Which hive to buy for a beginner??

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Which hive to buy for a beginner??
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Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Sun Feb 22, 09 7:56 pm Post subject:

Mrs Baggins wrote:

Tavascarow - You are a veritable mine of information... is there anything you don't know? You must have been keeping bees forever...

No my friend I'm just one of those people who when I'm interested in a subject I soak it up like a sponge.
When I'm not it goes in one ear & out the other.
Ask my old physics teacher.

Mrs Baggins

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Posts: 837
Location: West Kent

Posted: Mon Feb 23, 09 8:17 pm Post subject:
Well... as a measure of how far I have come: At my first bee class I asked if I could make Manuka honey in my garden.

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Mon Feb 23, 09 8:55 pm Post subject:
According to wiki manuka is another name for leptospermum which you can grow in your garden (or at least it will grow here in Cornwall) so in theory if you had enough growing in your garden you could make manuka honey.

Fox

Joined: 23 Apr 2009
Posts: 1

Posted: Thu Apr 23, 09 9:35 am Post subject:

To my mind both the national and WBC brrod space is too small. Most people end up double brooding or brrod and a half. The risk then is that the top brood gets clogged with food if they are a bit small, whereas if you single brood they are much more likely to swarm.

Both hives are pigs to make too.

I know little about TBH. They seem sweet enough for very small scale production, but without framed comb this means you have to press the honey out. This means the bees have to make up new comb each time.

My personal favourite is the Langstroth. Boxes can be simple half but jointed. I make supers out of floorboard. Brood chambers seem to be the perfect size for the colony. Best of all, you dont need to double or one and a half brood the colony, so there's half the work to do on swarm control. The down side is the boxes weight a bit more than nationals, so aren't so good if you struggle lifting. (full supers weigh about 40lb)

gz

Joined: 23 Jan 2009
Posts: 8954
Location: Ayrshire, Scotland

Posted: Thu Apr 23, 09 1:59 pm Post subject:

Tavascarow wrote:

According to wiki manuka is another name for leptospermum which you can grow in your garden (or at least it will grow here in Cornwall)
so in theory if you had enough growing in your garden you could make manuka honey.

manuka= ti/tea tree. don't know what the latin name is

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Thu Apr 23, 09 2:48 pm Post subject:

gz wrote:

Tavascarow wrote:

manuka= ti/tea tree. don't know what the latin name is

Yes but not the tea tree the oil comes from, thats Melaleuca alternifolia a relation of the bottle brush.
Manuka is Leptospermum scoparium

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