Mark R
I just, two days ago, set up my first beehive. It is a vertical Warre type. Different from the standard Langstroth in that it is a bit smaller in dimensions but actually taller and it uses top bars rather than frames.
I don’t think it will be as easy to harvest honey as from a horizontal hive, but I believe it most closely simulates the natural conditions of a hollow tree. The bees have access to all the boxes all the time and are free to build from the top down as they might in a tree. The boxes are made of 2" x 10" lumber and weigh over 20 pounds empty so full of honey they might be hard to handle. I’m OK with that though because I don’t really plant to harvest form this hive. My hope is to attract or trap a truly wild swarm and make them as comfortable as possible.
I’m already planning to build some more hives, maybe to sell but for sure to have one or two ready next year in case a swarm I get this year swarms again next year. Or if I do get one, I may want to re-home it into a hive I can more easily harvest from.
Here is a picture of my home made Warre style hive.
Reed’s Warre type beehive
Alma N
I tried bees a few years ago, I had them in a top bar hive. I wanted to do warre, but horizontal top bar was an easier build.
There were a few problems, they apparently wanted wider bars. I had to open the hive every few weeks to adjust the bars and see if they needed spacers or what. The real problem was that for a week or more after each check, they would attack me anytime I came near. This made it very hard to work in the garden, usually I would do all the watering and harvest wearing the suit.
The biggest problem was that by December, they had all died. I en up harvesting a few quarts of comb honey. The next spring, I didn’t have the cash for another package, haven’t tried again yet.
I have thought a lot since then about doing skep hives, the old fashioned round straw hives. Or some other small hive that would swarm often.
Honey would be harvested by placing the hive on top of a super, and allowing the bees to fill it with their excess. Though, I think that someone could get all the honey they want just from the winter kill hives.
I would select for more docile bees, and let nature do the rest.
From each culled hive; honey, wax, polen, even pupae (in the summer), could be harvested.
This is one of those of those projects that will have to wait till I have property, so they have lots of room. I don’t want to get stung in my garden anymore!
Greenie
I can see why, after that experience, you’d be looking for docile bees! I remember reading at some point that slightly more aggressive bees tended to be more successful and make more honey, but I’m sure that was in the context of bees that allow you into the garden!
Alma N
It was crazy, a few times I got stung minding my own business while I was dozens of meters from the hive. Even several days after opening the hive.
I just couldn’t deal with that with the little garden I have now.
Julia D
Funny about the aggressive bees, one of my neighbors hives is aggressive and she was just telling me all about how if the queen is agressive, all the workers are too, and if you replace the mean queen with a nice one, all the workers will get more docile
Alma N
That would make it so you didn’t have to cull the entire hive. And the queen switch would be a chance to cross different lines.
I wonder if the aggressive behavior would stop quickly or would stop slowly as the previous queen’s offspring died off naturally.
Megan G
That is interesting. I’ve never heard of switching queens for hive temperament, but it would be an interesting experiment for someone. I unfortunately don’t keep bees yet!
I applaud the idea of landrace bees. We can all use more regionally adapted pollinators.
Maarten F
Alma, sorry that your first bee experience wasn’t inspiring. One suggestion would be to start with a swarm trap, and hang it somewhere at your property you can easily keep an eye on. These swarm traps are relatively easy to make and if no swarm comes, you can always try again next year. Even if you don’t want to manage bees, you can let the swarm live in the swarm trap, the swarm’s odds are better in that box than out in the elements. Kinda like a bird house.
Too bad you live so far away, I’d come bring you some bees and a queen, it is crazy the amount of money they ask for a queen.
Alma N
If I ever get started with that project, I would need a bunch of traps. I would start with as much diversity as I could (minus aggressive bees). I would probably buy from several sources as well as catch some.
I want to have several acres for that project.
Unfortunately I don’t have the room for even one hive right now.
One of my neighbors said they want to have a hive…(suburban, outside city limits, small lots) I would be fine with them having one, I just don’t want to be the one. That family loves my chickens and goats, unfortunately I think the other neighbors are just tolerating them. They could draw the line at bees!
I really hope that mindsets can change as more people get excited about self reliance. I think we could help that along by breeding quieter livestock, plants that outgrow the weeds and look beautiful, and bees that don’t sting (or at least that don’t hold grudges!). I just have to decide which of those projects I can work on right now, some just don’t fit.
Thank you for your willingness to share! Even if we live too far apart.
Greenie
It’s interesting you talk about livestock that are quieter. My experience out here is that selecting for animals that are a little wilder tends to also select for animals that are a little more self-sufficient (in my rural context, which of course has different requirements than a suburb!)
-The same pigs that scream at me at feeding time and that escape the fence as piglets are great at foraging, farrowing in all weather, and chasing off bears (!)
-The same chickens that are wary of me even though I feed them are good at dodging mink and hawks and keeping my cats away from the chicks (I have even given hens to people as the ‘cat protector’ in their flock)
-The noisy geese are the ones that yell the foxes into submission
My sense is that these behaviours have been bred out over the years to make domestic animals easier to handle in closer confinement. I would love to think all that breeding work could go into helping, for instance, a suburban block-pig (gets all the scraps from the neighbourhood, gets divvied up at harvest time?) catch on. At the same time I wish more of the wilder genes were left, they are so remarkably useful.
Alma N
I’m really glad you brought all that up! Gave me ideas. This is where the local community aspect becomes important. Since it’s way harder to send animals than seeds.
Two projects with opposite goals could probably help each other more than if they had the same goals. The rural farmer could send his quiet pigs to the farmer who is looking for them. The suburban farm could send the screamers/stingers out to bear country where they need them.
That way the diversity could be maintained and be put to good use.
I saw a video of a pig running a bear out of its pen! I felt bad for the bear lol.
I like the idea of a neighborhood pig pen. I can feed goat guts to the chickens, but I miss the piggies for eating the chicken guts. My wife won’t let me feed anything like that to her mini pig.
Greenie
What an elegant transfer that would be. It’s like the patio/yard landrace vs visit-twice-weekly-field landrace: the climate and the person might even be the same, but the conditions are different.
My boar’s had his tusks for a year now, he was chasing off bears before he got them and I can’t imagine he’s got less formidable.
I think a neighbourhood pig & chicken share would solve a lot of nutrient-capture issues. Maybe someday it’ll come about.
Marvin W
I also like ‘Keeping Bees With a Smile’, and Dr Leo Sharashkin’s information. We made a couple of Layens hives to his specs a few years ago.
We cut a wild colony out of an old church building but apparently we must have squashed the queen. That hive died out before winter.
When we moved to our present farm a year and a half ago, we put a stack of swarm traps behind our shed and hadn’t managed to put them up the next spring; when the boys reported that some bees had moved into one trap in the pile! They chose a trap that had a bit of old comb in it. We moved them into a hive and although they didn’t have a lot of honey reserves last fall since they were a small colony, they apparently overwintered fine. We insulated the hive with 2 inch styrofoam.
Lazutin and Dr. Leo both teach that you’re best off with wild bees or a sort of landrace.
