Beekeeping

Wig

Some questions for the beekeepers here.

I am going to start beekeeping and have decided that my first hive will be a top bar hive. Easier to build yourself and allegedly better for healthier bees.

I will be doing a course this February through to April. The course will be based on the national hive system, and I will have to adapt what I am taught to the top bar method.

In a national hive what purpose does the queen excluder serve?

In a top bar hive there is no queen excluder, I am assuming the queen does not fly away, and I believe the bees make combs purely for honey and other combs for brood so you don't have to take brood out when you harvest.

In a national hive I assume the queen excluder means that any combs above the excluder will not contain brood.

If I order a queen by post, can I hang it in a tree at the correct time of year and attract a swarm to the queen thus getting an almost free startup colony? I don't fancy paying £200 for a start-up colony.

So lets say by April I will have my newly constructed top bar hive placed in my friends 6 acre flower meadow, does it matter what time of year I eventually get some bees into it? and once I have some bees (maybe by the method above) what would be the method of putting them into the hive and making them stay there? Do you like close all the doors and lock them inside for how long?

ajbell

I have a wasps nest you can have.
I would imagine you could train them to make honey.

Pembroke

Hi, Top Bar hives are quite difficult for a start-up beekeeper to use they're really designed for warm African savannah rather than damp and windy Wales.

The course sounds like a very good idea as some of the things you suggest won't work.

If you want some light reading over the winter try to get hold of:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Keeping-Bees-Green-Guides-Peacock/dp/1847869858/

For a more detailed book on the subject try this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guide-Bees-Honey-Selling-Beekeeping/dp/1904846513

It is quite possible to build a British National Hive for yourself, there are kits of parts available or you can get plans off the web.

The bees themselves are as you say available to buy, or the association who I assume you're joining to go on a course may have some sort of supply arrangement for beginners. You could always attract a swarm when swarming season comes around in April / May / June but you use a simple chemical attractant in the hive, not a queen strung up in a tree, the swarm will already have a queen with it.

To answer your question about the queen excluder, as you surmise it's to stop the queen laying eggs in the honey collection areas, it doesn't need one in a top bar as the queen confines her activities to one end of the hive and the workers collect honey in the other. I believe there's a blanking plate between the two areas but I'm not sure. Once the queen has been mated, or arrives with a swarm she never leaves the hive again. The queen produces an attractant pheromone that binds the worker bees to her and they remain bound to her over her lifetime.

Mojisola

Pembroke wrote: »

Hi, Top Bar hives are quite difficult for a start-up beekeeper to use they're really designed for warm African savannah rather than damp and windy Wales.

We have top bar hives and think they are easier for a beginner. We have had National hives in the past.

This - http://www.biobees.com/ - is a good place to start learning about them.