Beehives: Types, Making a Hive and Siting an Apiary – Livestock: Fish and Bees (Senior 3 Agriculture) | Ganzaa

Livestock: Fish and Bees

Lessons

Senior 3 · Agriculture

Livestock: Fish and Bees

4 lessons

Lesson 3 of 4

Beehives: Types, Making a Hive and Siting an Apiary

25 min

Let's begin

For centuries Rwandan beekeepers have hung hollow logs and woven cylinders in trees and waited for a swarm to move in. Many still do: in 2022 RAB counted about 300,000 traditional hives in the country, against about 75,000 Langstroth hives and 60,000 Kenya top-bar hives. MINAGRI now encourages beekeepers to move to modern hives (Annual Report 2024–2025). To see why, you need to know how each type of hive works, and how a good hive is made and placed.

Definition

Beehive: a container in which a colony of bees is kept.

Fixed-comb hive: a hive whose combs are fixed to the walls and cannot be lifted out, such as a log hive. Movable-comb hive: one in which each comb hangs from a removable bar or frame, so it can be inspected and returned.

Top bar: a wooden bar laid across the top of a hive, from which bees build one comb. Frame: a rectangular wooden support for a comb in a Langstroth hive.

Bee space: a gap of about 6 to 9 mm that bees leave open as a passage; they fill smaller gaps with propolis and bigger ones with comb. Hives are built around it.

Queen excluder: a grid with gaps that workers can pass through but the larger queen cannot, so she cannot lay eggs in the honey boxes.

Types of beehives

Feature	Traditional (log, bark, basket, clay pot)	Kenya top-bar hive (KTBH)	Langstroth (frame) hive
Combs	fixed to the walls	movable, each hanging from a top bar	movable, built in frames, often on a wax foundation sheet
Materials and cost	local and cheap	timber or local materials; moderate cost	precise sawn timber; costly; needs an extractor
Inspection	almost impossible	easy: lift one bar at a time	easy: lift one frame at a time
Harvesting	combs cut out, brood often destroyed, bees disturbed	only honey combs taken; brood left	honey supers removed; combs spun in an extractor and reused
Honey quality and yield	low; honey mixed with brood and pollen	good; more honey than traditional hives	highest and cleanest
Skill needed	little	moderate	most

Figure 11. (a) A Kenya top-bar hive in cross-section. (b) The parts of a Langstroth hive.

Making a Kenya top-bar hive

Materials: seasoned planks (or woven bamboo or sticks plastered with mud and cow dung), nails, wire, a roof sheet, and beeswax. Avoid wood treated with chemicals, and timber with a strong smell.
Body: make a long trough with sides sloping inwards towards the bottom, typically about 90 to 100 cm long inside, about 45 cm wide at the top and 25 to 30 cm deep. The slope matches the shape bees give their combs, so they attach little comb to the walls.
Top bars: cut bars about 3.2 cm wide (the natural spacing of worker combs), enough to cover the whole top with no gaps. Run a thin line of melted beeswax, or a wooden ridge, along the middle of each bar's underside so that the bees build one straight comb on it.
Entrance: drill three to five holes about 1 cm across in one end, or cut a narrow slot; small entrances are easy to defend against robbers and enemies.
Roof: cover the bars with a roof that overhangs on every side.
Bait: rub the inside and the bars with beeswax or propolis: its smell attracts a swarm.
Mount: hang the hive on wires from posts or trees, or set it on a stand about 1 m high, with the legs or wires greased or standing in tins of water or oil to stop ants.

Siting an apiary

Plenty of flowering plants (trees, crops, wild flowers) through the year, and clean water nearby.
Shade in the hot hours and shelter from strong wind; dry, well-drained ground.
Well away from homes, schools, roads, paths and livestock, with entrances facing away from where people walk; African bees attack when disturbed.
Away from fields sprayed with pesticides: MINAGRI recommends buffer zones between sprayed fields and apiaries (2025).
Easy for the beekeeper to reach, fenced, and safe from thieves and honey badgers.

Worked example 1: how many top bars?

Problem. A top-bar hive is 96 cm long inside, and each bar is 3.2 cm wide. How many bars are needed to cover the top with no gaps?

Solution. $\text{number of bars} = \frac{96}{3.2} = 30$

Answer: 30 top bars. If the division does not come out exactly, make the last bar a little wider rather than leave a gap: bees would build comb into any gap wider than the bee space.

Worked example 2: is a modern hive worth it?

Problem. A beekeeper's traditional hive gives about 5 kg of honey a year. A top-bar hive costing 40,000 Frw is expected to give about 15 kg. Honey sells at 5,000 Frw per kg. (All values illustrative.) How long will the top-bar hive take to pay for itself?

Solution.

Extra honey per year $= 15 - 5 = 10\,\mathrm{kg}$ .
Extra income per year $= 10 \times 5\,000 = 50\,000$ Frw.
Payback time $= \frac{40\,000}{50\,000} = 0.8$ years, about 10 months.

Answer: under a year. The cleaner honey usually sells at a better price too, which shortens the payback time further.

Warning

Common mistakes. (1) Top bars of the wrong width, or gaps between them: bees join combs together and the hive can no longer be inspected. (2) Placing hives next to a path, a house or a cowshed: people and animals get stung. (3) Painting or treating the inside of a hive: bees reject strong smells and chemicals. (4) Hives standing on the ground: ants, termites, toads and damp ruin the colony.

Tip

Memory hook: "Fixed comb, fixed fate; movable comb, managed colony." Only a movable-comb hive (top-bar or Langstroth) lets you inspect, manage and harvest without destroying the brood.

GIZ Kenya and Somalia: "Kenya Top Bar Hive". Look for the sloping sides, the top bars and the entrance, and compare them with Figure 11a.

✦

Practice

Distinguish fixed-comb from movable-comb hives, giving one example of each.
What is the bee space, and why must a hive be built around it?
Why are the sides of a Kenya top-bar hive sloped?
Name the parts of a Langstroth hive from the roof down, and state the function of the queen excluder.
A top-bar hive is 120 cm long inside and the bars are 3.2 cm wide. How many full bars fit, and what should be done about the gap left over?
Give five points to consider when choosing a site for an apiary.
Give three advantages and two disadvantages of traditional hives.
RAB counted 300,000 traditional hives in 2022, more than twice as many as modern ones. Suggest three reasons why so many beekeepers still use them, and evaluate MINAGRI's call to move to modern hives.

Show answersHide answers

In a fixed-comb hive the combs are fixed to the walls and cannot be removed (log, bark, basket or pot hive); in a movable-comb hive each comb hangs from a top bar or frame and can be lifted out (Kenya top-bar hive, Langstroth hive).
The gap of about 6 to 9 mm that bees keep open as a passage. Smaller gaps are sealed with propolis and larger ones filled with comb, so bars and frames must be spaced by the bee space for combs to stay separate and removable.
Bees attach little comb to sloping walls, so the combs hang freely from the bars and can be lifted out without being cut.
Roof, inner cover, honey super(s) with frames, queen excluder, brood box with frames, floor with entrance, stand. The excluder lets workers through but stops the larger queen, so she lays no eggs in the honey boxes.
$\frac{120}{3.2} = 37.5$ , so 37 full bars, leaving 1.6 cm; make the last bar 4.8 cm wide (or two bars a little wider) so that no gap is left.
Any five: forage and water; shade and shelter; dry ground; distance from homes, schools, roads, paths and livestock; away from sprayed fields; easy access; security from thieves and honey badgers.
Advantages: cheap; local materials; little skill needed. Disadvantages: cannot be inspected; harvesting destroys combs and brood; low yield and poor-quality honey (any two).
Reasons: cheap and made from local materials; little skill or equipment needed; tradition and habit; modern hives and extractors cost money. Evaluation: modern hives give more and cleaner honey, protect the brood and allow management, so the move pays off (see Worked example 2), but it needs training, credit and equipment, which cooperatives and extension services can provide.

Key points

Hives are traditional fixed-comb (log, bark, basket, pot) or movable-comb (Kenya top-bar, Langstroth); movable combs allow inspection and clean harvests.
A KTBH has sloping sides and top bars about 3.2 cm wide with a wax starter line; all hives respect the bee space of about 6 to 9 mm.
Site hives near forage and water, in shade, on stands safe from ants, and well away from people, livestock and sprayed fields.

Sources and credits

RAB Trains Beekeepers, Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), 2022: numbers of hives of each type. Figures cited.
Annual Report 2024–2025, Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI), section 1.2.8: recommendations on modern hives and buffer zones. Facts cited.
Photo Top-Bar-Hive, by Maja Dumat, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Photo Top bar hive comb, by Mind Control at Bulgarian Wikipedia, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Photo Beekeeping langstroth hive frame, by Robert Engelhardt, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Video: Kenya Top Bar Hive, GIZ Kenya and Somalia, embedded from YouTube.

Written by Ganzaa: the text, the table, Figure 11 and the worked examples. Hive dimensions are typical values; prices and yields in Worked example 2 are illustrative.

This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1Types of beehives

2Making a Kenya top-bar hive

3Siting an apiary

Types of beehives

Making a Kenya top-bar hive

Siting an apiary