Which Book

I have always gone to Ted Hoopers book Guide to Bees and Honey as my go to book , but after about ten years of keeping Nationals I would like to look into Top Bar Hives, The most talked about book on line seems to be Barefoot Beekeeping can anyone recommend this ,or give me an idea of a good all round guide to TBH beekeeping that covers all the aspects ,(Equivalent to Ted Hoopers book ,but for TBH)

Moonglow said:

I have always gone to Ted Hoopers book Guide to Bees and Honey as my go to book , but after about ten years of keeping Nationals I would like to look into Top Bar Hives, The most talked about book on line seems to be Barefoot Beekeeping can anyone recommend this ,or give me an idea of a good all round guide to TBH beekeeping that covers all the aspects ,(Equivalent to Ted Hoopers book ,but for TBH)

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Phil Chandlers book is about the only one available ... but, there are a number of websites with information about TBH Beekeeping.

But, actually, if you have been keeping bees in Nationals there is not a lot more that you will need to know ... a TBH is just a different box and instead of having frames you just have top bars and the bees build free comb instead of being confined to frames,

I took the middle road and built a Long Deep Hive which I run with 14 x 12 frames which are foundationless - so all the 'apparent' desirables of the bees being able to do what they want to do in the hive with none of the disadvantages of a TBH.

So ... The first question you need to ask yourself is why ?

It would be quite easy to join two of your national brood boxes together horizontally and run them as an LDH without having to make a TBH.

Thanks for the info ,I have just ordered it

The only reason that I have looked into this is because, of a change of circumstances ,I am now in a third floor flat(no lift) and the extraction process has become to hard on my back , i could just about cope with it in the apiary ,but the stairs have killed the enjoyment,
My options were ,find somewhere else to extract or find help with the heavy lifting, I tried both of those options but with little success.
For two years I struggled on ,and came to the conclusion that I would have to give up or change things, so after looking around, the African hive (TBH) that I new about but never paid much attention to came up.After some research ,I discovered that a lot of the philosophy in this Eco friendly bee keeping method was similar to what I have thought.
They are easy and minimalistic to build,so it looked like a plan of action to go forward,
but after thinking about it (and your comments ) I am now considering this(your) as a halfway option, and would be glad of any pointers
I am assuming as you say long that you have joined two side by side rather than the Warre type of vertical, so I am interested to know how this is done ,and have you added angled sides to the internal (to give the std top bar hive shape,and do you still use supers with foundationless frames
I would be very grateful for any help

You can keep bees in an eco-friendly way in any shape of hive. Hives with frames are generally easier to manage, with less disruption to the bees because there's less comb breakage.

If it's the weight of the full size boxes that is causing you a problem you could look at the Dartington, which uses half supers, or even the Beehaus, or just transfer full frames of honey into a smaller plastic storage-type box to make them easier to carry.

Another option would be to use unwired thin super foundation in half supers and sell as cut comb honey if you can find a market for it.