Something of spring to make my early mid-winter morning.
Are bees making a comeback? Did they ever get to the bottom of what caused the die-offs of 2-3 years ago?
Cool stuff from Wisconsin ping.
with backyard chicken-keeping.....but no roosters.
How long before Peta insist that roosters are allowed in cities too? (watch sales of BB guns go up)
Anyone got one of these? Any comments pro or con?
May be fodder for gardening list?
Mr. PanDowdy and I are hobbyist beekeepers. This, I can assure you, is NOT the way to keep bees.
The reason we all use the Langstroth hives (the traditional stacking boxes) is (contrary to this article) exactly what the bees prefer. Langstroth designed it to fit what he called “bee space” ... the exact measurement between the combs that bees in the wild will always build. Then he gave the bees convenient frames upon which to build their comb. He didn’t do this simply because it produced more honey (again contrary to the article), he did it also and more importantly because:
(1) it gives the bee keeper a way to efficiently slip out each frame to inspect for disease and pests which is today an essential to good beekeeping.
(2) and when we harvest the honey, we can put these frames into a spinner which uses centrifugal force to pull the honey out without messing up the comb. We can then put the comb back into the hives for the bees to reuse it. It is very important to have reusable comb at hand for several reasons which I won’t go into detail here about.... but rest assured that many times it saves the life of a struggling hive and also can provide the necessary incitement to attract a swarm into and save it’s life as well. The bees in this “top bar” contraption will loose all their comb each time the honey is harvested.
(3) In the Langstroth hives, we keep the bottom two boxes separated from the rest of the stack with a wire mesh that forces the queen to do all her egg laying in the bottom two boxes which we call brood chambers. Thus the eggs, larvae and pupae out of the honey we harvest. This also insures us that we know where the queen is at all times and can protect her and make sure she is not injured or disturbed during harvest. I can’t see any way this contraption accomplishes that.
(4) a Langstroth hive complete with a bees and a queen can be purchased for $160 or less. Why would you want to pay the hefty price tag of this thing?
I give it four thumbs down!
Last year I had Bees visiting my garden. In previous years I only had Bumblebees working the garden.
These look interesting and cute but not at all practical. Do the frames fit into regular extractors? Guess I’m too old fashioned but I’ll stick with my standard hives and supers.
Brushy Mountain Bee Farm Dadant
Kellybees
Betterbee
I have always wanted to keep a few hives and now being retired everything is in place except our property has over one hundred rhododendrons and about thirty azaleas planted by the previous owners. The honey would then be toxic and thus not so good on your biscuits, research tells me.
Removing the shrubs is not an option, according to my wife.
I’ve built something like that before. They’re much easier to make than the standard supers, and if you hinge the top, it doesn’t require any heavy lifting to maintain it.