“If we and the bees are to have a shared future, we have a responsibility to help upcoming generations to re-discover their deep connection to the natural world.”
Top Bar Beehives
When we're not busy in the garden, we're busy building! Beehives bridge the gap between garden and natural building. We build Kenyan Style Top Bar Beehives, from renewable and non-toxic materials.
Top Bar Hives aren't designed for production of honey, but rather to provide natural habitat for honeybees. They allow honeybees to build their own comb to their own requirements, are easy to manage, and are perfect for beginners or experienced beekeepers!
Honeybees also provide the very important benefit of increasing pollination in our garden. A shared relationship and harmony can be achieved with Honeybees, if only we look to their needs before our own.
The Kootenay Society for Sustainable Living plans to build Top Bar Beehives for local beekeepers in the Columbia Valley. All sales and proceeds from our Top Bar Hives will go directly towards increasing awareness of natural beekeeping in Canada, and supports our honeybee workshops and education programs.
BEES!
In 2020 we finally found time to build a new Top Bar Beehive, and in 2021 we purchased some healthy honeybees from a fantastic local beekeeper named Evan. He’s been using Top Bar Beehives as well, so he was able to transfer several of his bars directly into our new hive!
Our new companions wasted no time building comb and laying brood. We’ve begun to take notes on which flowering crops in the garden the honeybees prefer, and of course we stuck a SensorPush temperature data logger INSIDE the hive to monitor daytime highs, and nighttime lows!
You can also see we have a natural floor in our hive, invented and named the “Eco-Floor” by famous beekeeper Phil Chandler. We added an additional compartment below the main hive chamber, and filled it with material from the forest floor(leaves, rotting wood, insects) in an effort to mimic the natural habitat found inside a hollowed out log.
We left all of the honey produced for the honeybees to consume over winter, with hopes that a heavy nectar flow this coming spring, coupled with a much larger population, will yield enough surplus for us to enjoy in the sweetness!
Stay tuned for more updates, and if you’re hoping to buy a Top Bar Beehive, we have plans to build over the 2022/23 winter; with hives available for purchase spring 2023.