Possibly one to avoid

Whilst there's not much happening on the beekeeping front I thought I'd take time out to post an article about an item I've seen in various places on the net aimed at potential beginner beekeepers.

As seen on eBay..

..and as seen on Amazon
Both sites also sell regular hives too

I've seen it on eBay, I've seen it on Amazon, I've seen it on a few other sites too, but I've not seen it on any actual beekeeping websites which may ring an alarm bell or two. It's usually called Wooden Bee Hive Garden/Small Starter Wood Beehive For Beginners Honey Bees. Well it certainly is a small hive, it's what beekeepers would call a Nucleus rather than a hive, specifically a five frame Nucleus. That's just less than half the number of frames in a standard National brood box. A 5 frame Nuc can be a useful thing, you use them to start new colonies, transport bees, even overwinter small colonies but it's usually a transitional housing. At some point assuming your bees thrive they'll need more space which will mean moving into a bigger hive or somehow expanding the nucleus. Unfortunately you can't expand this box, aesthetically pleasing as it is, and lengthwise it also seems to be slightly smaller than a National Hive which may make transferring bees from one of these boxes into a larger hive later difficult problematic.

It's actually a bit sneaky trying to bill it as a beginners hive and any beginners trying to use one will soon find problems. There's no feeder for you to feed up your bees if there's a dearth of nectar (as happened this year) or help them into or out of winter, there's no eke either which with a crown board (advert doesn't mention a crown board either) would let you use a rapid or contact feeder instead. There's also no mention on any of the adverts of the floor so chances are it's a solid wooden floor. Whilst a Nuc has different ventilation requirements to a full sized hive an open mesh floor with sliding bottom board is useful if you hope to have some idea of varroa levels within the hive. Without monitoring them the unchecked mites will probably kill off your colony -I suspect finding a box of dead bees at the bottom of your garden may not be the most encouraging experience for the beginner beekeeper.

Whilst the 'hive' isn't as beginner friendly as it claims to be the blurb accompanying it hive seems to be missleading and nonsensical. Rather than suggesting beginners go out and purchase some bees (which will probably come housed in a nuc of their own anyway) the sellers claim the hive is designed to attract "non-swarming bees."

It goes on to say how bees are attracted to holes in wood, which is true enough. Beekeepers often leave out baited boxes or baited nucs to attract swarms, some may even have luck with unbaited ones. I've had a baited nuc on my shed roof for about 4 months which didn't catch a single swarm. Including my own there's at least 11 honey bee colonies within a quarter mile of my property and colleagues have told me about 2 clustering swarms spotted in the area -add that to the colony I lost and that's at least three swarms who've ignored my baited box. I know the bait attracts bees because I've foragers investigating the box. Evidently having the right size box for bees sat there, even with an attractive bait, won't necessarily get you any passing bees.

But anyway, let's give a little more thought to those non-swarming bees. Bee colonies swarm to reproduce, if they reached the evolutionary cul-de-sac of no longer swarming they would die out. But let's ignore very basic biology and pretend these magical fantastic non swarming bees do exist and didn't die out about 120 million years ago.

Why are a bunch of non-swarming bees looking for a place to live? Well, what do you normally call a bunch of bees out looking for a place to live? It's not a gaggle, a gang, a herd or a murder.. it's a.. wait for it.. it's.. it's called a swarm -that's the word. Swarm. So basically the claim is that these boxes will attract a swarm of non-swarming bees. Sounding a little unlikely isn't it, and that's whilst you're pretending they exist.

Some adverts have a print out of what appears to be the hive's instructions.

Instructions, errata and honey crop claims

The first thing I noticed is they say a queen bee life span is up to 3 years. That's just wrong. It's generally acknowledged that without mishaps a queen can live up to 5 years hence the colour scheme for marking queen bees having 5 colours used in a 5 year cycle. Beekeepers are a thrifty bunch (to put it mildly) and if they only needed three colours of insect paint then they wouldn't bother with another two.

The intructions claim you can get 20-30lbs of honey from one of these hives which can be harvested in August. That's based on a National Deep frame potentially being able to hold up to 5-6lb of honey and multiplied by 5. However that's assuming every frame contains nothing but honey. No brood, no eggs and no pollen. If in August your colony has no eggs, brood or pollen they're probably in trouble. Some beekeeper's do get National deep boxes completely filled with honey, however they're using another deep box to house the brood.

There's also the question of where do you put the bees when you've removed every single frame from the nuc -I mean hive, to presumably crush and strain the comb? I suppose it could be done by removing and cutting out a frame at a time then replacing the sticky wet empty frames as you go but that's going to get you some seriously angry bees.

The boxes aren't entirely useless to existing beekeepers. They certainly look nicer than a lot of nucs on the market and properly sited (high up) and baited they may actually attract swarms of real-proper-swarming bees. They'd probably have use as a temporary home for a split or raising a new queen too -well actually perhaps not the latter as that usually requires feeding now I think about it. But for beginners? Well buyer beware.

Oh and if despite all the above you still decide to get one don't leave it sat on the grass like in the picture above, it might look rustic but damp kills bees.