Beekeeping Hive type

We've been doing a lot of research lately on the type of bee hive we want to start. The Langstroth hives, big white boxes that most people are familiar with when you think "bee hive" are on the expensive side to start up. With boxes, supers for honey, frames and possibly frame foundation (guides for bees to build on) the price tag for us to start 2 hives was getting into the $700 range, not including the bees!

I searched the Warre` hives, they look similar to a Lang hive accept the bees build there own comb. No frames or foundation. Some truly beautiful hive material, however they get heavy. For the Lang method if you need more room (generally speaking) a new hive box is added on top. But I guess that's now really how bees work, they like to work from the top down. This is how the Warre hives work, when you need a new box for more bee room it gets added to the bottom. A lot of heavy lifting to get the boxes on top moved or a special lift must be built. Nope..... not gonna happen.

We've settled on Top Bar Hives or TBH. There's two types Kenyan and Tanzanian. One box is "V" shaped the other is square. Other than that they are very similar. The idea is a box that runs horizontally not vertically like the previous two hives I mentioned. We will be easily able to make our hives by hand, rather than having someone craft them for us. By doing our beekeeping this way and building the hives ourselves we can get into the hobby for well under $400. That is a very high number, assuming we use VERY high quality wood, purchased new. If we can scrounge up some pallets we might be able to make it for even cheeper! We'll see.

Here's a link to a beautiful top bar hive and bees.