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The Arizona model’s roof is white. The white roof helps to reflect heat away in very hot climates where the bees must work hard to cool the hive.
The Gold Star Top Bar hive:
It's easy to assemble, it's easy to manage, it's just easy!
The Deluxe Hive kit comes in two models. There's the New England, with its black roof for colder climates and the Arizona, with a white roof, for where it's warmer.
The Gold Star Hive kit's body, roof, and legs are all made of pine. Pine
is such a good, clean, benign wood - and completely practical for
beehives. We don't use any plywood, chipboard, or fiberboard - which
are all laminated products - in the construction of a Gold Star Top Bar
Hive kit. Why, you ask? Wouldn't it be cheaper? Well - it might be
cheaper if one looks only at dollars. But most conventional plywood,
OSB and MDF are bonded, i.e., laminated, with
formaldehyde adhesives that off-gas this formaldehyde into the environment around them.
The Environmental Protection Agency has classified formaldehyde as a
probable human carcinogen. Long term inhalation of the vapors can cause
fatigue, respiratory illness, and allergic skin reactions.
We don't want your bees living in that. (Really, we don't want you or your family living in that either!)
The top bars are made of poplar.
It's easier with poplar, and more
cost-effective, to get the cleaner grade of wood that is required for
the one-piece, beveled point design of our top bar. Its one piece
construction requires the use of a specialized piece of high-speed
equipment that doesn't take well to knotty, bumpy stock. And besides -
have you looked closely at poplar? It's really quite attractive - it
comes in colors from white to green to purple!
Why all this emphasis on the "one-piece, beveled point top bar"? Well...
there are lots of ways to make a top bar. You could use a flat bar
with a guide attached to the bottom of it with a brad nailer. You could
use plain flat bottom bars, or flat bars with grooves that have had
beeswax poured in them, or flat bars with grooves with popsicle sticks
inserted in them, or flat bars with grooves with strips of foundation
inserted in them, or flat bars with triangles glued or screwed to the
bottoms - even pieces of yarn dipped in beeswax and stuck to the bottom
of the bar! These are all relatively easy to make at home, but they
don't always do a very good job as a "comb guide", which is the most
important thing about the top bar when you're asking your bees to make
all their own natural beeswax in a TBH.
So we set out to make the most effective top bar that we could. As a
kit manufacturer, we wanted it to be affordable, sure - but it also had
to really *work*. And it had to be clean and green, just like the rest
of the kit. We didn't want anything that was screwed or glued, since
those sometimes come apart, and we had our doubts about the various
glues available; we didn't want to use starter strips of foundation,
since really, we think it's all about the wax, so foundation is the
first thing we want to get away from due to the contamination problem;
and we wanted it to be the best comb guide around.
That's why we went with the "one-piece, beveled point top bar" that
you see in a Gold Star Top Bar Hive kit. It's clean, it's green, and it
*WORKS*. It's the best little top bar in bee-dom, you might say...
The roof comes to you already painted.
The roof of your Deluxe kit is already
painted - either white if you have an Arizona, or black if you have a
New Englander - when you receive it.
But we don't use just any old paint - because, well - typical exterior
latex paint, just like plywood and its cohorts, contains formaldehyde!
Which off-gasses into the air around it - for up to six years!
We paint the roof of your Deluxe hive kit with a planet-friendly, non-toxic, zero-VOC paint. It's made by Mythic Paint Company.
They have a whole palette of beautiful colors, and if you can't find it
locally - they will ship it to you! We really appreciate Mythic, even
though they probably didn't really start out to make paint for beehives!
You can learn more about their very clean, safe products by clicking here to visit their website.
Why don't you paint the body of the hive?
For protection from the elements, we
don't think it's all that crucial. Lots of people do paint the body of
their hive - some people turn them into art! But with the roof painted,
we think the rest of the box is fairly well protected from the elements
due to its design, and besides - pine weathers to a lovely silver
color.
What about the legs? Don't they suffer from moisture damage?
The legs
of a Gold Star hive are indeed affected by moisture. But it takes a
very long time! Here in Maine we have hives that have been in the field
since 2008 - and back then we were using the "skinny leg" design that
you see in some of the photographs - and they're still standing just
fine!
(And here's a funny old Yankee tip that's always made us smile: If the
bottoms of the legs are damaged by moisture - remember, the legs are
removable! So one could always remove them, shorten them slightly, and
reinstall them!)
Do the Deluxe Hive kits all come with the observation window? Yes, they do, the shuttered observation window is "standard equipment"!
What is the observation window made out of?
Glass. Yep, real glass. Real, non-toxic, plain old melted sand -
glass. We looked at plexiglas, since putting a piece of glass into the
hands of a shipping company sounded like a risky business - but guess
what? Plexiglas is a petroleum product. Not clear whether it also
off-gasses, but in the end we chose against it. So we use glass, we
pack it carefully - and shippers very rarely break one for us. And if
by chance yours arrives broken - we'll take care of replacing that whole
piece of the kit, it's called the "hive back" - immediately! (But
please note - any damage must be reported within 7 days of receipt of
product - open it immediately and LOOK at the window!)
What holds the observation window in place? Oooh, good question. It's an adhesive caulk made by a company called Safecoat. And again, it's non-toxic, and has no formaldehyde or other nasty stuff to off-gas into your bee's home. Here's the link to their website - with lots of good information on it.
Other questions? Write to us and ask 'em!
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