from that long point, 18 and 3/4 down, and we'll square it from there. Now, with our saw, we'll cut out our first slab. Now, what's happened is, is we're going to have our saw cut going-- one going this direction and one cut going this direction. Every time we flip the board, we'll get those two opposite angles. This slab here is going to be cut into nine different bars. We'll rip it down. OK, there's our first slab. Now, we'll rotate our board again, and we'll measure from the long point 18 and 3/4 again. Now, we'll want to repeat this process until we've cut out the entire board. That'll give us enough bars for the whole hive. Now that we've got our slabs here, we'll want to rip these all down to an inch and three eights. That's the first thing we'll do on the table saw. Now, the first thing we're going to want to do, is set our fence of the table saw to an inch and three eights. And then, we want to set the height of our blade to just above the board itself, and we're ready to start cutting. Now, we'll want to repeat that process until we've cut all our slabs into bars. Now, we'll want to sort through these and get out anything that has broken. This one's broken and is short, so we'll want to put that to the side. We'll also want to get any out that are-- oh, here's another broken one. We'll want to also get out any that are narrow. See, this one's a little bit narrower, it's a cut off. We have another cut off. That one's weak. All right, there's our stack. And we're ready to start cutting in the groove. Now, we'll want to cut a 3/8 inch channel into this top bar. That's where the foundation, the starter strip, is going to go. It's going to be glued into that. So the first thing we'll do, is we'll set our blade height at 3/8 of an inch. Now, it's very important to set our blade right at 3/8, because we don't want to cut totally through. We want to just create a channel. Then the next thing we're going to want to do-- now, we'll want to set the inside of the blade to 11/16. And what we'll do, is we'll run our bar through one time on one side. We'll flip our bar over, and run it through the other side. We'll end up making two cuts, and that'll make a wide enough groove for that foundation to slip in. All right, let's cut that. Now, this is a very picky measurement here. We've got to make sure that this foundation can slip in. See? It's a little too tight. So I want to adjust my fence so that it takes a little bit more off. I'll adjust it in a little bit. You want to adjust it just a hair line measure. Let's try it again. All right, there we go. We've got it right, so now we're ready to rip all our bars. Now that we've cut all the channels in our top bars, we're ready to cut out the starter strip that goes in those top bars. Right. Here we've got our four sheets. First thing we're going to want to do, is cut them down to 14 inches. We'll set our fence to 14 inches, and we'll rip all our foundation to that 14 inches. The next thing we need to do is set our fence to one inch, and cut all these sheets into the one inch starter strips. OK. Now that we've got all our starter strips cut out, we'll set these aside and start cutting out the main hive body. OK, now, let's cut out our hive ends, our roof ends, roof rails, and divider board. Make sure your skil saw is back set to a square cut. And we'll start by cutting out the first hive end. All right, so that's end board two. Now, we'll want rotate the whole board around and cut out our divider board next. OK, that makes for our divider board. The next thing we want to cut out is our roof rails. What I'll do is I'll cut these out on the table saw. That'll keep for much more parallel pieces. Now I'll set my saw to 3/4 of an inch to cut out my foam stops. Next step I'll do is I'll cut all my roof rails and my foam stops to length. I've already got a mark down. OK, now, all we have left to cut out on that first board are the two roof ends. I first start by cutting out the square ends. OK, there's our first board cut out, two roof ends, one divider board, two hive ends, two Styrofoam stops, and then the roof rails. All right, let's set these to the side and proceed to cut out the hive sides. OK, now, we're ready to cut out hive sides. There you have your first cut on your hive side. So the next thing we need to do is come over to the table saw, and set the blade at 22 and 1/2 degrees. 22 and 1/2 degrees. And measure right on top of the table to the inside edge of the blade, nine inches. Move your fence over to there. This is where you'll want to get somebody to help you to cut these hive sides out. My friend Amis here is going to help me. What I'm going to do is I'm going to send the board through, and cut my first angle. That will leave my left over piece being the hive side rails. Then I'll set that to the side, and flip the side over, and that'll give me my other angle. Let's do it. OK, there's my first side. It has two 22 and 1/2 degree angles on both edges. And then my hive side rail, we'll cut the next board. thank you. Now that we've got our hive sides cut out, we'll set them to the side and cut out the last piece of wood, which is going to be the hive bottom. Here's our bottom board. Rotate it around here. OK, here's your hive bottom. This is going to be an extra piece of wood. This is the only piece of scrap we'll have. It can be made into a bird house-- or else if you're making two hives, you can easily use this wood as another hive bottom. Next, after having cut out our bottom here, we'll want to set this to the side, and we're ready to cut out our legs. We'll start here at the end of this two by four. First thing we want to do, again, is to make sure our saw, our saw blade, is set just a little bit below the two by four. There's your first leg. Now we're ready to start on the last two by four. All right, that's all your wooden pieces. Now, when you get your piece of metal from the metal dealer, you'll want him to cut it down to 48 inches. But if he didn't cut it down for you, you'll just take a jigsaw and cut your metal down to the 48 inches. OK, now we're ready to cut out our Styrofoam. We want to measure up 46 and 1/2 inches. 46 and 1/2 inches. Take our razor knife and our long square, and we'll cut the whole thing. The next measurement is going to be 20 and 3/8. 20 and 3/8. Now that we have all our parts cut out, we are ready to start assembling our bee hive.

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