The Bees of Rosemary Hill
Bees are coming to Rosemary Hill! We are planning on having our first hive (two hives?) in the spring of 2020. We had been planning on going with the traditional Langstroth hive, but have been romanced by the beauty and ease of the Cathedral hive. The Cathedral is a top bar hive, which means you open the top of the hive and all of the frames can be lifted individually.
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These images show exactly why we love the Cathedral hive.
(Photos found on BackYardHive.com for demonstration only here.)
(But how amazing is this???)
(Photos found on BackYardHive.com for demonstration only here.)
(But how amazing is this???)
There are many reasons why we have decided to go with a top-bar style...
The more traditional Langstroth hive is used more for a reason -- they can be put on trailers and moved to flowering orchards or gardens, you can add more boxes on top which means more honey for you if the flow is strong that season. Both good things.
But for the backyard hobby farmer who never plans to ever move their hives, and who will be just fine with whatever extra honey is produced in the hive, and who isn't looking forward to lifting boxes full of honey that can weigh up to 80 pounds just so they can get down to the bottom box to check on the queen.... ummm.... yeah. We're going with the top-bar style.
First of all, the Cathedral hive is gorgeous. Ours will be made from cedar which will keep most of the nasty bugs away, because most bugs hate cedar. Yay! The Cathedral hive is ACTUALLY IN THE SHAPE OF A HONEYCOMB. Yay! Instead of the regular top bar, which is just a straight small board, the bars for the Cathedral have three sides -- the top three sides of the hexagon shape -- and that means the comb your bees will build have more support than the traditional straight bar. Woo!
Oh, because that is one of the selling points, at least for us -- the traditional Langstroth hives use frames that contain "foundation" -- a plastic insert that has been embossed with the pattern of a honeycomb. It's meant to give the bees a start, and before you set up your hive, people add wax to the foundation plastic to help get the bees going.
Well, we don't want that -- we want the beeswax. I love the jars of honey that actually have a piece of comb inside! Now THAT is some real talk! If we want that beeswax, the easiest way to get it is to let the bees make it on the top bars, and then after we extract the honey, that wax can be made into beeswax wraps, candles, balms -- all kinds of great things.
Also, we found out that if the bees are the ones making the honeycomb chambers, they will make them the proper size, and THAT means less mites being deposited inside the cells. This is a very good thing! Mites are the villains in this story, sharing the spotlight with insecticides.
The more traditional Langstroth hive is used more for a reason -- they can be put on trailers and moved to flowering orchards or gardens, you can add more boxes on top which means more honey for you if the flow is strong that season. Both good things.
But for the backyard hobby farmer who never plans to ever move their hives, and who will be just fine with whatever extra honey is produced in the hive, and who isn't looking forward to lifting boxes full of honey that can weigh up to 80 pounds just so they can get down to the bottom box to check on the queen.... ummm.... yeah. We're going with the top-bar style.
First of all, the Cathedral hive is gorgeous. Ours will be made from cedar which will keep most of the nasty bugs away, because most bugs hate cedar. Yay! The Cathedral hive is ACTUALLY IN THE SHAPE OF A HONEYCOMB. Yay! Instead of the regular top bar, which is just a straight small board, the bars for the Cathedral have three sides -- the top three sides of the hexagon shape -- and that means the comb your bees will build have more support than the traditional straight bar. Woo!
Oh, because that is one of the selling points, at least for us -- the traditional Langstroth hives use frames that contain "foundation" -- a plastic insert that has been embossed with the pattern of a honeycomb. It's meant to give the bees a start, and before you set up your hive, people add wax to the foundation plastic to help get the bees going.
Well, we don't want that -- we want the beeswax. I love the jars of honey that actually have a piece of comb inside! Now THAT is some real talk! If we want that beeswax, the easiest way to get it is to let the bees make it on the top bars, and then after we extract the honey, that wax can be made into beeswax wraps, candles, balms -- all kinds of great things.
Also, we found out that if the bees are the ones making the honeycomb chambers, they will make them the proper size, and THAT means less mites being deposited inside the cells. This is a very good thing! Mites are the villains in this story, sharing the spotlight with insecticides.