Two of my beehives were getting full (even after a wet summer) so it was time to give them a little space. I decided to remove three bars of caped comb from each.

I lifted the first bar giving me room to slide the other bars along. (I no longer have a follower board in my strongest hive as the bees have expanded to fill the whole thing). I moved the bars along until I came to the caped combs, which happened to be about four bars along in both hives. I lifted each bar out carefully then with a sharp jerk shook of most of the bees. I removed the rest using a soft bee brush. I then put each bar into one of the small NUC s I had built. It takes six bars so is just right for placing the full combs into. When I had removed three combs from the first hive I gave the Nuc a couple of puffs of smoke to keep the bees away and covered it with a cloth leaving a corner turned back slightly so any stragglers could escape.

I replaced the bars with new empty bars and closed the hive back up. I worked carefully from the storage end of the hive without disturbing the brood area, which is another advantage in having a hive with offset entrances. I repeated the process with the other hive and once it was closed back up I carried the honeycombs in the Nuc up to the house away from the bees.

I lifted each bar in turn, brushed of any remaining bees and cut the comb from the bar into a food standard bucket.

I put the lid on the bucket and stood it in the kitchen. I cleaned the remainder of the comb from the bars and stored the Nuc box and bars away in the shed.

To extract the honey from the comb I use the crush and strain method. First I cut the comb into smaller chunks.

Then with disposable rubber cloves break it up finely by hand. I find this the best way of doing it rather than using a tool such as a potato masher or wooden block. It is easier to get the comb and honey into a fine mush and remove any missed debris such as the odd earwig or bee.

The result should look like this.

There are several ways of making up a DIY strainer but if you look you can find them fairly cheaply on the Internet. I brought my strainer and honey bucket (It has a large clog free drain valve for filling jars) brand new from ebay.

Put the strainer over the honey bucket and pour the honey comb mush into the strainer. Cover the remainder of the mush with the bucket lid and let the honey drain through the strainer overnight. You can add more to the strainer as the honey drains through. Make sure you undertake this process in a closed room. You don’t want your house full of bees or wasps for that matter, trying to steal the honey.

I ended up with just over 14lbs of honey from the six combs plus a good saucepan full of bees wax for making polish.

Having only taken three combs from each hive there should be ample stores to see them through the winter. The next harvest will be when they are just starting to build up in the spring. I will then remove any remaining honey left over from their winter stores and give the bees plenty of empty space to expand into again.

Originally posted on my Beekeeping website  http://www.topbarbeekeeping.com/

I had just arrived home the other evening when I received a frantic phone call from one of my neighbours. There was a swarm of bees round a small tree in his front garden.

I told him not to worry and I would be over shortly to have a look. I had half expected to find a wasp nest when I arrived. It is funny how many people can’t tell the difference between wasps, bumble bees and honey bees. I have been called out for a swarm of bees a few times but when I arrive I find mostly wasps and bumble bees.

To my surprise (and delight as I had just completed constructing a third hive) it actually was a swarm of honey bees!

One of the neighbors had a video camera, so this is me (The Fat Bloke) up a tree!

About Clive

Today, beekeepers are losing 30 to 40 percent of their colonies each year to mites. News articles and scientific research warn the world of the imminent nutritional danger humans face since honey bees are dying at alarming rates. In the US, almost 50% of managed honey bees have been annihilated by a pest known as the Varroa Mite. Since the late 1980′s, the varroa mites have become a major problem to the health of bee populations and many beekeepers have experienced significant loss of production as well as increased costs.

Conventional beekeeping methods of using chemical treatments have only resulted in producing chemical resistant mites without causing an significant reduction in their numbers.

Natural beekeeping methods tackle the problem from a different angle. The first is letting the bees build their own comb rather than using foundation. The Varroa prefers larger cell sizes such as drone cells and the larger cell size forced on the bees by comb foundation.

When left to their own devices the bees will construct comb with smaller cell sizes (regression) which naturally restricts the Varroa.

Second, use natural substances to upset the Verroa and encourage the bees to groom one another knocking of the mites and killing them.

Personally I use Beevital Hive Clean  which works naturally and does not affect honey or the wax.

After its application the tiny drops of the liquid deposited on the bees’ hair are then transferred onto other bees through contact and the bees’ natural urge to cleanse. Hive Clean cleanses bees from parasites and honeycomb cells from dead larvae which then drop to the bottom of the hive.

It is non-toxic and does not kill Varroa instantly. The Varroa immediately sense a change in the environment after applying Hive Clean. This irritates them and they fall off the bee or are bitten off by other bees. Eventually they die on the open mesh floor tray.

Both my bee colonies survived the very harsh winter and are building strongly

Colony 1

Inside My First Top Bar Hive

Colony 2

Inside My Second Top Bar Hive

It is now time to undertake the first Spring Verroa treatment. The knife is my TBHive  tool. I use it to prise apart the bars and clear any excess propolis (A conventional hive tool is not very useful when working on top bar hives).

Dribbling hive clean between the hive bars in the brood area.

Depending on the mite drop I will undertake two more treatments spaced over the next ten to 15 days.

At the same time as undertaking the Varroa treatment I added five empty bars to each hive so the bees have plenty of room for expansion. If the weather continues like it is at the moment there may well be some surplus honey  fingers crossed!

About Clive

While I was researching for my eBook on Natural Beekeeping I came across a lot of misinformation with regard to using a smoker on bees. The biggest and most quoted misconception was that the smoke calms the bees and makes them easier to handle. Conventional beekeeping methods rely on this and use a smoker every time a hive is manipulated.

The fact is the smoke does not calm the bees. When bees smell smoke their natural instinct is to prepare to flee.  After all in the wild smoke would only mean one thing….  Fire!

A forest fire would of course destroy their nest so as soon as the bees smell smoke they immediately start to gorge themselves with honey. If they find they have to leave their nest and relocate to somewhere safer they will then have sufficient reserves to tide them over until their new nest is located and set up.

A bee gorged with honey will of course act calmer and be unable to sting because she can no longer bend her abdomen easily (how do you feel after a large meal!). So while all outward appearances are of calm they are in fact on high alert preparing to “high tail it outta there”.

That of course is the reason why too much smoke will have the opposite effect. It will cause the bees to become more agitated rather than less.

Smoke has an added consequence of destroying the hive scent and the pheromones within, which are used to control the smooth running of the system. The advantage to the beekeeper being the guard bees cannot mobilise the hives defences against him or her.

The down side, once the beekeeper has finished the task they set out to do is the bees have to repair the damage to their supplies caused by gorging themselves. They also have remove the scent of smoke from their hive so things can return back to normal.

Can you imagine the stress and adverse effect this has on a hive when every ten to fourteen days the conventional beekeeper comes along and subjects them to a good few puffs of smoke and pulls their nest apart?

It is good practice as a natural beekeeper to avoid using smoke on your bees. If you want to inspect them chose your time so most of the foragers are out away from the hive. Handle your bees gently; calmly and methodically then nine times out of ten you won’t have any trouble at all.

If you need to get them to move out of the way, when you are closing up the bars for instance a light spray from a garden spray bottle of water or water and a few drops of cider vinegar will get them to duck out of sight.

You can then shut up your hive in the knowledge you have not left behind the chaos caused by a smoker.

Having said that, for the one time things don’t go to plan you should always have a lit smoker on the ground within reach. That way if things do start to get out of hand you can give them a few puffs of smoke so you can shut them up and return another day.

Because of how a smoker works on bees it is a waste of time smoking a clustered swarm. The smoke would in fact agitate the swarm and may make them fly. If you are trying to collect a swarm either use nothing on them at all or spray them with weak sugar water. They would then be too busy licking it off one another to bother about you.

If you have not yet read my book on natural beekeeping for beginners than you can get it with a special subscribers discount here: Natural Beekeeping

About Clive

There seems to be a lot of misinformation and myth circulated around the web and in some beekeeping publications regarding Natural Beekeeping.

The first and to my mind the most damaging myth put about by exponents of conventional beekeeping methods is that Natural Beekeeping is a return to the ancient ways of beekeeping before the ‘great’ invention of removable frames by  Langstroth.

To paraphrase an all to common opinion; “The basis of natural beekeeping was to catch swarms and stick them into hives, the most primitive of which were just hollow containers made of wood, clay or straw. When the bees had filled the nest with honey, they were smoked out or killed and the honey and wax harvested. Just one step away from stealing honey from wild bees! So the old ‘natural way’ was to catch bees, gave them somewhere to live, then kill them and take their stuff.”

Then the clincher question would be asked. “How is that in anyway better than modern beekeeping?”

My answer to that is it’s not any better, modern conventional beekeeping is probably about the same!

I would suggest that modern Natural Beekeeping started with Abbé Émile Warré (1867 – 1951) who lived in France and kept bees in a wide variety of hives with the aim of finding the best hive for both bees and beekeeper.

Abbé Warré developed The People’s Hive based on his studies of 350 hives of different systems that existed at his time as well as of the natural habits of the bees themselves.

He advocated a method of beekeeping that involved minimal interference. After all the bees have had over 100 million years practice why do they need us to strip their nest apart every two weeks to check they are doing it correctly?

His hive uses top bars so the bees can build their own comb the size they want unlike conventional frames and foundation where the bees are forced to build comb larger than they would otherwise. (The thinking there was that larger cells means bigger bees resulting in more honey) The actual effect is larger cells make it is easier for the Vorroa!

The main draw back with Warre’s methods is his hive. It is expanded by adding new boxes to the bottom. The existing stack of bees and honey has to be lifted so the new empty box can be inserted. Towards the end of a heavy nectar flow you would need two fit people to lift it. Not a beekeeping method for anyone with a bad back!

Enter the Horizontal top bar hive, a style of cheap low-tech hive that has been about since ancient times. It could be adapted to the new minimal interference methods suggested by Abbe Warre without the heavy lifting.

Therefore I would suggest that ‘Natural’ beekeeping is in fact a more ‘modern’ method of keeping bees than that supported by the conventional beekeeper. Their assertion that natural beekeeping is nothing more than a return to the old days of slash and burn beekeeping is just a load of hokum.

Perhaps it is the conventional methods of manipulation, exploitation, constant interference   and the use of chemicals as a cure for everything that should be regarded as old fashioned?

Check out my website Natural Beekeeping Using  Top Bar Hive

About Clive