>        In thinking about TBH's a was wondering if anyone had
>tried adding spacers between the bars after the comb is
>initially drawn? Equivalent to frame spacers for positioning 8
>or 9 frames in a ten frame box.
 
Adding spacers would defeat the advantage of the top-bars together forming
a covering on the hive. The bees would probably fill the narrow gaps with
propolis, which could make things difficult to work, too.  I have thought
about the possiblility of having the bars in the "surplus" part of the hive
a trifle wider than the others.  Of course then you have to deal with 2
different sizes of bars, and the bees might not restrict the honey storage
to the portion of the hive where you want it anyway.
 
Having fat heavy honey combs on top bars could be asking for trouble with
breakage.  One thing that is not fun about top bar hives is trying to
remove a big comb of honey and having the bar itself just tear off.  The
wax they would produce to widen widely-spaced surplus combs could also just
be used to make more of the combs with normal thickness.  The wide spacing,
too could invite burr combing, making the frameless combs difficult to
remove.  Nevertheless, experimenting is half the fun, so if you give it a
try, let us know how things turn out!
 
On the press:
 
>...Basically two verticall rollers turned by a
>hand crank that would press the honey out of the wax. One would
>just feed in the top bar and the honey would run to the bottom
>and the wax would be pressed into a flat sheet with little to no
>honey. Has anyone tried to seen anything like this?
 
Regarding such a roller-press -- again, why not give it a try?  I don't
recall ever seen anything of the sort, but it sounds interesting.  It may
be alot of work getting lots of combs through such a device, though.  The
honey might goo everything up and the combs might be difficult to get
through, without them breaking apart or slipping.  Natural combs,
especially those recently built for surplus storage, are made of thin wax
which might not support itself as you tried to feed the roller.  I don't
envision that the wax would come out intact on the other side, either, at
least not free of honey. The combs being so fragile, I'm not so sure you'd
even want to hold them any way but top-bar-up.
Having a full chunk of honey comb fall off and land on your shoes is a mess.
 
Food for thought.  Still, there's no harm in giving it a try.  Especially
with tbh's, the cheap and simple way to house bees.  You don't have much to
lose...
 
later...   JWG