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Alternative beekeeping - not in the books
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Read the health warning about information found on web sites before venturing further! This page may include top bar hives; small cell sizes; skep beekeeping; radical hive designs; bee breeding; varroa treatments or not; different crop management or anything alternative and simple
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New Comb for Old
I have taken to cutting the centre, bred-in area out of old combs for re-use. The resulting brood patterns when the queen is laying in fresh comb have to be seen to be believed. Try it - but only on colonies that you believe to be healthy as this does not eliminate any lurking germs.
No foundation
I've more or less given up using full sheets of foundation. Instead short <an inch starter strips allow the bees to build their comb more naturally, the cell size THEY want rather than what we try to impose. This is generally smaller than with foundation so you get more bees from a single brood box. Sometimes they build lots of drone. You can cull this as a varroa trap and harvest the wax.
No Extractor Needed
Chunk honey commands a high price as it looks so classy. It sells faster than cut comb.
Simply take the best looking comb honey, cut it to fit through the neck of a honey jar and reach from top to bottom. You can get up to 8 from a full width comb.
Put the comb in the jars and add the lids. Chuck all the off cuts, misshapes, half-filled combs etc in a plastic bucket and mash them. Put them in your honey warmer, warm, filter and then top up the jars.
Remember that comb is lighter than honey so you will have to be careful with the scales and fill the jars close to the top.
Charge more for it.
Top Bar Hive
I have fun with my TBH. I made it from pallet wood with roof of a donated sheet of wriggly ally so it cost me nothing.
In shape it is a horizontal hemi-cylinder with a 17" diameter so that bars can be transferred to a National, which I have done. It is a yard long so it can be supered if desired. It sits on a trestle now. I tried rope slings first but this was not too successful (the string broke).
The bars are the warm way and the entrance is a circle the size that can be made with your finger and thumb. Bees love it and do well but it doesn't produce much of a harvest.
As the bars but together only the bees on the comb you take out see you. This makes them very peaceable, and I can't remember having been stung when working my TBH.
There is a good web site devoted to TBHs. Try typing TBH into Google.
Skep makers
I was asked the other day for a skep maker to attend a show. Now that dear Roly Rowe has gone on I don't know of anybody else in Dorset who can make a good show of skep making. Any volunteers? How about you Sally? Well done! Jenny too!
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