Backwards Beekeepers More urban beekeeping, this time atop a Toronto hotel Gain instant and exclusive access to over 5,000 of the most creative ideas, innovations and startups on our database and use our smart filters to take you direct to those that are most relevant to your industry and your needs. Not interested? You can still browse articles published in the last 30 days from our homepage and receive your daily and weekly fix of entrepreneurial ideas through our free newsletters. Build Your Own: Bee Hives and Supers - Show Me The Honey! - Christopher Beeson - Beekeeper Blog - St Louis Missouri Whether you want to build your own bee hives or just see what's involved, the following is my account of making my own hives and supers including: Wood SelectionRipping the WoodBox JointsRoute the Frame RestPriming/Painting the Hive Wood SelectionObviously you would never want to use any treated lumber in the making of a bee hive. For my hives I used pine. If you're buying typical dimensional lumber, you can use a single 1x8x8 to make one medium super and a single 1x12x8 to make a single deep hive body. Ripping the WoodOnce you have your lumber home, use the dimensions for Langstroth Hive Plans to mark the width and height of the hive pieces on each board. Using a table saw, rip the boards to the desired height first. Box JointsOnce you have your wood cut to size, it's time to determine how to join your pieces together with a strong durable joint so that they stand up to Mother Nature, and also the weight of the bees and/or honey. It isn't perfect, but it works pretty good.
Bee Culture References: 1. Bray, G.A., et. al., Consumption of High-Fructose Corn Syrup in Beverages May Play A Role In The Epidemic Of Obesity, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, April 2004, Vol. 79, No. 4, 537-543 2. Forshee, R.A., A Critical Examination of the Evidence Relating High Fructose Corn Syrup and Weight Gain, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 2007, 47:561-582 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
Bee Pollen helps avoid allergies, increase… Toronto’s Blooming Buzztropolis By Julia De Laurentiis Johnson Urban beekeeping is kinda hot. Vancouverites are on board. New Yorkers have followed suit. Torontonians, too, have started to get wise to the benefits of city buzzers, with some bee-friendly spots scattered throughout the city. The Fairmont Royal York hotel got much buzz when they kept rooftop honey bees in creatively named hives and used the homespun honey in various dishes served at their restaurant. For anyone in and around the city interested in learning about beekeeping, this is a great place to start.
The beginner hive: Langstroth or top bar? | Honey Bee Suite I have a definite opinion on this subject, although I don’t know if it’s completely justified. I’ve managed hives in both types of equipment, both at home and at the state prison where I used to teach beekeeping. It seems to me that, for a beginner, the best option will depend on the individual, the location, the purpose, and the beekeeper’s ability to fabricate equipment. Let’s start by running through some of the issues. About Langstroth hives: Here in the states, Langstroths are fairly uniform in size and shape. About top-bar hives: Although top-bar hives have been around for a long time, here in the states they are relatively new. In my opinion your choice of hive has a lot to do with your ultimate goal. Still, I think it is easier to manage bees in a Langstroth. RustyHoneyBeeSuite
American Beekeeping Federation Bee propolis contains all the vitamins and… Humans must change behaviour to save bees, vital for food production – UN report 10 March 2011 – The potentially disastrous decline in bees, a vital pollinating element in food production for the growing global population, is likely to continue unless humans profoundly change their ways, from the use of insecticides to air pollution, according to a United Nations report released today. “The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century,” UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner said. “The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.” But bee colonies have been collapsing in many parts of the globe, and the report – Global Bee Colony Disorders and other Threats to Insect Pollinators – cites more than a dozen potential factors ranging from declines in flowering plants and the use of memory-damaging insecticides to the worldwide spread of pests and air pollution.
Honey Bee Suite Chapter 2 Honey bees have been kept by man in a wide variety of hives. In the early days of the United States the most common hive was a section cut from a hollow tree, called a gum or log gum, with a slab of wood to cover the top of it. In Europe the straw skep hive was common and one model used in Greece had movable combs. Bee hives have often been designed and built without regard for the needs and habits of the honey bee colony. Many beekeeping enthusiasts are attracted by unnecessarily elaborate equipment or feel a need to modify the basic Langstroth design. Hive Parts and Selection of Equipment A bee hive is composed of one or more wooden shells called hive bodies within which hang the combs in wooden frames. Hive composed of two Dadanth-depth shallow hive bodies. Parts of a typical bee hive. Bee hives are available from many different companies (see page 155) or you can make your own. Beekeeping suppliers and catalog stores offer basic equipment kits for beginners. Assembly of Equipment
The Early History of Beekeeping History of Wild Bees and Beekeeping The beekeeper is the keeper of bee collection of honey and the other products that bees product in the hive like beeswax, pollen, and royal jelly. Another product of bees is for resale to other beekeeper. The location of where bees are housed is called an apiary or beeyard. The collecting honey dates back 15,000 years ago, Egyptian art shows beekeeping around 4,500 years ago. Wild bees became domesticated in artificial hive like logs, wooden boxes, pottery, and woven baskets. The Greece apiculture found smoking pots, honey extractors in Knossos; Beekeeping was a highly valued industry. In China the art of beekeeping recorded the importance of quality of wooden boxes if improved the quality of the honey. There are more than 20,000 different species of wild bees. With breeding bees some companies will achieve a selectively breeding and hybridize varieties are disease and parasite resistance, which produces good honey, swarming behavior reduction.
Beekeeping booming in Toronto Time was, when Greg Thomson went to parties and told people he sold beekeeping supplies in Toronto, he was guaranteed a disheartening laugh. “I just got kind of fed up,” the manager of F.W. Jones & Son Ltd. in Downsview says now. “I’d say, ‘Yeah, beekeeping, laugh it up’.” Over the past few years, Thomson has seen his business shift from supplying commercial beekeepers outside of Toronto, to increasingly selling to Torontonians keeping a hive or two in their back yards. Or balcony, or rooftop. Even the Canadian Opera Company is getting in on the act, with the unveiling Wednesday of two hives on the roof of its new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. But it’s the jump in home beekeeping — despite restrictive Ontario laws that hives must be 30 metres from the property line — that has caught the attention of local bee enthusiasts. One of Thomson’s customers, Brian Hamlin, keeps hives on the Toronto Islands and near the Leslie Street Spit.