Beekeeping Videos

Apr 17

Beekeeping Video: Top Bar Hive Beekeeping

This is an excerpt from the full length (85 minute) DVD “Alternative Beekeeping Using the Top Bar Hive and The Bee Guardian Methods“, available at BackYardHive.com

Beekeeping with top bar hives is getting more and more popular, as it is thought to be a more natural way to keep bees, more in tune with the way they would live in their natural environment. In other countries around the world, particularly in Africa, top bar beekeeping is still very common – the Langstroth hive being more expensive to make.

This top bar beekeeping DVD was filmed in the beautiful Colorado mountains. It includes footage from a top bar beekeeping workshop held by Corwin Bell, and shows hands-on techniques, close-up footage of hives, combs, cells and bees, and lots and lots of practical tips and techniques for the natural beekeeper.

I think it is beautifully filmed (as you can see from the extract), so it is also a delight to watch.

It is primarily aimed at beginner beekeepers – although experienced beekeepers will really enjoy it too – and goes from explaining the features of a top bar hive, getting your hive set up, sourcing your bees, working with your bees, right through to harvesting your honey – and lots more in between.

Watch it in full screen mode, and enjoy!

You can read a full list of the contents and learn more about the DVD by visiting BackYardHive.com

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Nov 20

Beekeeping Video – Life Inside A Top Bar Hive

I found this amazing video showing bees working in a top bar hive. It starts with the colonisation of the empty beehive, then shows 3 months (condensed into 2 minutes!) of activity. You’ll notice the number of bees suddenly drops – this is because they swarmed.

Fascinating!

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May 24

How To Create An Artificial Swarm

Bees’ natural instinct is to swarm, and you want to prevent this if possible. If preventing a swarm is not possible, then one option is to create an artificial swarm. To know when to do this it is important to know about the timing of a swarm.

When you find queen cells which are close to sealing (containing larvae or royal jelly), you can create an artificial swarm. If they are already sealed, you are too late! As with all things beekeeping, there are several ways to do this, but here is one of the simplest methods.

Queen cells on a frame

Sealed queen cell

To do this you will need a spare hive, including hive stand, floor, brood box, frames, crown board and lid. (If you are not sure what these all are, see components of a modern beehive.) Be sure to have them ready before you start.

Move the original hive to one side onto another hive stand
Put your new floor and empty brood box on the stand on the original site
Open the original hive, find the queen and place her and the frame she is on in the centre of the empty brood box. Make sure that there is plenty of unsealed brood on this frame, and NO queen cells
Fill the new box with frames of foundation, and put on the crown board and lid
Replace the frame you removed from the original hive with a frame of foundation, and replace the supers (if there were any), crown board and lid

Your artificial swarm has now been created. The queen is in the new hive, but as it is on the original site, all the flying bees will return to it. This mimics what happens naturally in a swarm, as the queen leaves the original hive with the flying bees.

The original hive, in its new position, is full of nurse bees, brood and stores, but is queenless and has no flying bees. But it has several queen cells which will (hopefully) soon produce a queen. Because it now has no foraging bees, it is a good idea to feed sugar syrup to this colony for the first few weeks. This should get it off to a good start, and hopefully you will have 2 strong colonies before the winter sets in.

For those of you who prefer to watch rather than read instructions, I found this great demonstration video on how to perform an artificial swarm.

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Mar 01

Natural Beekeeping Alternatives – Top Bar Hives

Natural beekeeping is increasing becoming the buzz word for hobby beekeepers – and particularly for those thinking of starting beekeeping.

Of course, all backyard beekeeping is natural, in a way that commercial beekeeping is not. For commercial beekeepers pollination is often the biggest earner, so bees are transported thousands of miles to pollinate huge swathes of mono culture crops. This excessive transportation, the lack of biodiversity, and the associated heavy chemical use – little wonder that scientists are increasingly citing stress as a likely cause of Colony Collapse Disorder.

But some forms of hobby beekeeping are seen as more natural than others – particularly top bar hive beekeeping and it’s close cousin Warre hive beekeeping. Both of these are arguably less invasive than traditional beekeeping with Langstroth hives, and the bees allowed more freedom to act as they would in their natural environment.

Build Your Own Top Bar Hive

One of the real advantages of top bar hives is their simplicity. If you have even basic carpentry skills, building a top bar hive is really simple. You can get top bar hive plans from the Back Yard Hive shop for just $9.95 (and they also supply materials if you need them). If you are interested in building your own top bar hive, the video below should also help.

Buy a Top Bar Hive

Alternatively, if you do not have the time or inclination to build your own beehive, the Back Yard Hive also has hand crafted top bar hives for sale. This is definitely a more expensive option, but their hive does include a full length viewing window making it easy to inspect your bees without disrupting them, and it is beautifully made.

Whether you make your hive yourself or buy it ready made is really a personal choice. And of course so too is the choice between top bar, Warre or Langstroth – they all have their own merits. The important thing is to pick one, and start beekeeping – you won’t regret it.