Chop Wood Carry Water Plant Seeds is a blog about Self-Sufficient Homesteading. How can we live by creating a sustainable bio-diverse world, instead of by consuming and destroying the only one we have? What kind of teaching have you got if you exclude nature?

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Top Bar Hive Finished

What a great feeling seeing the hive finished today :) what a joy :)
I decided not to drill same holes on both sides of the hive. The main entrance will be the high entrance at the end of this photo which is also known as Telescope Anti-Varroa Entrance. The lower entrance will be used to catch new swarms. I decided to make entrances at the ends instead of the sides.
Low entrance from inside ...
Low entrance from outside, closed with wine corks ...
Hight entrance from inside ...
High Telescope Anti-Varroa Entrance from outside. Bees still fly in low and climb the inner wall to enter into the hive up high avoiding the falling Varroa. 
Decorating :) burning into the wood a few bees :) ...
the door lock ...
door for the observation window open and the glass is in place ...
Door for the observation window closed ...
Finished :) ...
ready to be painted with linseed oil ...
Before being coated in oil ...
after being coated in oil ...
The Top Bar Hive beauty infront of Kretsloppshuset
And finaly the costs :) Guess what? Total cost was 406 kr (swedish crowns). In the photo above one can see the price list of material used. electricity used cost so low that we decided not to mention at all (just a couple of crowns). A new beehive costs at least 2000kr + the equipment for extracting the honey which is not needed in Top Bar Hives :)

1 comment:

  1. hello, congratulations on such a good looking TBH! Your windows and decorations are especially nice. I'm currently gathering the materials to make my first TBH, and I am inspired by you!

    Good luck with the bees, see you over on the Biobees Natural Beekeeping Forum.

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