Beeman's Beehut

Looking into CCD (colony collapse disorder) I found some articles on organic beekeeping.  From what they were saying was, those beekeepers who were doing organic beekeeping didn’t have any losses to their hives.  This had me scratching my head and doing some research on this.   I have herd of doing organic beekeeping but never tried it.  I am however convinced that if we were to take up a stance to completely limit or eliminate the chemicals in which we use in beekeeping it may have a good impact.

No Chemicals, Whats this all about?  Won’t the bees get sick or the mites kill them?

Well, see the first thing I’d like to point out is there are ways to prevent mites without using anything on the market.  Upon doing some research I found that the foundation we use today may actually be hurting our bees.  The cells in the foundation are roughly 5.4-5.5mm for regular worker foundation.  If you see bees build their comb naturally you will find that natural worker comb is from 4.6-5.1mm which could mean a big difference when it comes time to capping brood.  Some say having smaller cells takes a day less for bees to cap thus less chance for varroa mites to get in on the brood to reproduce.  A single day in this instance can make a big difference and create less work for the bees.   Here is something I found out.  Did you know that bees which build their comb naturally often build it faster than they do on foundation?  I didn’t know this but it makes sense because when ever we try and help out nature, we tend to screw up.  I’ll talk about diseases later.

How do you get the bees to build their own cells on the frames without the comb being built every where?

Well, you have a frame and on the top bar for most frames its usually flat with a wedge you can pry out for the foundation.  Don’t pry that wedge out of the top bar instead cut a 45 degree angle downward on both sides of the bar.  You will have a wide part on top and a narrow part on the bottom of the bar which the bees will build on.  Having this narrow edge on the bottom will help the bees figure out “ hey we’re suppose to build here on the bars and not in the big empty area between the bars”.

Now about diseases, you would want to pick good locations to put your hives.  If your hives are down in a moist area all the time then there is a greater risk for foul brood.  Going back to the cell diameter, this is also key in preventing disease, in that spores are less likely to get into the hive.  If you go to www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/index.html.  You will see an interesting article about a couple who studied bees.