Kenyan Top Bar Hive: Definition, Design and Dimensions

Reviewed by Thomas B. · Last Updated September 22, 2026 · How we review

A Kenyan top bar hive (KTBH) is a single-storey, horizontal beehive with sloping side walls, in which the bees build natural comb hanging down from a row of loose wooden bars laid across the open top, with no frames and no foundation. Each bar carries one comb, the beekeeper lifts and inspects bars one at a time, and the colony grows sideways along the trough rather than upward through stacked boxes. The sloped walls are what make it Kenyan rather than simply a top bar hive.

Key Takeaways

• A Kenyan top bar hive is a frameless horizontal hive: one long trough with V-shaped sloping sides, closed by a row of removable top bars from which the bees hang one natural comb per bar.
• The sloping sides, usually cut at about 30 degrees from vertical, approximate the rounded shape of natural comb, so the bees are less inclined to glue their combs to the walls.
• Only one measurement is genuinely critical: the width of the top bar. Cooperative Extension guidance puts it at 1 3/8 inches or 1 1/2 inches. Length, depth and slope are all negotiable.
• The Kenyan design is separated from the Tanzanian top bar hive by exactly one feature: the Tanzanian has straight vertical sides, the Kenyan has angled ones.
• Despite the name, the design was worked out by Canadian researchers in a development project that began in Kenya in 1971, not by traditional Kenyan beekeepers.
• It suits beekeepers who want low cost, no heavy lifting, comb honey and beeswax, and who accept lower extracted-honey yields and fragile, unwired comb.

What Is a Kenyan Top Bar Hive?

Strip the hive down to its parts and there is very little to it. A Kenyan top bar hive is a box, longer than it is wide, whose two long walls lean inward toward the bottom so that the cross-section is a trapezoid, or a blunt V. Across the open top sit loose wooden bars, side by side, filling the opening completely. A lid or roof goes over the bars. Somewhere at one end, or along one side, there is a small entrance. Inside, a movable partition called a follower board lets the beekeeper shrink or grow the usable cavity.

What the hive does not contain is just as defining. There are no four-sided frames. There are no sheets of wax or plastic foundation. There are no supers to stack on top. The bees are given a bar and a cavity and they do the rest, building a single sheet of comb downward from each bar in whatever shape suits them, which is a rounded, slightly tapering sheet rather than a rectangle.

Because each comb is attached only along its top edge, it is a movable-comb hive rather than a movable-frame hive. That distinction matters, since state apiary rules generally require that combs can be removed and inspected for disease. A top bar hive satisfies that; a fixed-comb hive such as a traditional straw skep or a hollowed log hive does not.

KTBH is simply the abbreviation, and it is the reason a good share of the searches for this hive are four letters long. Some people also write it Kenya top bar hive without the n. Both refer to the same object. Within the wider family of top bar beehives, and the still wider family of horizontal hives, the Kenyan is the sloped-sided branch.

Where the Design Actually Came From

The origin story repeated across most beekeeping sites is that Kenyan villagers invented this hive in the 1960s. That is not quite what happened, and the real version is more interesting.

The hive as it is now recognised came out of a bee development project run in Kenya by Canadian researchers, most often credited to Dr Maurice V. Smith and Dr Gordon Townsend of the University of Guelph, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, with the initial project beginning in 1971. The brief was not to build a better hobby hive for North America. It was to give beekeepers who were already harvesting honey from fixed-comb log hives a container they could build from locally milled timber, work with nothing more than a smoker and a veil, and harvest from without destroying the brood nest each time.

That history explains the design decisions. Nothing about a KTBH needs precision joinery, metal frame rests, a saw jig for foundation grooves, or a honey extractor. It also explains why published dimensions vary so wildly from one plan set to another: the design spread as an idea rather than as a parts catalogue, and was never meant to be standardised the way Langstroth equipment is.

From there it travelled outward into hobby beekeeping in Britain, Australia and the United States, which is where most plan sets available today come from. Because the design originates in East African development work, African and development-agency manuals are the closest thing to source documents for it, and they remain topically correct references even for a US beekeeper. Bees for Development, for example, still specifies bar widths in the 32 to 34 mm range for African Apis mellifera races.

Why the Sides Slope, and by How Much

The sloping wall is the single feature that separates this hive from every other top bar design, so it is worth understanding rather than just copying.

Bees hanging comb from a bar in an open cavity do not build a rectangle. They build a sheet that is widest at the top and curves away at the bottom corners, roughly following a catenary, the curve a chain makes when hung from two points. In a straight-sided box, the bees meet the vertical walls with empty space below the natural curve of the comb, and many colonies will fill that space by welding the comb to the wall with wax spurs. Those attachments have to be cut at every inspection, and cutting them is how new beekeepers break comb.

Angle the walls inward and the wall sits roughly where the comb was going to stop anyway. The University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension states the mechanism plainly:

The most common types are Tanzanian Top Bar Hives – with straight sides – or Kenyan Top Bar Hives – with angled sides. Because a honey bee’s comb is naturally rounded on the bottom, bees seem to consider these slopes sides as part of the floor, and tend to avoid attaching the combs to the sides or bottom of the hive, making each comb easier to remove.

— Jon Zawislak, University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, Beekeeping Basics: Introduction to the Bee Hive

The most commonly recommended angle is about 30 degrees from vertical, and plan sets in circulation generally fall in a 30 to 40 degree band. Thirty degrees is the figure quoted most often because it lines up with the geometry of the comb face: with the walls at that angle, the cell openings on the comb sit roughly parallel to the underside of the bars.

From a woodworking standpoint the angle is the part of the build most people get wrong, because the bevel has to be ripped on both long walls and cut on both end boards so the pieces meet cleanly. If your saw will not tilt, a shallower angle is far better than a botched one. What matters is that the wall leans in; the exact degree is a refinement, not a requirement.

The One Dimension That Has to Be Right

This is what separates a hive that works from a hive that turns into a solid block of cross-comb, and it is remarkably simple: the top bars have to be the correct width.

The only critical dimension for these hives is the width of the top bar. It should be 1 3/8 inches wide or 1 1/2 inches wide. This give room for a honey comb to be centered on each bar, with half of a bee space on each side.

— Jon Zawislak, University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, Beekeeping Basics: Introduction to the Bee Hive

The logic is the same bee space arithmetic Langstroth worked out in 1851. One comb, plus the gap the bees need in order to walk on either face of it, comes to a fixed repeating distance. Make the bar that wide and the bars, laid edge to edge, place each comb exactly one comb-plus-a-bee-space from its neighbour. Too narrow and the bees build across two bars to get the width they want; too wide and they squeeze an extra thin comb into the gap. Either way you lose the ability to lift a single comb out, which is the entire point of the hive.

The narrower figure, 1 3/8 inches, is close to the 32 to 35 mm range quoted in international sources, and it suits the brood nest, where comb is thin. The wider figure, 1 1/2 inches, suits the honey end of the hive, where bees draw honey comb noticeably fatter. Many builders make both: a set of narrow bars for the brood area and a set of wider ones for storage. That is a preference, not a rule.

Two secondary numbers are worth carrying in your head. First, comb deeper than roughly 12 inches becomes heavy enough, once filled with honey and warm from the hive, that it tends to tear away from its bar when lifted, which argues against building a very deep trough. Second, many builders cut their bars 19 inches long, the same length as a Langstroth frame top bar, purely so comb can be transferred between the two systems later. Neither is mandatory. Both save trouble.

Every other dimension really is yours. Published Kenyan hives run anywhere from about a metre long to well over four feet, with top widths from roughly 12 to 20 inches. A hive that holds 20 bars and a hive that holds 30 are both legitimately Kenyan top bar hives.

Kenyan vs Tanzanian vs Langstroth

Most comparisons of these three hives drift into opinion. Below are only the points where they genuinely differ in construction or handling.

The one line in that table that decides most purchases is frame interchangeability. If you ever want the option of moving comb into standard equipment, the Tanzanian top bar hive is the version to build, because a straight-sided box can be cut to Langstroth frame dimensions. The Kenyan gives that up in exchange for cleaner comb removal. It is a real trade, not a marketing distinction.

For completeness, the Kenyan is not the only horizontal hive with a following. The Layens hive is horizontal but uses deep frames, and the Warre hive uses top bars but stacks vertically. Sloped sides plus top bars plus a horizontal layout is the Kenyan combination specifically.

The Rest of the Hive, Part by Part

Top bars. Flat strips, at least about 3/4 inch thick so they do not bow under a heavy comb, cut to the chosen width and long enough to rest on both walls. Each needs a comb guide down the centre line of its underside: a sawn V-bevel, a thin strip of wood glued into a kerf, or a bead of melted beeswax. Without a guide the bees choose their own start line, and it will not be the one you wanted.

Body. The trough itself. Rough sawn softwood is fine. Because the walls lean, the end boards are trapezoids, and cutting those two pieces accurately is most of the job.

Follower board. A blank partition cut to the internal trapezoid profile, sitting on the floor and sealing the cavity at one end. A new colony gets a handful of bars and the follower right behind them; as comb is drawn, the follower moves back. This is the KTBH equivalent of adding a super, and leaving it out is a common reason small swarms fail to establish.

Entrance. Usually a row of small holes, around an inch across, or a slot near one end, so that the brood nest sits at the entrance end and honey accumulates away from it.

Roof. A separate lid resting over the bars, ideally with an air gap and an overhang. The bars themselves act as the inner cover, so the roof only has to shed weather.

Legs. Not universal, but the hive is worked standing upright rather than bent over, and putting the bars at waist height is the main ergonomic argument for this design. It is also what makes the hive attractive for small-space and backyard setups, where a single unit sits permanently in one spot.

What Working a Kenyan Top Bar Hive Is Like

An inspection has a different rhythm to a Langstroth inspection. You open the far end of the hive first, away from the brood, and work forward. You lift one bar at a time, keeping the comb vertical at all times, because unwired natural comb warm from the hive will fold or shear off if you turn it flat the way you would rotate a framed comb. Combs go back in the same order and the same orientation they came out.

New comb needs a light touch for the first few weeks. Until it is attached along its edges and toughened, a single comb full of nectar is genuinely fragile. Experienced top bar keepers inspect less often and more deliberately for exactly this reason, and that lighter touch is often sold as a benefit of the hive when it is really a constraint the hive imposes. Beyond that, the routine follows normal colony management practice: watch for queen failure, swarm cells, mite load and stores.

Harvest is destructive to the comb and generous with the wax. A capped honey comb is cut from its bar, the empty bar goes back with a fresh guide, and the comb is either sold or eaten as comb honey or crushed and strained. There is no extractor and no reusing drawn comb, which is why a KTBH produces less surplus honey than a Langstroth of similar colony strength and considerably more beeswax. Whether that is a cost or a benefit depends entirely on what you want out of the hive.

Running a KTBH in a Cold US Climate

This is the question the source material handles least well, because the hive was designed for a warm climate and most of the literature was written for one.

A horizontal hive cannot be made smaller by removing boxes. In a stacked hive you take a colony down to one or two boxes for winter and the bees heat a cavity that matches their size. In a long trough the cluster forms at one end and the rest of the hive is dead air behind it. The follower board is the only tool you have, and in a cold region it moves from being a spring convenience to being the central piece of winter management: closed up tight behind the last comb of stores, so the colony is not trying to hold a temperature gradient across three feet of empty box.

Two other consequences follow. First, cluster movement is sideways rather than upward, and a cold snap can strand a cluster away from its stores in a way that is less common in a vertical hive where the bees simply move up into the combs above. Arranging stores directly alongside the cluster, rather than trusting the bees to travel, is the standard answer. Second, a long single-skin box has a lot of wall area for the volume it encloses, so insulation and condensation management matter more than in a compact stack, and external winter insulation is common practice in northern states.

None of this makes the hive unsuitable for a cold climate. It does mean a plan set of tropical origin needs adapting, and that a beekeeper in the northern Plains is solving a problem the original design never had to.

Who the Kenyan Top Bar Hive Is For

The Kenyan top bar hive is a good fit if you want to build your own equipment from cheap lumber, if lifting a 40 pound honey super is not something you want to do, if you want comb honey and beeswax more than gallons of extracted honey, and if you are keeping one or two colonies rather than running an apiary at scale.

It is a poor fit if you want maximum honey yield, if you want equipment that interchanges with what everyone else in your bee club uses, if you want to move hives to pollination contracts, or if you want to buy a nucleus colony on standard frames and drop it straight in, which you cannot do in a sloped-sided box without cutting comb out and tying it onto bars.

The honest summary is that the KTBH trades productivity and standardisation for cost, comfort and comb. It was designed to make that trade deliberately, for beekeepers who had no access to milled frames or extractors. A US hobbyist choosing it today is choosing the same trade for different reasons.

For how the Kenyan top bar compares with other designs, see types of beehives compared.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Kenyan top bar hive?

A Kenyan top bar hive is a horizontal, frameless beehive with inward-sloping side walls. Removable wooden bars laid across the open top form the ceiling, and the bees build one natural comb hanging from each bar. There is no foundation and no stacking of boxes, so the colony expands sideways along the trough.

What does KTBH stand for?

KTBH is the standard abbreviation for Kenyan top bar hive, also written Kenya top bar hive. You will see it used interchangeably in plan sets and beekeeping forums, usually alongside TTBH for the Tanzanian top bar hive, which is the straight-sided version of the same basic idea.

Why does a Kenyan top bar hive have sloped sides?

Because bees build comb with a rounded lower edge. A wall that leans inward sits roughly where the comb naturally ends, so the bees treat it as floor rather than as something to brace against, and attach comb to the walls far less often. That makes lifting a single comb out much easier and safer.

What is the difference between a Kenyan and a Tanzanian top bar hive?

One feature: wall angle. The Kenyan has sloped walls, the Tanzanian has straight vertical walls. Everything else, including top bar width and the one-comb-per-bar principle, is shared. The practical consequence is that a straight-sided Tanzanian can be built to accept standard Langstroth frames, while a Kenyan cannot.

What size should the top bars be?

University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension guidance gives 1 3/8 inches or 1 1/2 inches, and calls bar width the only critical dimension in the hive. International sources quote 32 to 35 mm. The narrower size suits brood comb, the wider size suits fatter honey comb, and bars should be at least 3/4 inch thick.

What are the standard dimensions of a Kenyan top bar hive?

There are none, and that is intentional. The design was distributed so it could be built from whatever timber was available locally. Published hives run from about three to four feet long and roughly 12 to 20 inches wide at the top. Only the top bar width is genuinely fixed.

How much honey does a Kenyan top bar hive produce?

Less than a comparable Langstroth colony. Comb is cut and destroyed at harvest rather than extracted and returned, so the bees rebuild wax each season instead of refilling drawn comb. The trade is a much larger beeswax harvest and the option of selling honey still in the comb.

Is a Kenyan top bar hive good for beginners?

It is good for beginners who want to build their own hive and avoid heavy lifting, and harder for beginners who want local mentoring, since most US clubs run Langstroth equipment. Unwired comb is fragile and unforgiving of clumsy handling, so inspections demand more care from the very first season.