learn about bee friendly practices, top bar hives and how to manage bees when the well being of the bees is more important than harvesting the honey. See how developing countries are using the top bar hive as a cheap alternative to the langstroth hive

1. Week Five
Sustainable Beekeeping
Dara K. Dimitrov
dkd4@waikato.ac.nz

2. Why Natural Bee Keeping?
 Efforts towards holistic practices in raising and caring for
bees
 Natural bee keeping seeks to understand the nature of
the bees
 It is an apicentric approach to bee keeping
 The welfare of the bees are primary focus
 Unlike conventional beekeeping which relies on the conventional
agricultural solutions (chemicals and man-made solutions)

3. Traditional Ethiopian Bee Hives

4. Encouraging Indicators for
Sustainable Bee Keeping
 Bees who have swarmed seem to do better than hives
that haven’t
 Bees that overwinter on their own honey do better than
hives that are fed sugar water
 Bees that forage on predominantly organically cultivated
land also exhibit better resistance to viruses and
parasites

5. Bee Cell Regression
 This is to do with cell size
 Bees vary over a wider range than the cell size
 Cell size can also vary depending on the bee size
 Large cells = larger bees
 Cells can be anywhere from 4.9mm to 5.5mm
 Commercial bee keepers may use hives to produce
drawn comb for when they divide their hives later

7. Bee Cell Regression
 Forced regression – place foundation sheets in the hive
 Natural regression - no foundation at all – the bees are free
to build the cells any way they wish.
 Letting bees build their comb with a natural cell size is a
fundamental tenet of sustainable bee keeping

8. Issues with Forced Regression
 Large bees, from large cells cannot build natural sized
cells
 They will always build something in between for brood cells
(5.1mm)
 Natural sized cells have less Varroa – their capping time is
shorter (by up to 24 hours) and therefore there is less
mites

10. Swarm into a Sunhive
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HndNezyzWGw&feat
ure=player_embedded

11. Top Bar Hives
 Designed for developing countries – so simple and easy
 Less expensive: no frames, foundation, covers etc
 Can easily be manipulated – less heavier than working
with a honey super (box) from a Langstroth
 Low tech hive – you can use any stray material around
to make your hive
 The bars are where the bees build their foundation – so
more wax – every bar with honey is an entire bar of wax

12. Working with Top Bars
 You have to remove the bars – carefully – so you are
better to work with a knife or screw driver than with a
hive tool (the foundation is fragile and can be easily
broken)
 The foundation is usually
 Uneven and odd shaped (this is the natural method of
regression) – with travel tunnels
 The bees will build the foundation down into the ‘space’
under the bars (so the foundation may sometimes stretch
across bars) – so you have to do more comb correction and
destruction to keep the comb freely movable
 Bees have to rebuild any combs you remove each year
You must be able to inspect the top bar frames for disease

14. Top Bars Hives & Comb
 Comb is loaded in the same way as Langstroth hive
 Always work with the bar carefully – there is no frame to
support the comb and so DON’T HOLD THE FRAME
SIDEWAYS (it will break off)
 If it breaks off – you can reattach it with a hair slide that
will attach to the bar and grab the comb (cut it out later)
 You can use a piece of string soaked in wax and attach it to
the top bar to give the bees something to attach it
 If the comb is curved – you can ‘straighten’ the comb by
slicing it gently at the ends and squeezing it back down
 Burr comb (bits that jut out) – cut them off
You want to get a beautiful bar of honey from your top bar

16. Top Bar Hive
 Working with the hive
 You have to work VERY carefully
 Using a knife – slip the knife along the bar – to separate it
from the other bars (its is way better than the hive tool)
 If there are any burrs (cross-sections between the bars) –
cut vertically through the burrs carefully
 Remove 2 frames (in the same way as the Langstroth) –
laying them down gently
 And then work through the hive by shifting the bars toward
the empty end
The bees are suppose to be much happier in Top Bar Hives

18. Biodynamics and Bees
The environment is seen as a strong, self-sustaining,
vibrant organism
-
Each component of the organism is seen as a different
component of the whole organism
- Special natural manures are used
- Herb based preparations are applied to the grounds to
improve the fertility
- Only natural products are used to stimulate the
microbiological life in the soil
- It also incorporates using the rhythms associated with the
sun, moon and planets – using the lunar calendar

19. Bees and Biodynamics
 Introducing bee friendly practices
 No insecticides nor pesticides which unsafe for bees (eg
neonicotinoids – which are fatal for bees)

20. Bee Friendly Practices
 Placing the hives at least 1m off the ground
 Ideal is 2.5 – 6 metres
 Never on the ground
 It is warmer off the ground and receives more light
 Value the bees as pollinators first and honey producers
second
 Planting gardens full of flowers and forage
 ‘messy’ gardens with lots of flowering weeds
 Modern plants are ‘sterile’ and not bee food
 Avoid any chemicals

21. Bee Friendly Practices
 Harvest honey only in the late spring when there is
sufficient honey flow
 Allow the bees to overwinter on their own honey rather
than feeding them sugar syrup
 Allow the bees to reproduce naturally – let them swarm
 Only open the hive when necessary
 Opening the hive causes the bees to be stressed
 It can take more than 24 hours for them to recover

22. Bee Friendly Practices
 Select your apiary site carefully
 Make sure that the bee density is low
 It is away from industry, traffic and farm fields where
pesticides and chemicals are used
 The bees are on that site permanently
 Bees that live near conifers (pine trees) are unusually
healthy – so place near a pine forest

23. Perone Hive
 A VERY big version of the top bar hive
 Is made out recycled wood
 Basically a big square with bars in it
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgriYH8gncQ

24. Guest Speaker for Next Week
 Cameron from the Waikato Domestic Bee Keepers
Association
 Possibly the commercial guys too