Reddit reviews Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health

I enjoyed this guy who does top bar beekeeping

Video
and book.

I would just use knotty pine (cheapest). I sealed it with raw linseed oil. If you buy the plans it calls for a stupid thickness you would have to special order (7/8" thick) for a lot of the boards because of the 'weight' of a fully loaded hive, but 1/8" of thickness doesnt really make any significant difference and you'll have a much easier time finding 1" nominal thickness (3/4" actual thickness) boards rather than 1 1/8" thickness.

At a minimum you need:

• chop/miter saw (you can get a hand powered one but that wouldn't be fun)
  
• table saw
  
• band saw (not required but it would make the top bars WAY easier to make, I used a table saw for this)
  
• drill
  
• impact driver (it makes it easier to drive fasteners in)
  
• pocket screw jig
  
• drill press
  
• Finish nailing gun would help a lot
  
• The plans call for the use of biscuit dowels to join the hive body panels but that's pretty advanced wood working and a lot of finesse work with either purchasing the biscuit dowels or making them yourself and it adds the need of a router to the mix. So, I just drilled angled holes and used screws or pocket screws/jig
  
• other misc. tools like measuring tapes, pencils, etc.
  
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  The hardest part was making the top bars (cutting, drilling, etc.) and getting them straight and not warped. They are really expensive from backyardhive.com compared to the time and material required to do it yourself but, it's moderately advanced work getting that right or at least knowing how to fib things to make it work like I did.
  
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  Like I said before, if I were to make them again, I would use 2" nominal thickness boards for the hive body because it would reduce some of the difficulty of making the top bars work because of the ridge that you make to rest the bars on makes the following board pretty difficult to fabricate if your cuts aren't 'just so'. This would also help with insulation (both in hot and cold climates). I would also not mess with an end entrance/landing board that are in the plans. It adds unnecessary complexity to the project. I would rather do a combined approach from the cathedral hive and what you will find in Les Crowder's book: Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health. He has found that the bees prefer and entrance on the side of the top bar hive, towards the bottom board, about half a foot back from the front of the hive that is about 3/8" tall by 6" long (these numbers are from memory so they could be inaccurate).

As a noob, I've been reading and acquiring a lot of beekeeping books lately. Here are my thoughts:

"Homegrown Honey Bees" by Alethea Morrison is a nice introductory book that is loaded with photos. It's definitely a gentle intro book more than a reference book.

I really love "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping" by Dean Stiglitz and Laurie Herboldsheimer. It covers all the basics and teaches a treatment-free approach. I was put off by the Beekeeping for Dummies book, which repeatedly recommends prophylactic use of chemical treatments.

After that I'd recommend a good reference book that has hive management diagrams, such as "The Beekeeper's Handbook" by Diana Sammataro and Alphonse Avitabile.

If you're interested in top-bar hives, I would get "Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health" by Les Crowder and Heather Harrell, and "The Thinking Beekeeper: A Guide to Natural Beekeeping in Top Bar Hives" by Christy Hemenway. Backyardhive.com has a great DVD on top-bar hive management.

If you want to geek out on beekeeping history, "The Archaeology of Beekeeping" by Eva Crane is legendary. It's sadly out of print and very expensive to buy. I found it at the library.