Who on the Vine wants to keep Bees?

[hailtryfan]

Ginge, thankfully, I'm only allergic to bee stings. However, I hate wasps with a a vengeance.

I've never been stung by a bee so I don't know if I'm allergic or not. I intend not to find out on purpose

[Pumpkin Becki]

We'd love to keep bees. MrPB is really keen. We've been looking at the Top Bar hives as a possibility, but I am worried that our garden just isn't right for bee keeping.

We're also very enthusiastic about Bumble Bees, so I've just bought him a Beepol and lodge Beepol Garden Hive. It should have been delivered yesterday, so fingers crossed for today...I don't want our Queen in transit over the weekend!

[Alison]

OH is very keen to keep bees and we've already got permission for the plot. I'm hoping to get along to the next of my local bee assoication meetings and sign up for a course next winter as I want to make sure I do it right.

[hamsterhead]

We'd love to keep bees but sadly we don't have a lot of room in the garden and I think the neighbours would complain. They may get another shock soon when I start to keep chickens!

[dave_norm_smith]

Hi

I would still like to get some but location is the main problem. We had thought about locating them on the shed roof but with some of the weight you can harvest I would need to reinforce. However -15 degrees this winter with them in such an open position worrys me more! As my two year old is an absolute 'headcase' and thinks himself to be indestructable I cannot put them where he can access them!

Threat of job loss and general money struggles will undoubtedly delay things however for the moment! So I'll just have to read your blog and believe that one day soon I'll be filling my own jars.

Dave

[Mrs Dobby]

OH is very keen to keep bees and we've already got permission for the plot. I'm hoping to get along to the next of my local bee assoication meetings and sign up for a course next winter as I want to make sure I do it right.

You'd always be welcome to come over and see our 'girls' Alison, we've got a spare suit or two, so can get you suited up to go into the apiary and help do our inspections?

[Seahorse]

It's something PW and I have been considering for a while. I have a flat roof on the extension at the back of the house, so they could happily live up there. We've been a bit hesitant as neither of us has previous experience and going on a course wouldn't be very practical in terms of time. However, we found out last week that our next door neighbour is a former bee keeper, so we'd have help and advice literally a shout away! We are very tempted...

[Hilary B]

I wish I could remember the name of the book I once had which encouraged the 'catenary' hive. Similar principle to the 'top bar' type for the brood chamber, but it took a normal 'super', and it was ery cheap (and fairly easy) to make, requiring 2 walls made of solid plank and a curved piece of plywod for the other sides and the 'floor'. The entrance was a suitably sized hole drilled in one of the solid sides, the top I can't remember exactly but I think it was similar to a 'normal' roof, and an ordinary super could be placed on top, over a queen excluder and under the roof.
Best of both worlds in many ways.
Hamsterhead, if you've got room for chooks, you could fit in a hive or 2!

[Jax]

I would adore to have bees, but OH is fully against it. I have asked and asked and I get a rather growly "NO" then I ask why and all he says is "coz I said so" I think its because of the "stigma" of bees. So many people I know seem to think they are dangerous, I try to explain that they are not and are incredibly beneficial and becoming rare but it seems to be falling on deaf ears. His family keep bleating that you cant keep them near the house etc so I think its just him following them and assuming Im not knowledgable enough.

[BigShot]

There are plans available on the net, tho most of the easy to build ones are for 'top bar bee hives', which are supposed to give you as close as possible the environment that the Bees would live in the wild. Only drawback is that to harvest the honey you have to destroy the honeycomb, which costs the bees a lot of energy (and honey) to make.

EDIT - this bit came out kinda garbles so I'm re-doing it. Content otherwise the same.

It's not a simple trade between comb building and honey production though. Building new comb brings benefits too.
New comb prevents the build-up of diseases and (if you're using them) chemicals in the wax.
Foundation contaminated with toxic substances is no longer an issue if you're using top bars (or foundationless frames for that matter). It's not seen as a problem by many, but as far as I understand it some of the chemical controls used in the donor hive can end up in the foundation.

As I see it, the main benefit to bees drawing their own comb is that they can fully exhibit their natural behaviour, including the building and re-working of comb to whatever cell size best suits its intended use (bees prefer different sized cells for brood, drone brood, and stores).

Fringe benefits from (superless) top bar hives are the lack of heavy lifting and the fact you don't open the whole hive (including the brood nest) every time you take the lid off.

The main thing about top bars though (at least in the format usually seen based on the Kenyan hive) is that you're favouring the bees needs over and above honey production.

(Edit ends - sorry about the first draft.)


That said - it's possible to have phenominally large scale honey production on top bars too. Have a look at Oscar Perone's site. His operation makes most commercial ones look positively amateur by comparison. Plenty of honey production even when drawing and re-working full combs.

I would adore to have bees, but OH is fully against it. I have asked and asked and I get a rather growly "NO" then I ask why and all he says is "coz I said so" I think its because of the "stigma" of bees. So many people I know seem to think they are dangerous, I try to explain that they are not and are incredibly beneficial and becoming rare but it seems to be falling on deaf ears. His family keep bleating that you cant keep them near the house etc so I think its just him following them and assuming Im not knowledgable enough.

Build a Kenyan/Chandler top bar hive for about tuppence ha'penny, (link to plans below), get bees, put in garden...
...then watch in amusement while people gradually realise that bees AREN'T stings-with-wings that exist only to sting them...
...then seal the deal with a jar of home-made honey the following spring.

Quite frankly "because I said so" would be a red rag to me.

"It's far easier to get forgiveness than permission."

"Why did you get bees? I said no!"
"And I said yes... so here they are."

That's just me though.

Thanks Suzanne, that's very helpful. Do you have any websites links for those plans?

The natural beekeeping forum at biobees.com is a great place for that kind of beekeeping (some of them with decades of keeping experience under their belts, and some of them on a commercial scale too).
The plans and some other documents associated with them are available on Phil Chandler's LuLu page at Philip Chandler's Storefront - Lulu.com

Check out his site though - there's a wealth of info on there for anyone interested in top bar beekeeping.



Some of the methods encouraged by the likes of Phil Chandler and others of that bent transfer to conventional hives too.

* Instead of using a smoker at inspection time, use a spray bottle. Smokers trigger the bees alarm response... a light spray of water makes them think it's raining and they get their heads down.
* Rather than using insecticides or organic acids to fight varroa (and getting resistant mites or harming the bees in the process) dust the bees with sugar powder to get them grooming - knocking off mites as they do so.
* Use foundationless frames to allow job-specific comb sizes.
* Leave the honey on over winter and harvest whatever they didn't eat once the flow starts in the summer.

Anyway - enough from me...
...can you tell I'm keen on the gentle approach?

[Jax]

I love that BigShot, hes a fussy so and so my other half. In time I will use that plan Am pushing my luck as it is at the moment hehe

[VirginVegGrower]

Both of us would, OH absolutely interested - got chooks two months ago so first things first. Anybody else thinking that the drive towards self sufficiency becoming much more widespread these days?!

[hamsterhead]

we've got a spare suit or two, ?

Can you get suits in 5XL or Extra Medium?

[Alison]

You'd always be welcome to come over and see our 'girls' Alison, we've got a spare suit or two, so can get you suited up to go into the apiary and help do our inspections?

Thanks very much, will have a word with OH but am guessing he'd be interested, I know roughly where you are (used to go through Partington to work every morning in my old job) so maybe we could cycle over one weekend if we could find one to suit everybody.

[BigShot]

Mrs Dobby - I've just had another look at the photos you attached above and it seems like the hives all face the entrance door of the apiary. Did you not get a load of bees flying into you when you went in there walking right through the flight path?
I always try to approach hives from the side to avoid that but it doesn't look possible there.

Then again, I suppose you'd be fully suited up in there anyway.