Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
This is also helpful to the beekeeper. Lids are flat surfaces and thus obey the laws of
all flat surfaces - they become covered with 'things'. When out beekeeping you tend to
place items on to nearby lids, such as smokers, tools and frames from another hive. I
have gone out beekeeping in 50° C (120° F) in Andalucia and I've put honeycombs on
scorching hot lids that have melted almost at once. These red-hot lids must also cook
the bees and cause them to spend a great deal of time collecting water to cool the hive.
When they divert foragers to collect water, these bees are not collecting nectar/honey!
In hot places, paint the lids white. You want your bees to collect honey, not water.
Beehives round the world
There are many types of beehive available, especially on the second-hand market, but
my advice is to go for either the Langstroth or the Dadant hive. The reason is that
these two are common all over the world and, wherever you are located, you will be
able to buy frames, sheets of stamped wax and other items that fit on or into these two
designs. The most common is the Langstroth, which may be called other things in other
countries but essentially is the same hive. I wouldn't think about buying any hive other
than one of these two. Even with these hives, though, you will find there are as many
different dimensions to a Langstroth as there are manufacturers, but all the bits will
more or less fit together sufficiently well for your purposes.
In the UK, however, the National hive is popular, as is the Smith in Scotland and, if
you are located in these countries, you will find many other beekeepers using these.
They look the same as a Langstroth, only slightly smaller. All countries have their own
indigenous designs, some of which are fine, others terrible. The Spanish Layens hive, for
example, is a box designed to make bees overheat, become savage and swarm incessantly,
whereas their 'Perfeccion' is in fact a Langstroth by another name - and so it goes on all
over the world. Many new beekeepers notice that these hives are just packing boxes on
top of each other and don't look anything like the hive of their imagination. This is true,
and the reason is that the wonderful-looking hives of storybooks are either inefficient
or totally useless for modern beekeeping as well as being cruel to the bees.
