Introduction
In Getting Started With Beekeeping, Jacob Klingensmith will give you an understanding of why bees are so important to raising your own food and how they work to pollinate our food crops. You will meet the four different products of the bee hive; honey, pollen, propolis, and wax. You’ll be introduced to the basics workings of a hive and what’s involved in caring for your bees. You’ll also learn what tools are needed for keeping your bees; the bee brush, smoker, hive tool, protective gear and more, as well as how to use them properly.
Jacob will then take you inside the hive to explore the fascinating world of bees and learn about the rank and task of each bee; the queen, the worker and the drone. You’ll discover how the bees communicate with each other and navigate from the hive to the nectar-laden flowers and back again. Jacob will also go over the pros and cons of some of the many breeds of honeybees in North America. You’ll learn about each bee’s life cycle so that you, as the beekeeper, can better provide what is needed to maintain a healthy, productive hive.
You’ll learn about the history of the Lansgtroth and top bar hive and the pros and cons of each. Then, you’ll finish off with setting up your first top bar beehive! Jacob will teach you when to start your hive, when to order your bees and how and when to properly feed and care for them over their first few months. When you finish this course you will have all the knowledge and skills you’ll need to start your journey into the amazing world of beekeeping.
What you’ll learn in this course
- Why bees are so important to food production
- The four products of the beehive
- The basic workings of the hive
- The tools you’ll need and how to use them
- Explore the fascinating world of bees inside the hive
- Learn about the bee’s life cycle
- Pros and cons of different breeds of honeybees
- The history of the Langstroth and Top Bar Hive
- The pros and cons of the Langstroth vs. the Top Bar Hive
- How to set up your top bar hive
- How and when to start your hive
- An overview of the care and feeding for your new hive
Additional Resources
For additional instructions, see: Resources for the Online Beekeeping Course.
The Instructor
Jacob Klingensmith has been raising bees for over 13 years and manages more than 80 beehives. He has been working for a number of years with the top bar hive and feels that it is perfect for the small, sustainable family farm. Jacob has been teaching beekeeping and gardening classes at the Ploughshare for 8 years.
Overview
Introduction to Beekeeping
[MUSIC PLAYING] A vast majority of Americans no longer have any direct connection with the source of their food, nor have the knowledge to produce it themselves. Join the movement to take the provision of our daily bread back into our own hands.
Hello I'm Jake Klingensmith. I'm a beekeeper and an instructor at The Ploughshare. I've been beekeeping for the past 13 years and have around 80 hives. I've been working with the Top Bar Hive here recently to develop a more simple and sustainable family hive. Today I want to talk about the importance of honeybees.
When we think of honeybees we think of the sweet golden honey that bees produce. Honey is an all natural sweetener with many different beneficial properties. Bees gather nectar from flowers. They take the nectar back to their hive, where they turn it into honey.
Honey is not the only reason honeybees are important. As honeybees gather nectar and pollen from flowers for food, they are also pollinating the plants. Honeybees are not the only insects that are useful for pollination. There are many others, such as bumblebees, Mason bees, butterflies and more.
All these other insects cannot be relied upon as a main source for crop pollination for several reasons. One, they do not live year round and are not able to pollinate some of the crops that bloom in the early spring. Two, butterflies do not eat pollen. Thus, they prefer plants that produce sweeter nectar, skipping the less desirable plants.
Three, because bumblebees do not live as a colony year round, they do not need to store large amounts of nectar and pollen, and they do not pollinate very many flowers. A bumblebee queen will start a nest in the early spring. The nest will grow to be a colony in the early summer. Then as the weather cools in the fall, the bumblebee colony will die off.
Our gardens and orchards depend on bees to pollinate the flowers in order to set fruit. And almond blossom will not set fruit if it does not get pollinated by bees, nor will tart or sweet cherries. A cucumber blossom is open for only one day.
If the blossom is not visited that day, it will not set fruit. There are over 90 different crops in the US that depend on bees for pollination. Some plants need to be visited several times in order to be properly pollinated.
If an apple is not visited by five or six bees, the apple will only have a few seeds in it. The seeds cause the meat of the apple to grow. A good apple has about eight to 10 seeds in it. If it has less, the apple will be small and misshaped.
Let's take a look at a few different apples here. Here we have an apple that seems like it wasn't properly pollinated. You can see it's small on one side and larger on the other. It was probably pollinated five to six times. And the seeds are in this side, and there are probably not any in this side.
Here we've got some nicely shaped apples that seem like they were properly pollinated. Let's cut this apple open here. You can see here how the seeds were in the larger side, and there aren't any seeds in the small side. We've got here, one, two, three, four, five-- five seeds in this apple.
This is direct results of poor pollination. A good apple should have 10 seeds. That's why this one was small on one side and larger on the other. Let's take a look at one of these bigger apples here.
This one seems to have been properly pollinated. Let's cut it open. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven-- eight seeds in this apple. So we can see the direct results of pollination here.
We've got an apple here that was pollinated by eight bees-- healthy and big. We've got an apple over here that was not pollinated the proper amount of times, and it was small and misshapen. Bees are also very important to seed saving.
There are several crops that are harvested before they ever produce seeds, such as carrots, cabbage, onions, radishes. In order to save the seeds for the next year, these plants need to be left until they flower. The flower must be pollinated by several bees in order to produce seeds. The seeds are then collected and saved to be planted.
The bees need our gardens as much as we need them for pollination. During the hot dry months of the year when the wild flowers will not be in bloom, the bees will gather nectar from flowering vegetables in our garden. Pollen and nectar are the honeybee's main food source.
Nectar is the bee's source of carbohydrate. The bee's gather the nectar from flowers. They take it back to the hive and store it in their combs. The bees then fan their wings at the entrance of the hive.
This causes the air to circulate through the hive and dehydrate the nectar. Then it turns into honey. The honey is then fed to the honey bee larvae and all the other bees.
Pollen is their source of protein. It furnishes the bees with fat, amino acids, and minerals. As the bees gather nectar from the flowers, they become dusted with pollen. The bees then stop to comb the pollen out of their hair and into small baskets located on their hind legs.
They continue on to the next flower to gather more nectar and pollen. Upon this flower, the bees will lose some of their pollen that they had just collected from the previous flower. Thus, the flower is pollinated.
A beehive is very simple to manage. Throughout the year, the hive management will be similar to that of a garden with not much to do in the winter, and the activities increasing in the spring and summer as the flowers bloom. In the spring, when the flowers begin to bloom, the bees will collect the nectar and pollen as food for their hive.
The more nectar they collect, the larger the hive will grow. On a good year, the bees will gather more nectar for honey than they will use in one winter. This extra honey is what the beekeeper will harvest for his own use.
There are four basic reasons to manage a beehive. One, it is important to check the hive for diseases. Two, as the hive grows throughout the year, you will need to manage the growth of the hive so it will not swarm.
Three, you will need to watch the amount of food that hive has and feed when necessary. The fourth reason is to manage the hive to produce surplus honey, pollen, propolis, and wax. Let's take a look at these four products of the hive.
Honey is the bee's main diet. Honey is gathered from flowers as nectar. The bees sift the nectar from flowers into their stomachs with their tongues. While the nectar is in the bee's stomachs, the bee will add enzymes from a gland in their stomach.
Once the nectar has been turned into honey, the enzymes will preserve it from spoiling. They carry the nectar back to the hive, where they place it in the combs. The nectar is about 85% water when it is first gathered. The bees must dehydrate the nectar to less than 18% moisture or the nectar will ferment.
The bees dehydrate the nectar by fanning their wings at the entrance of the hive. This causes the air to circulate through the hive. After the bees have dehydrated the nectar, it is now honey. Now the bees will cap all the cells that are filled with honey with wax.
This is how the beekeeper knows the honey is ready to be harvested. Pollen is the bee's source of protein. And average hive will gather 60 pounds of pollen in one year. Pollen is a powdery substance that comes from flowers. The pollen collects in the bee's hairy body while gathering nectar from flowers.
The bee will stop every so often and comb the pollen out of its hair. The bee starts by wetting its front legs with nectar. It then combs the pollen from its head and thorax with its front legs. The nectar will cause the pollen dust to stick together.
It will comb the pollen into baskets located on its back legs. The bee flies back to the hive, where it drops the pollen into a cell. Propolis is a sticky resin that is collected from flower buds and trees. The bees gather propolis to seal cracks and polish the inside of the hive.
The propolis has antibacterial properties which keep the hive clean. The bees are always cleaning their hive of any foreign matter. If an object is too big for the bees to remove from the hive, the bees will propolis it over.
If a mouse should enter the hive, the bees will try to sting the mouse and chase it out. But if the mouse does not leave quickly, the bees will sting it to death. Because the dead mouse is too big for the bees to remove, they will propolis the mouse over.
This will keep the hive from becoming contaminated with a dead mouse. Many people collect propolis from the hive for medicinal purposes. Wax is secreted for the abdomens of bees. The bees then use the wax to build their combs.
The bees will hang on each other, forming a chain that hangs from the top of the hive. The bees will pass the scales of wax they secrete up the chain of bees. To bee at the top of the chain will then formed the wax scales into cells.
All these cells comprised together make the comb where they store the honey, pollen, and the metamorphosis of the honeybee takes place. So that's the general overview of bees and beekeeping. Bees are not that complicated.
If you can garden, you can keep bees. In the next videos, we will cover the tools necessary for beekeeping, the different bees-- the queen, the worker, and the drone. We'll talk about how to set up a hive, and much more.
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Bee Caste Rank and Task
[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi. I'm Jake Klingensmith, instructor and teacher at the Ploughshare. In this video, I'm going to be teaching you about the bees and their different activities within the hive. In order to keep your hive and healthy, it is essential to know how these different activities work within the hive.
We will start here with the queen. The queen is the most essential bee within the colony. She's the mother of all the other bees. She lays between 1,000 to 1,500 eggs a day. So when you're raising a hive, you need a healthy queen. You need one that's vigorous, you need one that's going to produce the proper amount of eggs, essential to keep the hive running.
So one of the main things to checking your hive is to check to see if you have a healthy queen. You want to make sure she's doing her job. The queen bee doesn't rule the hive in the sense that she tells every bee what to do, rather she emits a smell called pheromones. These pheromones cause the other bees to understand that she's there, and it also invigorates them to work harder.
Anytime the pheromone ceases to be within the hive, the bees will become lazy and not work as hard. The pheromones stimulate the bees to continue to work to build the comb, bring it honey, pollen, nectar. The pheromones is what keeps the hive's cohesion. The queen lives about two to three years.
The only time the bees ever raise a new queen, is if the queen should die or the colon within the hive gets too large. Half the bees will leave. This is called swarming.
The queen's life starts out as an egg laid in a special cell called the queen cell. The queen cell is much larger than any of the other cells in the hive, and they only build this cell at the time that they're going to raise a new queen. But they don't just build one, they build 15 to 30 of these cells. That's in case one of these cells doesn't hatch or the queen should die before she hatches out.
The egg hatches three days later, and the worker bees begin to feed this larvae a high mineral substance called Royal Jelly. This Royal Jelly is secreted from glands on the worker's head. The worker bees feed this larvae so much Royal Jelly it literally floats, like in a tub of Royal Jelly.
The larvae begins to mature very quickly. And then after eight days, it spins its cocoon. At this stage, it's called a pupa. After a total of 12 days, the queen hatches out as an adult queen. The worker bees, at this point, begin to groom her and take care of her.
The queen's first job within the hive is to eliminate any other queens that may have hatched or are hatching. Remember, there's only supposed to be one queen within the hive, so she's got to dominate the hive. She goes to any of the other cells, she'll eat a hole in the side of the cell, and she stings the emerging queen that's still inside. If a queen has already emerged, there will be a fight and the strongest queen will win.
After three days, the queen leaves the hive and she goes on a mating flight. She will fly within two to three miles from the hive and mate with anywhere from 10 to 17 drones. The queen will only go on this mating flight one time in her life. If the queen does not properly mate with enough drones, she will not be able to lay productively the entire three years of her life.
After returning to the hive from her mating flight, three to five days later she will begin her duty of laying eggs. Her production, at first, is very low. But within two weeks, she will be at her full capacity of 1,500 eggs a day.
In general, there's only one queen in the hive. Every once in awhile, there's an exception to this. If the queen's pheromones should weaken or diminish totally, the bees will begin to raise a new queen. And because the new queen that hatches cannot smell the old queen, every once in awhile you'll get a queen that'll work side-by-side.
I found it interesting once when I opened up a hive and found two queens. It was the mother queen, who's pheromones had totally stopped, and the new queen working side-by-side. This is OK because, eventually, the older queen is going to die. As long as they're getting along, it's OK to have both of them in the hive. But this rarely happens, you'll rarely see this.
The drone honey bee. The drone is the male honey bee in the hive. Although shorter than the queen, the drone is bulkier and noticeably larger than the worker bee. The drone's sole purpose in the hive is to mate with the queen. Although his lifespan is variable, it's rarely longer than three months.
Because he has no stinger, wax glands, or pollen basket, he cannot carry on the normal activities of the rest of the worker bees. In the fall when the weather begins to cool and the drone is no longer needed, the worker bees will chew the wings off the drone and chase it out of the front of the hive. Because he cannot fly back into the hive, he will die of starvation. In the spring and summer, there may be as many as 600 to 1,000 drones in a healthy hive.
Next, we'll talk about the worker bee. The majority of the hive's population consists of the female worker bees. There is anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 worker bees in a hive in the spring and summer. She's raised in a little bit of a different cell than the queen. The comb is constructed of many different cells, and in these cells, is where the worker bee is raised.
The worker bee starts as an egg. Three days later, the larvae hatches from the egg. For the first three days of its larval life, it is fed Royal Jelly, just as the queen was. Then after that, the workers begin to dilute the Royal Jelly with some nectar and pollen. Because it is not fed Royal Jelly through its entire larval life, the worker bees reproductive organs do not fully mature.
After eight days, the larvae spins its cocoon, and this is called the pupa stage. After a total of 21 days, the worker bee hatches out.
After the bee hatches, its first task is to clean itself. Then after that, it will begin to go and get some honey and pollen from the cells and feed it the older larvae. At this point, it's Royal Jelly glands begin to form and it will feed the younger larvae at this time.
The bees next job in the hive is to build the comb. The bees will hang from the top of the hive from each other forming what we call a wax chain. The bees secrete the wax from glands on their abdomen. They pass the little scales up the chain, each bee adding their scale to each other's, until the last bee forms the scales into a hexagonal shape of the cells. All this construction is how the bees make their combs.
It's next job in the hive is to greet all the incoming bees at the entrance. It gathers the nectar and pollen that they're bringing in from the field and stores it in the newly built combs. After that, the bees next job before leaving the hive as a field bee is to stand at the entrance of the hive and guard it. Every bee coming into the hive has got to check in with the guard bees.
If they bear their mother pheromones, they're welcome in. But if for some reason they should not or be from another hive, they will be chased out. There's one exception to this rule. If the bees are bringing in nectar or pollen, gifts, then they're just welcome in the hive, whether they bear the queen pheromone or not.
While working as a guard, the bee will take short flights learning to navigate back to the hive. Once the bees have successfully learned how to navigate, they will then begin to gather nectar and pollen for the hive.
The first bees that leave in their early morning are called scout bees. These bees go out and search for nectar and pollen. When they've found a floral source, they go back to the hive and do something called a bee dance. This bee dance will tell the other bees exactly where to go to find this nectar or pollen.
The bees dance in a figure eight. Depending on the angle of the figure eight is going to tell the bees where the nectar source is in correlation with the sun. This is very important for the other bees to watch. The bee will do a vibration through the center of the figure eight. This vibration is going to tell them how far the nectar source is.
If they vibrate very fast, it's very close. If they do a very long vibration, it's going to be a good distance away. The bees need to know this because they're going to store up on just the right amount of nectar to make it to the floral source. They don't want to store up on too much because they want to be able to bring back as much nectar as they possibly can. They don't want to store up on too little or they'll run out before they make it there.
Bees know the floral source is getting close because they begin to run out of the nectar and honey that they stored up. Upon arriving on the flower, the bee will take in the nectar through its tongue and into its honey stomach. Here, the bee adds enzymes from its stomach into the nectar. This is what will preserve the honey later on.
The bee then flies back to the hive, where it places the honey inside the cells. The rest of the bees guarding the entrance will fan their wings circulating air through the hive. This is what dehydrates the nectar and turns it into honey. So the worker bees life is about 45 days.
There over 25 different breeds of honey bees in the US. The more common ones that I've worked with are the Italian, Caucasian, Carnolian, Russian, and Bucfast. Each have their pros and cons. Some do better in colder climates and others do better in warmer climates.
The Italian bees were originally brought over into the US around the 1950s. They were brought over because the queens were a consistent golden color all the time. The Caucasians were brought over because they were able to adapt to the cooler weather. The Carnolians, they had a longer tongue and beekeepers thought they would be able to reach further into the flowers and get more nectar. The Russians were brought over more recently because of their resistance to the varroa mite.
The varroa mite is a pest that will weaken the health of the colony. The Bucfast bee was brought over because they were a very docile bee. They're very gentle and a lot of beekeepers like to keep them. I've worked with all these and I, personally, like the Italian an the Bucfast because they are a more gentle and docile bee.
As a beekeeper, a lot of time is spent observing the life cycle within the hive and providing whatever is needed. Having an understanding of these activities will help you maintain a healthy hive.
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The Hive Langstroth vs Top Bar
Hi, I'm Jake. In this video, we're going to be talking about the beehive and the individual parts that make it up. Then we'll go over the pros and cons of the two most common hives, the top bar hive and the Langstroth here.
Let's start here with the Langstroth hive. The Langstroth hive was named after a man named Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth. In the mid 1800s, L.L. Langstroth had been keeping bees as most beekeepers had been keeping them for over thousands of years. Beekeeping consisted of catching a swarm of bees and containing them in some sort of cavity or container.
Traditionally, most of us when we think of beekeeping, we think of the straw skep. This is the hive that the Europeans kept their bees in for many years. They would catch a swarm, they would place it in this basket, and then place the basket on some flat surface, leave the bees there all summer, and then towards the end of the summer they would take the whole basket and either dunk it in hot water or put it over a fire. This would kill all the bees and all the brood. Then they would take the combs that the bees had built inside here, scrape them all out, squeeze the whole mixture together, and the liquid that came out was what they used for honey.
This destroyed your hive every year, and therefore they had to collect a new swarm every spring. Beekeepers begin to realize that in order to be more productive, they were going to have to be able to manage each individual comb. They were going to have to be able to take the combs out of the hive and separate the brood combs where they were raising all their young from the honeycombs.
So many beekeepers begin to work with the hive, building all sorts of apparatuses and frames in order to get the bees to build their combs on it, but the bees never did it. They were just one failure after the other-- it just didn't work.
Then in the 1850s, Langstroth made an incredible discovery. He realized that bees built their combs an inch and 3/8 from center to center every time, whether in a hive, in the wild, anywhere around-- they always built their combs an inch and 3/8 apart.
So then he built his frames, his apparatuses to hold the combs, an inch and 3/8 from center to center. Now for the first time, bees began to accept the apparatuses the beekeepers made to build their combs on and the beekeepers were able to manage their hives in such a way that they didn't have to kill the brood and bees and start a new colony every spring.
L.L. Langstroth's hives were a combination of the two hives here. Both hives came out of what he first developed. He started off with a box hive with top bars going across the top and little wax starters on them. The bees began to build their combs from there, and later he built a frame to encapsulate that.
As beekeeping became more and more industrialized, beekeepers began to focus more and more on honey production rather than just the bees and pollination. They begin to build these box hives in order to stack up the boxes so that they could maximize their honey production. So from that drive for production came what we know as them modern Langstroth hive.
Now let's go over the individual parts of the Langstroth hive here. We've got the lid. This is the most common lid-- there's several different styles, but this is the most common.
Then we've got the boxes themselves. If you notice here, there's two different size boxes. There's a 6 and 1/2 inch box here and then a nine inch box. The reason for that is when harvesting honey, these boxes get very heavy. A deep box like this filled with honey is going to weigh 80 pounds and this shallow box is going to weigh about 60 pounds. That really helps on the beekeeper's back. We raise our young bees-- the brood-- is all raised in the deeper boxes and the shallower boxes we just save for the honey.
Now inside the hive we've got the frame, and in the frame here we've got something called foundation. There's several different foundations on the market. There's the wax ones and then there's the plastic ones. The more common ones these days are the plastic ones.
The purpose of foundation is two things. One, it shows the bees where to build their combs. You see it's embossed in the shape of their combs so they just draw it out with wax. And then the second is to add rigidity to the comb when you put this whole comb in the extractor.
Now the combs are built with that inch and 3/8 spacing. The comb itself is inch and 3/8, so that puts the center of the comb inch and 3/8 from each comb. That was that discovery that Langstroth made.
Now, in order to keep the queen down here rearing all her young and laying her eggs in the bottom box, we have a queen excluder. It's a wire grate, and the wires are all spaced apart so that the worker bees bringing in the honey and storing it in the hive can come up into the top box but the queen can't. She's just a little bit bigger and she can't fit through this screen.
So this is placed over what we call the brood box. That's just a box that's deeper and where all the young are raised. We place that over there and that keeps that queen down there in the bottom.
Now, when beekeeping, as the hive expands we'll have to add more boxes on. We'll end up with two deep boxes for brood, then we'll put our queen excluder, then we'll begin to stack these shallower boxes on top. I have seen hives stacked up as high as eight shallow boxes on top of two brood boxes. That's a good honey year.
Then the whole hive is set on what we call the bottom board. This here is the bottom board. This is a screened bottom board and the purpose of it is two things.
One, it adds ventilation in our hot Texas summers and two, there's a little pest we have in our hives called the mite. It's kind of like a tick. It hosts itself on the bees. And every once in awhile it falls off and it will fall right through that screen and land on this little white board down here, and it's unable to crawl back up and get on the bees. So that's your standard Langstroth hive.
So now let's go over the individual parts of the top bar hive. This version of the top bar hive is my own development. I've been working with the top bar hive for the past 13 years here in Texas. One of the things that we have to focus on is heat, so I changed some of the things from the standard top bar hive that you would see elsewhere.
OK, here's the roof. I've put some Styrofoam in the roof to keep the heat from going down onto the hive itself. I've also puts some little spacers here and this keeps the lid about 3/4 of an inch above the hive, and that allows for ventilation and air to circulate over the top of the bars.
And then in the hive, we've got our top bars. And again, here's that inch and 3/8 spacing that L.L. Langstroth discovered back in the 1850s. The top bar here has this starter strip on it. It can be a wax starter strip or it can be a plastic, but all this does is it guides the bees where to build their combs. They will build their combs off the top bar hanging down like this.
So the top bar hive has about 24 top bars in it. When you're first starting your hive, you'll only use about 10 of them.
Here we have a divider board. This serves two purposes. One, it condenses the amount of space that the bees have to warm in the wintertime and then the bees have to cool their hive, also. So it allows them to have the minimal amount of space that they have to heat up the hive or cool it.
This also helps the bees build their combs straight. We'll keep it pretty close to where they're building their combs and they'll build them straight across these bars.
OK. So as the hive grows, you'll move this divider board back. You'll always want to keep about three bars for the bees to build their combs on. They'll continue to expand and you'll just continue to move this divider board back.
In a good honey year, you'll end up moving this divider board all the way to the back here. You'll have combs on all 24 of these bars.
Another thing about this particular top bar hive is I have put an entrance on both ends. Both ends of the hive look just like this end right here. We've got an entrance here and then we've got an entrance here. The purpose of this is so that you can raise your own queens in the back part of the hive.
You also can split the colony right within this hive. So you can have two colonies of bees right in this hive here. This helps cut back on the swarming problems.
So that's the parts of the top bar hive. Now let's discuss the pros and cons of the two hives here.
The Langstroth hive was developed for maximum honey production. For the small family homestead, the disadvantage is it takes a lot of tools to extract the honey. To harvest the honey, you'll take the comb out.
First, the bees build their combs within the frame. And after they fill the combs with honey, they cap each cell with a wax capping. So then we have to take this comb out, we have to take a hot knife and cut that wax capping off. We'll take it and put it in a big round barrel extractor, and all the frames are put in there in the shape of a wagon wheel, and then they're spun and centrifugal force pulls the honey out of the combs.
In order to harvest the honey, we've got to harvest an entire box or more. It would be to our disadvantage just to harvest one comb because when the honey is in the extractor, it'll just barely wet the sides before it begins to run out. So we need an entire box. The equipment is fairly expensive, and if I was going to be in beekeeping and have more than 10 hives, I probably would have the Langstroth hive.
And let's talk about the top bar hive here. The top bar hive, on the other hand, is great for somebody who's looking for pollination and to also harvest a little honey on the side. You can harvest one comb at a time.
The way you harvest the honey is you'll take the combs out and you'll take a knife and you just cut it right off below the starter strip, take the comb and place it in a bowl, take a potato masher and match those combs up, and then you'll pour that mashing of comb and wax over cheesecloth stretched over a bucket. You'll get your wax on the top and you'll get your honey on the bottom.
The nice thing about it is you can harvest one comb at a time. You could harvest ten combs if you have it. But if you're out checking your bees and you notice there's a comb ready to be taken, you can take it. It doesn't take a lot of equipment and you probably already have it in your kitchen.
The disadvantage to the top bar hive is when you harvest your honey, you're taking the comb every time so the bees have to rebuild that comb. On an average year, you should be able to get anywhere from three to five gallons out of this hive.
The Langstroth hive, on the other hand, because you're returning the combs back to the hive, they spend all their energy just gathering nectar and turning it into honey. You can get anywhere from three to seven gallons.
So as you can see, the production is a lot higher. A lot more equipment, a lot more production, a lot less equipment, a little bit less honey.
Because I'm focused on sustainability, I can raise all the bees I need for this hive right within this hive. Remember, it's got entrances on both ends and so I can raise queens by the very simple method that I use in this top bar hive for raising queens.
Now if I was going to be keeping bees with the top bar hive, I probably wouldn't want to have a lot of them. If I had a small homestead, two top bar hives would be enough to pollinate my garden and to provide me with what I would need for my family.
In beekeeping, if you're after production and you're wanting 10 or more hives, the Langstroth hive would be the way to go. As far as the small family homestead goes and sustainability, the top bar hive is great. Two or three hives is just what you would need to provide your garden with pollination and your family with a little honey.
Tools of the Trade
A vast majority of Americans no longer have any direct connection with the source of their food, nor have the knowledge to produce it themselves. Join the movement to take the provision of our daily bread back into our own hands.
I'm Jake Klingensmith, beekeeper and instructor at the Ploughshare. I've been working with the top bar hive for the last 15 years to produce a more sustainable and self-sufficient hive for the family farm.
Here are your basic beekeeping tools. We have the veil, the gloves, the bee brush, the hive tools and the smoker. We're going to start here with the smoker.
The smoker here is one of the more important tools in beekeeping, because it calms the bees. The bees work on something called pheromones. When the bees are alarmed, they put out these pheromones to warn the other bees to attack. The smoke masks that alarm pheromone. It also causes the bees to begin to eat honey, thinking that there may be a fire and they'll have to leave the hive.
Let's go ahead and light the smoker here. I built this little handy box to store all my smoker fuels. I've got sawdust in this little compartment here. I've got fine wood chips and then coarser blocks. I've got my matches and all my newspaper in this side over here.
We'll start with some newspaper. I'll put that down in the bottom of the smoker and light it. I light the paper in the bottom of the smoker and start pumping the bellows. As soon as I see the flames beginning to catch that paper, I'll add some sawdust. And as soon as I feel they've caught fire, I'll begin to add some finer pieces of wood.
One of the keys to lighting a smoker is getting the proper amount of oxygen into the firebox, so you've got to keep pumping these bellows. Now I'm going to start adding some coarser blocks in. I'm going to keep pumping the whole time. It takes a good bit before they start to catch a fire.
Meanwhile, I'm going to be checking. As soon as I begin to feel this radiant heat, that's going to tell me there's some really good embers forming. OK, there we go, I feel it. And now I'll really add some wood into this.
I've got a real good fire going here. Now, one of the important things we want to make sure is that we don't want any flames coming out of the front of this smoker here. That's a fire hazard, and definitely will do some damage to the bees.
We're ready to use some of the tools. And I'll go through the different tools as I open this hive up. Before we get started, it's a good idea to put on our protective gear.
I'm going to put on my veil here. The strings keep the bottom of the veil secure around my shirt. That way, the bees can't crawl up and around my face.
Here are the gloves. They're leather. They're not 100% sting-proof, but they definitely minimize the amount of stings you'll get.
I personally don't use gloves. They get very hot in the summer. And I really leave it up to the individual if you want to wear gloves, so I'm going to take these off. Our bees are very docile and I haven't had that much problem.
We have the last essential tools here. We have the hive tool and the bee brush. I've got two different hive tools here.
Here's your standard hive tool, and here's the French hive tool. I prefer the French hive tool. Because it's nice and long slender, and I can fit it down to the bottom of the beehive and scrape out any wax or anything that would fall to the bottom of the hive.
Let's open up the hive now. Remember, any time we're checking our bees, we want to continually give them smoke. I smoke over the top. It gets the bees all nice and calm.
Now you'll see why the hive tool is important. The bees are always bringing in a resin substance from trees call propolis. They propolis the whole inside of their hive. It's kind of like caulking to a painter. They'll seal the entire hive, making it almost impossible to remove any of these bars.
See, I can't get them out without the hive tool, so this acts like a pry bar. See this substance here? This was between the two bars. This is propolis. This is what they glue the whole hive together with.
I want to talk about the brush now. The brush here has some pretty soft bristles, and it's primarily used when harvesting honey. When I want to harvest the honey, I've got to get the bees all off this comb here. So I'll use my brush to brush them back into the hive. These bristles are nice and gentle, so they don't harm the bee at all.
This is a nice comb of honey. There'll be a few straggler bees that try to stay on the comb. This is their honey that they worked so hard for. The other around thing the brush is so useful for is when closing the hive up. You want to get all these bees brushed back in.
Setting Up a Top Bar Hive
[MUSIC PLAYING] A vast majority of Americans no longer have any direct connection with the source of their food, nor have the knowledge to produce it themselves. Join the movement to take the provision of our daily bread back into our own hands.
I'm Jake Klingensmith, beekeeper and instructor at the Ploughshare. Today I'm going to show you how to start a hive.
The best time of the year to start a hive is in the early spring. Here in Texas, that would be April. You'll want to order your bees in the late winter, sometime in December, because the beekeepers tend to sell out by March. So you'll want to place your order so that they can come in in April.
It's always very exciting when picking up your package of bees from the post office. And believe me, the postmaster will be just as excited to see them leave.
Before we get started, we need to find a place for these bees to go. We need to look at a location for the hive. One of the first things to consider would be your neighbors. You don't want to set your hive up in a place where your neighbors' activities are going to affect the bees coming in and out of the hive.
The next thing you want to look at is your activities. You won't want to place your hive where you're going to be mowing, rotor tilling, or making a lot of noise. Because that can oftentimes upset the bees.
The next thing you want to consider is shade. Bees need shade, especially in the summertime. Here in Texas it can get pretty hot. And the bees need that shade. They've gotta keep the hive at 93 degrees. And if you've got it in the middle of the sun, it can get pretty hot and those combs can start to get soft and melt.
So you'll want to place it where they have shade most of the day. It's good to have some sun in the early morning, but shade is really good in the afternoon. So shade will be a big thing to consider.
The next thing you're going to want to consider is elevation. You don't want to place your hive up on top of a hill where the wind will come and blow it over. That can be a big problem. Preferably, you would want to place them near some kind of wind break.
Another thing is you wouldn't want to place your hive in a little valley. You're really going to have to look out over the lay of your land. If you've got a dip in the land, oftentimes cold air will accumulate in those little dips. And as a result, the bees won't get out as early in the morning.
For instance, bees fly at 55 to 57 degrees. And so if you've got a little dip in the land, the bees oftentimes will get stuck until that area starts to warm up. Especially in the wintertime. When the frost comes through, you can have a hive freeze that's in a dip.
But right next to it, if the hive is just up a little bit, elevated a little bit higher, then it won't take as high risk of being frozen.
OK. This is the fun part. We've got our bees here. And the first thing we want to do is give them some little sugar water. Here I've mixed up some sugar and water. It's 50/50. 50% sugar, 50% water.
And I'm just going to mist these bees. They've gone all the way from the beekeeper through the mail to you. And so they're a little worn out. And this will help kind of perk them up.
Give them a good misting. You definitely don't want to drown them. Just give them a misting. Kind of clams them down. It's kind of like a kid being thrown into some cotton candy.
I'll set them to the side and we'll get the hive ready here.
We want to take out 10 bars here.
These bars here have a wax strip on it. This is what the bees will build their combs from. It's just kind of a starter.
This here is the divider board. This will keep them within that 10 bars' space. You don't want to give them too much space. If you give them more than 10 bars' space, they tend to build their combs crooked. They'll build them from front to back instead of from side to side on these starter strips.
You just want to get them 10 bars' space. That will also make it where they don't have to heat or cool so much of the hive.
Bees, in general, have to keep their hive at 93 degrees. The way they do that is they intake sugar, which is a carbohydrate, and it's an energy. And so therefore their bodies produce heat. They'll all mass together and they'll vibrate their bodies. And this vibration will cause heat. And that's how they keep the hive warm.
In the summertime when the hive begins to get hot, the bees will all come to the entrance, they'll fan their wings, and circulate air through the hive.
If it gets really hot, they'll fly from the hive. They'll go dip in some water. They'll fly back. And they'll fan their wings over their wet bodies. This causes an evaporation, which cools them, which, in turn, cools the air that circulates through the hive.
All right. We're ready to start but these bees in. I will mist them down one more time with this sugar water. You see how they really calmed down from the first time I sprayed them?
Here we've got a can here. And this is what the beekeeper filled with sugar water in order to feed them as they were being sent through the mail. You need to get that out.
Got some bees here. Shake the bees off. This is where they were eating from. And I'll spray some more sugar water in there.
OK. This little strap here has got the queen on it. She's in a cage just below that. So I'm gonna take that out.
All these bees know that the queen is in there because she puts out a smell called pheromones that attracts all the bees to her cage. So I'll need to shake these bees off.
OK. Here she is. First thing you'll want to do is check to see if your queen is healthy. This is a real nice, healthy queen here.
This cage here has a cork on either end of it. And it's very important to take out the right cork. The cage has three little holes in it.
And one of the holes is filled with something called candy. This candy is a very soft kind of like a marshmallow candy. The bees eat through that and release the queen out.
These bees here came from several different hives. The beekeeper went around and he collected bees from different hives and he shook them down into this package. And he got three and a half pounds of bees here.
Then he went and he got a queen from a hive that he was raising queens in. This is how the beekeeper is able to ship bees to you, is by collecting them from different hives.
So, one the important things here is to realize that these bees here are not familiar with this queen. And so the beekeeper has put some candy in this side of the cage here. The bees will eat through that candy. And during that time, they will get used to their new queen.
They will familiarize themselves with her pheromones, and this will cause them to accept her. If she is released too soon, the bees will kill her. So it's very important to take out the cork on the candy end. If you take out the cork on the wrong end, she'll be released too quickly.
It takes about 24 hours for the bees to get used to their new queen. So just about the time that the bees are eating through this candy is about the time that they'll be used to their new queen.
So let's take out this cork. And let's do it on the candy end. One of the most common mistakes that a new beekeeper makes is forgetting to take out the cork. This isn't disastrous, because you could always take out the cork a week later. But the sooner she gets out, the better.
Now we'll want to place this queen. We'll want to hang her between two bars. One very important thing to remember is you don't want your queen placed on the bottom of the hive.
The bees cluster at night. They'll all cluster to the top of the hive at night to build comb. And therefore, they'll just forget her down on the bottom. And she'll never get released. She may even starve to death.
The other thing is, I place her to the front here. Therefore, when I come back to check my hive here in a week to see how they're doing, I know that they're going to cluster around the queen. So therefore they're going to build their comb right on these first two. Just helps me visualize where they're going to be when I go to open the hive next week.
Now we're ready to start shaking the bees in. I usually take the sugar water. And I'll mist them again. And then, start dumping them in.
As I'm dumping them in, I'll mist them down again.
This is pretty close to 3,000 bees. We only estimate it, but it's about 1,000 bees per pound.
You'll have a few bees that linger in the cage. But that's OK. I try to get most of them out. They don't like being shaken around like this so they try to hang on to the edges. And if you work real quickly, I think you can get most of them out.
Then I'll take this cage. And I usually set it right next to the front of the hive. That way the last bees remaining in the cage, they'll be able to fly out and go into the hive itself.
And then I'll mist them down with sugar water one more time.
Now I'm going to brush whatever bees are on the outside into the hive.
One of things I'm looking for, is I'm looking for bees that are going to put out a pheromone that tells all the rest of the bees that they're happy with this new location.
Bees are always talking to each other through pheromones. Let's see here. Here we go. We've got some bees right here. They're fanning their wings, spreading that smell out.
One of the important things about starting a hive is that you've got to feed them. These bees have nothing in this hive to eat. So anything that they store up is gonna come from you. You've gotta feed these days. So we're going to feed them some sugar and water.
That's primarily what they're going to eat when they start off. They need a lot of sugar water to build all that new comb. One important thing about the kind of sugar you use is that you want to use granulated sugar. You don't want to use powdered sugar. It contains cornstarch, which is really bad for the bees.
You also wouldn't want to use honey, because you don't know where it came from. And that's how you could easily spread diseases.
What I usually do is I just fill a jar half with water. And then I'll fill it up the rest of the way with sugar. That's half sugar, half water. So I'm going to fill it up half full and then I'm gonna dump this sugar into it.
On average, when you first start a hive, they usually take in the first quart in about three days. After that, as they begin to build up new comb, they'll take in about a quart every day.
It's very important to feed your bees at least every three days for the first three weeks. I'll just stir and stir this sugar until it all dissolves in the water.
This here's a feeder. And it'll go into the entrance of the hive. This is a lid that goes on the jar. It has all these little holes in it.
And the bees will come crawl out of the hive and they'll crawl into this feeder. And they'll crawl up here. And they'll take out all the sugar water out of the jar through those holes.
You'll want to take this feeder here and slide it in the entrance. And then put your quart of sugar water on it. These bees sure have a sweet tooth.
One of the main reasons we would lose our hive is if we don't feed them enough. It's very important to feed your bees a lot. In the beginning, all they had to eat is what you're gonna provide them. So oftentimes I overstress that you've gotta feed your bees.
And that's to your good. The more you feed them, the healthier the hive will be. I had one student come and take my class. And after taking the class, he went home and started his hive.
With great excitement, he called me back three months later to tell me his bees were about to swarm. That meant that they have run out of room and half the colony was going to leave.
I told them that couldn't be because his hive was just brand new. So I explained to him that he just needed to give the bees more room. Move the divider board back. Let these bees expand.
He explained to me he had done that. I suddenly realized, well, yes. He had moved his divider board back. But he wasn't understanding what I was saying. Give them more room.
Yes, he'd given them more room. So I asked him, how many combs do have in the hive? He said, 24. Huh. I said, three months and 24 combs? How often are you feeding them?
He said, well, my son feeds them at 12 o'clock. I feed them at one o'clock. My wife gets up at 2:00 in the morning. No kidding. He was feeding them every hour. The bees will take in a jar every hour. Once they start building that comb, they will fill those combs up.
They're not actually eating it as if we were eating breakfast. They're storing it within the hive. It was good that he was feeding them a lot. Yes, he had a very healthy hive. But you don't have to feed them every hour.
You'll want to continue to feed them through their entire first year. After about three months, they'll empty the jar in about an hour's time. They're taking that nectar inside and they're storing it in the combs.
That's all very good and very positive. So the more you feed them, the better they'll be. But you only have to feed them once a week after three months.
So to summarize, you'll want to feed your bees a 50/50 sugar to water mixture. For the first three months, you'll want to feed your bees every three days. After that, for the rest of their first year, you'll want to feed them once a week.
Now we need to close the hive up. We'll want to leave these alone for the next week while the queen is being released. And they'll be building comb in there.
We'll want to come back here in a week and check them to see how they're doing. We want to make sure the queen has gotten out. We want to make sure that they're all nice and healthy and built new combs.
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