The Ultimate Top Bar Bee Hive!
The Garden Hive is a top bar honeybee hive created especially for gardeners, orchardists, and honey lovers everywhere. The attractive top bar design complements any landscape and is especially suitable for urban and suburban settings where it blends into the scenery. There is no heavy lifting, no expensive honey processing equipment, and no parts to be replaced.
Everything you will need is included except for the bees, and we will help you with that too. Construction is of solid rough-textured cypress with solid poplar interior parts. There are no plastics or chemicals used in construction of the hive other than a water based waterproofing coating applied to the roof.
What is a top bar hive and how is it different from the hives you are used to seeing?
Top bar hives have been around since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. They are still quite popular today in many parts of the world where they are prized for their simplicity of construction and ease of management. In fact, top bar hives are the most popular honeybee hives in the world.
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The 
basic difference between a top bar hive and the familiar Langstroth hive is that while the Langstroth is essentially vertical in design, with the honey storage at the top of the stack and the brood nest at the bottom, a top bar hive is horizontal with the brood nest at the front of the hive and the honey stores to the rear.
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The advantages of the top bar hive become apparent when you realize that a full box (super) of honey in a Langstroth hive can weigh upwards of 75 pounds and that the entire hive must be disassembled to check on the brood nest. No wonder so many beekeepers complain about bad backs. As you can imagine, the bees can become upset by the dismantling of their home 
and thus the beekeeper must use smoke and heavy protective clothing when he works his hives. Not so with the Garden Hive. Check the colony through the full length glass observation window. To examine the brood nest, or to harvest a honeycomb you remove only one bar with comb at a time. You only disturb those bees on the single bar you are working with and those can be softly brushed off. We include a veil with the hive and advise that you use it, but you may notice that many top bar keepers wear no protective equipment at all. Simple, easy, less stress for the bees and less stress for you.
And in your own way you will be sharing the effort to restore our land to the Eden it was always meant to be.
Want to know more about the equipment and what’s involved? Check out our owner’s manual here.