Les Crowder, photo by Jeff Spicer

Bioneers’ RD Managain just interviewed Les Crowder, a veteran commercial beekeeper in New Mexico.

Crowder on varroa resistance:

 I started keeping bees when I was a kid. It was then I read an article in the American Bee Journal was reading about the varroa mite in Europe, written by an Italian who was researching the Italian honeybee in its natural state. He calculated how many feral beehives there were throughout Italy. When the varroa mite arrived, many of the feral hives died.

About eight years after the arrival of the varroa mite, he noticed a general increase in the feral Italian honeybee population in the wild. He concluded that they had developed a natural resistance to the mite. And, of course, nobody applied any miticide to those bees. They’re just wild bees out in nature. So, honeybees left alone will naturally develop mite resistance.

On antibiotics:

Antibiotics interfere with their digestion, just like if we take antibiotics we get diarrhea sometimes because we kill off our natural flora. My wife just recently wrote an article for the American Bee Journal, which they declined to print, indicating that the use of antibiotics can set up conditions for things like Candida and Nocema cerranae [a pathogen tentatively linked to colony collapse disorder] in honey bees. In beekeeping, they advise you to give antibiotics to bees, every beehive, every year as a preventative. It is administered in the winter to prevent them from getting sick in the summer, which doesn’t make any sense.

[Read the full interview with Les Crowder]

Plans for a Kenyan Top Bar hive by TJ Carr

Looking to build your own top bar hive?

• Albuquerque beek, TJ Carr, shares his plans for a gorgeous TBH. Download both the plans (PDF) and the accompanying narrative (PDF) to build your own. NOTE: This is the style I’ve used here and here.
• BioBees has published an ebook with photos on building your own top bar hive (PDF).

Or, do you prefer to buy one?

• Backyardhive.com sells beautiful top bar hives with a side window that are just perfect for beginning backyard beekeepers.
• Hirschbach Apiaries sells TBHs as well.

As a new beekeeper with energetic girls, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn the difference. Now predicting what happens when a hive starts building these cells is anyone’s guess…. but here’s what look like and where you can find ‘em on the comb.

In a Top Bar Hive:

• Swarm cells are typically built on the edge, side, or bottom of a comb.
• Supercedure cells are typically built smack in the middle of the comb.

2 capped swarm cells, built on the edge of the comb

Queen cup (left) and capped supercedure cell (right), both built in the middle of the comb.

In a Langstroth Hive:

Things are slightly different in a Langstroth hive, but here’s a useful discussion indicating that in a Langstroth:

• Supercedure cells are typically built in the top half of a frame. See photo of a supercedure cell in a Langstroth.
• Swarm cells are typically built in the bottom half of a frame. See photo of a swarm cell in a Langstroth.

TJ's honey filtration system for a top bar hive

Albuquerque bee-man TJ Carr is endlessly engineering new tools and methods to ease the plight of top-bar beekeepers like myself. His latest nugget of beekeeping wisdom is a gravity-filtration system for honey harvesting from top bar hives.

This weekend, I tried it for myself. With a filtration system dependent totally on gravity and 24 lazy hours, let’s just say it fit right into my schedule.

Wanna try it for yourself? Here are some more details to get you started.

Get 3 food-grade five gallon buckets and set ‘em up as follows:

• Bucket #1 has a closed bottom with a honey gate installed.
• Bucket #2 has an open top and a mesh or sieve bottom. Inside Bucket #2 is a fine mesh bag with edges secured around the end of the bucket with say, a giant rubberband or tape. Resting inside the mesh bag and on the edges of the bucket is a colander. Check the trusty diagram if you’re lost now.
  
• Bucket #3 has an open top and a closed bottom with a honey gate installed.

Build a wooden stand where the top has an opening cut for Bucket #1 to rest tilted forward. Or… just put Bucket #1 on a bookshelf or table where it might easily drain into Buckets #2 and #3.

Then, set everything up as shown in the honey harvesting diagram.

1. Cut comb off top bars. Place in Bucket #1.
2. Chop, slice, or otherwise pulverize the honey comb in Bucket #1. I like to use a pastry cutter.
3. Place TJ’s groovy honey stand on a bench or chair.
4. Place Bucket #1 in TJ’s groovy honey stand. Tilt 45 degrees.
5. Place Bucket #3 on the bench or chair below the honey stand.
6. Place Bucket #2 on top of Bucket #3.

So now you should have the buckets arranged in order from top to bottom where Bucket #1 is on top, in the wooden stand. Check the trusty diagram if you need to.

Ok now, it’s business time!

Check to ensure that the honey gate on Bucket #3 is closed. Check that the mesh bag and sieve on Bucket #2 are secure. Then, open the honey gate on Bucket #1 and let ‘er flow.

Wait 24 hours and decant from Bucket #3. Share with friends, neighbors, and lover(s).

Gravity Honey Filtering

Decanting honey

• Hirschback Apiary’s “Guide to Top Bar Beekeeping”

With delectable bee porn and homey misspellings, it’s a website rich with information for hungry newbeeks like me. Dive in and enjoy!

Here’s the story.

Another local bee guy named Bill (Bill’s the guy who built my hive) picked up our “bee packages” from a farm south of the city where they’d been trucked in from Texas.

We took the whole package over to my hive and set to work. TJ first removed the syrup container from inside the package. The can was nearly empty as it had fed the bees for a couple days in transit. You’ll notice, still in the package a rectangular box hanging from the top… That’s the queen, whom we’ll get to in a few.

With the can removed, some of the bees start emerging from the package, curious about their new digs.

Back to the queen. We removed her cage from the package and took a knife to wedge out the cork at the end.

Behind this cork is sugar candy which the worker bees will eat over the next day or so, freeing up the queen at their own pace.

Next, we place the queen cage face down between 2 honey-filled combs. Squeezing to wedge her safely between the combs, we then marked her location with red arrows. (Where’d I get the comb, you ask? TJ donated some from his strongest hive to get my girls started.)

The rest is easy. We simply placed the package still full of bees into the empty half of the hive body. The bees will work their way out of the package and up onto the comb. NOTE: About 4 hours later when I checked on them through the window of my top bar hive, sure enough, the package was empty and the queen surrounded by a warm cluster of bees on the comb.

We placed the rest of the bars in the hive to seal it up.

And the girls (including their mama) are one happy camp.

Dearest neighbor!

I’m thinking of inviting 10,000 of the world’s best pollinators to live in my backyard this summer. They’re quiet, docile, and oh, did I mention they produce honey?

I’d like to start a beehive. But before I do, let’s talk.

Do you have questions or concerns about bees? Is there anything you want to alert me to before I start a hive?

Of course, you’re always welcome to come and see them. In the meantime, here’s some information about how it all works.

Here’s the kind of hive I’m using:

[Rendering by Top Bar Bees]

Here’s the process of caring for the bees:

1. Look at them.
2. Provide water.
3. Once a week or so, check on them.

And that’s it! There’s no unsightly or noisy equipment. There’s no cages or chemicals.

Every now and then you may see me with a smoker, which looks like this:

I’ll use it to add woodsmoke to the hive before I open it. Woodsmoke makes the bees docile enough that I can handle their combs with bare hands.

Once a year in the Fall, I’ll harvest some honey. Not much, since I’ll only have 1 hive, but here’s hoping there’s enough to share

Questions? Concerns? I’d love to talk with you about honeybees.

Mistress Beek