Hi all.

I intend to venture into apiculture or the beekeeping partly as commercial venture and partly a hobby. I have never been a beekeeper before but i know a little about those beautiful little honey manufacturing insects...

I have scouted around for information about the beehives and i came to conclude that there are three main configurations under use in kenya namely, the top bar, the langstroth and the traditional beehives. The traditional log and top bar beehives have been around for a very long time while the langstroth is relatively new in kenya...

A close look at the beehives and after further search of advice yielded the following results:

...the traditional log beehive is the cheapest to make as it is not complicated in its design and the materials are readily available. Although it is the cheapest, it is the worst bee hive, the main reasons being that it is very difficult to manage the bees because of the access limitation and difficult to harvest. Also, during the honey harvesting, you kill a large population of the bees (this is not desirable to a beekeeper). Traditional log bee hive has very poor honey yields in a given year and the quality of honey extracted is very low.

...the top bar beehive is the most widely used. It is cheap to construct, easy to manage and the honey yields are higher than the traditional bee hive. They are also easier to harvest. The main draw back is that the combs made by the bees are unsupported and easily breaks. Also bees here build a lot of wax and as such there is a lot of wax in the honey crop harvested, but the honey is of good quality.

...the langstroth beehive has not gained any much ground in kenya due to its complexity in construction and requires very experienced beekeepers. The biggest problem is the honey super frames whose foundation is not locally available, but with everything available, it is the easiest to manage, the size can be varied by adding the honey supers as the bee population increases . It has the highest honey yields and the honey is of high quality. The bee colony is also very easy to manipulate depending on the beekeepers intentions.

Having done that i settled for the top bar hive which is good for a beginner like me. I will not mind having a colony of anywhere between 2k to 5k bees for a start which i think is good enough.

My worry is if i go traditional method of getting a colony of bees for my hive it may take weeks or months before a swarm appears to colonize the hive, unless of course i go out there and start looking for a swarm to catch. Swarms are not a common scene nowadays.

Do we have honeybees breeders here who can sell a starter bee colony with a queen?

Over to you beekeepers in wazua. Please share your ideas and experiences.

I actually thought the same, though venture is noble one has to ensure safety otherwise you will run into trouble with your neighbours.

you see a bee keeper wanna be can only make a choice when there is a variety on display. i have never heard of any bee breeders in kenya where one can go and choose which species of bees one would love to keep. So one would have to do the kienyenji (traditional) method...position the beehive and wait...cannot imagine going to a colony or a swarm and start grabbing those bees one by one and flipping their underside to check if it has the sting or not (very risky business).

And hey, i hear there are about 20k bee species of which about 5 are common in kenya...I understand that all african bees are pretty aggressive especially when disturbed or provoked. The apiary location will be undisturbed only during the inspection times.

Thanks wendz for the information. I will contact them guys and see what they have to offer.

you see the top bar beehive has a comb problem...the constructed comb is not properly oriented or directed since there is no flames or foundation to guide it. Therefore when the bees construct the comb it tends to fill up really fast causing a constraint in space between the combs. This causes overcrowding in the hive and may lead to really poor ventilation.

I bet smoking them out in a poorly ventilated space or environment will cause some for bees fatalities which is inevitable anyway.

If there is a prolonged delay in harvesting the bees will swarm.

By the way have you tried keeping them?

Try this website may be they can help out..

http://www.africanbeekee...og&id=1&Itemid=2

Any experienced beekeeper?

I just remember the bee stings...

As many have contributed this is a good venture..for hobby the hives can be as simple as the African pot, the round 20 litres tins(Need to insulate against the heat during. Lagging with glass or old sisal sacks will do. The african log hive not so common this days. For the topbar and langstroth hive they are both costly but yields are better.
We currently improving of the top bar and the other less improvised hives by separating the hive into two and confining the queen to brooding area with an extruder. The second potion of the hive will have honey and with the ' maanas' or the larvae and yield will be more. Practically we are able to get 10kg of honey per hive in a good season and two seasons can get as much as 20 or 15kg. Building the colonies moss moss.
Bees can be trained just like dogs and the rest of the animals. our hives are less 20 metres from the house with one less than 10 meters from the house. Unless disturb they don't bit. Retailing our honey at 500 sh per kg. The demand is huge

[quote=wairegi]As many have contributed this is a good venture..for hobby the hives can be as simple as the African pot, the round 20 litres tins(Need to insulate against the heat during. Lagging with glass

@ wairegi

unless you are constructing the top bar hive with hardwood and foundation frames, it is generally cheap to construct...also as a correction once the queen has been confined into her own chamber with her own comb, there is no way she can venture into the honey chamber and as such, on harvesting there will be no brood in the honey comb...just honey and wax.

If i may ask..for the improved top bar hive,

1. What is the overall size of the hive?

2. What are the optimised sizes of the brood chambers?

3. Are you subdividing the honey chamber into further smaller ones?

4. Are you using any frames in the brood and honey chambers?

5. What is the size of the mesh window for the queen excluder?

6. How do you handle bee swarming in this type of hive?

have you ever tried the langstroth beehive?