The bars form a continuous roof over the comb, whereas the frames in most current hives allow space for bees to move up or down between boxes.

Top-bar hives usually include one box only, and allow for beekeeping methods that interfere very little with the colony.

[8] Although guidebooks for use in Africa often give precise dimensions for the Kenyan hive, and encourage beekeepers to keep their equipment of uniform and thus interchangeable sizes, one of the main selling points of the KTBH among proponents from English speaking countries is the fact that it can be made to practically any size and shape, as long as the top bars have an appropriate width.

A top-bar hive has bars from which the honey bees attach and hang wax comb, an array of hexagonal (six sided) cells.

The top bars are usually 1+1⁄4 to 1+3⁄8 in (32 to 35 mm) wide, depending on local conditions and the type of bee to be housed.

The bees will lose access to this during the winter cluster in the hanging combs, thus increasing their likelihood of starving.

It is important to give the bees a clear starting point to build comb on each top bar.

Some TBH beekeepers fashion their top bars with a V-shaped bottom to guide the comb building.

Alternatively, some use a table saw to cut two closely spaced slots along the long axis of each new top bar.

Either type of guide, wax line or grooves, gives bees a place to hold on to with their hooked feet.

Top hives have entrances that are a small slot or a number of holes of an inch in diameter or thereabouts, which more closely mimics what honey bees prefer in nest cavities.

In areas where large land animals (such as ratels and bears) present a threat to beehives, single-box hives may be suspended out of reach.

The use of follower boards to selectively control the amount of interior space available to the bees can be helpful, particularly in young hives or when dealing with newly captured swarms.

(Follower boards are adjustable solid panels, which effectively reduce the size of the interior space within the hive box that is accessible to the bees.)

Tub shaped top-bar hives are usually small enough to be portable, and allow beekeeping methods that involve periodic merging and splitting of colonies.

The earliest known possible mention of a bee hive with removable top-bars is in Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai's didactic poem Le Api, written in 1539.

[15][16] The travelling pair George Wheler and Jacques Spon witnessed a beekeeping method using woven tub shaped top-bar hives in Greece in 1676.

Spon briefly mentioned this in his memoirs, but Wheler gave a detailed description and a drawing of such a hive in his work Journey Into Greece, published in 1682.

[18] In 1790, Abbot Della Rocca from Syros also wrote about tub shaped top-bar bee hives used in Crete during his time.

[20] Thomas Wildman described tub shaped top-bar hives as "skeps that are open at the top" in his Treatise on the management of bees in 1768.

[21][22] Greek "Anástomo" bee hives, wicker or made from clay, are round in shape and have top-bar frames.

[23] Until the 1960s, beekeepers in rural Tanzania used predominantly log hives, which consisted of a cylinder with closed ends and a harvesting hole near the middle.

The plank hive did not use moveable top bars, however – bees would attach comb in natural patterns to the roof.

The hive commonly referred to as the Kenyan top-bar hive was developed by Dr. Maurice V. Smith[22] and Dr. Gordon Townsend[24] from the University of Guelph in Canada, sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) under an initial four year overseas project which began in Kenya in 1971.

[25][26] The hive and its development was subsequently and extensively described by Dr. Isaac Kirea Kigatiira from Kenya, who was a student at Guelph in the early 1970s.