Getting Started

I was introduced to the world of bee keeping by my friend and tenant, Ryan. Ryan works as a post-doc at and has a Ph. D. in Physics. It was while working on his Ph. D. that Ryan was introduced to Corwin Bell of Backyard Hive and his promotion of using the Kenyan Top Bar hive. You can check out Backyard Hive at their web site: http://www.backyardhive.com.

Ryan and I had talked about having a hive a year ago but waited to long to get started. We built our hive in late March of this year and established our hive one rainy evening in April. Why a Top Bar hive instead of the more traditional Langstroth? A Top Bar hive is designed to be more bee friendly, and by design allows bees to build comb in a more natural fashion. It also allows the queen to roam through the hive instead of using a separator. It's horizontal design is a back saver as it does not require heavy lifting when inspecting the health of the hive. Here are a few pictures of us working on it.

Ryan

Rich

View 1

View 2

In early April Ryan went to pick up our bees over at the Bee Healthy Honey Shop on Telegraph Avenue, here in Oakland. You can check out their site here: http://beehealthyhoneyshop.com.

We established the bees that night. I went out to check on them the next day after work and took this short video. I showed it to my class (I teach kindergarten) the next day and they loved it. Particularly the part when I said, "Yes, boys and girls, we have bees." They thought I was referring specifically to them!

I'll be posting more as I learn more about this fascinating world.