
Farmers Plant Beehive Guard Posts to Repel Elephants - samsolomon
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/invisible-fences-farmers-plant-beehive-guard-posts-repel-elephants/
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threesixandnine
I kept beehives years ago and also tried Kenyan Top-Bar style beehives. The
bees in those were the most productive and most gentle. Love to see those
again and at this very moment I am itching to get at least 2 beehives and
start beekeeping again.

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bluejekyll
Did you find these easier to manage than other types of hives?

It looks like it might be harder to get access to the honeycomb.

Also, is it easy to get queens for all those hives?

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threesixandnine
It was actually harder to manage them from the perspective of modern
beekeeper. Manipulating bars-combs was sometimes really hard since bees built
comb their way because you left them on their own with either just a strip of
wax or wooden stick as a guide for them instead of the whole frame with
foundation.

Once you sorted that out though the combs were perfect and easy to manage.
Sometimes you get lucky and they "listen" you from the beginning though.

Honeycomb is something else. You have to make sure that you kind of separate
brood and honey and that again takes management. I just left them to their own
and just took a comb or two of honey at the end each year. The last few combs
were always 100% honey. I also let them swarm multiple times per year (had
smaller Kenyan hive - 15 bars ) so I had practically no issues with Varroa in
these.

I populated them with my own swarms or packages. Or are you asking about
rearing queens?

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bluejekyll
I know very little about bee keeping, but I was just curious how you get the
initial queen for all those hives. Maybe it's not as hard as I think...

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threesixandnine
Initially if you want to keep a beehive you have to get queen+bees. You can
start either with a few frames of brood and bees and a new queen, package or
the best option with a natural swarm.

I personally recommend natural swarm for a first hive. You get to start clean
and from scratch. Bees from natural swarm are eager to start building their
new home and are usually much quicker to establish a colony than bees from
frames with brood or package.

