Information - Bee Against Poverty Zambia

INFORMATION

Bee Against Poverty Zambia is based in Hampshire, England and in the Copperbelt Region, Kitwe, Zambia

If you want to get in touch with us for any of the following reasons:

To make a donation to Bee Against Poverty Zambia
To personally get involved in the Bee Against Poverty Zambia project
To get more information about Bee Against Poverty Zambia

Please use the Contact Us page

DAYSPRING MINISTRIES is based in Kitwe, the Copperbelt Region, Zambia

If you want to get in touch with Dayspring ministries for any of the following reasons:

If you wish to make a donation to help fund the work of 'Dayspring Ministries' such as the Streetlife project and the two Orphanages
If you wish to sponsor a child in one of the 'Dayspring Ministries' orphanages
If you have any questions or want more information about 'Dayspring Ministries'

Please contact: info@christcentralchurches.org

INFORMATION

Why choose a TOP BAR Bee hive?

Top Bar Hive on legs Bars span across the hive Bars with stater strips of wax in Bars with Honey comb on (we will suspend it from wires)

In Zambia and other African Countries the traditional method for attracting and keeping Bees is to split a log in two then hollow out both parts, using one half as the base and the other as the lid or roof. A small opening is made in the log for the Bees to enter, then it is coated inside with a mixture of wax and propolis to attract a swarm, the log is then suspend in a tree. When its time to harvest the honey someone goes up the tree takes off the lid or roof and smokes the Bees, so they can cut away the honey comb which may or may not have brood in it.

The reason there may be brood in the honeycomb is because the queen can roam wherever she wants to in the log over the honeycomb laying her eggs in cells on the honeycomb. The honeycomb that has been cut away is then usually pressed or squeezed to extract the honey out of it.

A lot of people now generally use a Top Bar hive in Zambia and Africa, which is similar to the traditional log hive and it too can be suspended in a tree, but it can also be suspended on wires or put on legs.

Another hive that is used is the Langstroth hive, but this type of hive along with the National hives all need wooden frames with wax foundation in them for the Bees to build the honeycomb on and produce honey. This means that a Beekeeper has to have a good supply of wooden frames and wax foundation. This is because the wax foundation in the wooden frames will need renewing from time to time, as will the wooden frames themselves.

See the images below for an example of a sheet of wax foundation and a wooded frame + a honeycomb frame full of honey.

To extract the honey from a Langstroth or national hive you usually uncap the honey on the wooden frames and then spin the honey out of the frames. But if the frames haven't any wires in the wax foundation the honeycomb can be cut out of the frames and then pressed to extract the honey.

The brood in a Langstroth or National hive can't be seen to check them out unless you take off the super box which is where the Bees are storing the honey. This means that the Bees can get stressed and disrupted from their task of building honeycomb and producing honey for the duration of the brood inspection. However, in a Top Bar hive the brood can be checked out by removing a bar one at a time and so this reduces the stress and disruption to the Bees.

With a Top Bar hive the Bees build their honeycombs downwards from a small starter strip of wax attached to a bar that spans across the body of the hive at the top. When it is time to harvest the honey, bars are removed one at a time and the honeycomb can be cut away from the bar without much effort, then the honeycomb is pressed to extract the honey.

But like the Traditional Log hive the honeycomb can have brood in it, so care must be taken when cutting the honeycomb away, so as not to destroy the brood which is the next generation of worker bees etc.

We will be suspending the Top Bar Hives from wires attached to a wooden bar and two upright posts like the goal posts and bar in a football net, this is to help protect the colony from termite attack.

To try and stop the Queen from roaming around the hive you could try introducing a Queen Excluder around bars 8 or 9 in a 21 bar hive and around bars 10 or 11 in a 25 bar hive. This will then prevent the Queen from being able to lay her eggs on any of the other bars that have honeycomb attached to them.

After trying this on a top bar hive for a season we found it didn't work very well as none of the bees liked the Queen excluder and they didn't go past it themselves very much, so there was no honeycomb built passed the Queen excluder, we will have to rethink this.

In a Langstroth or National hive a Queen Excluder is introduced between the brood box and the super box to control the movements of the Queen and where she lays her eggs.

But I have found myself that leaving out the Queen excluder altogether allows the worker Bees more freedom to build and fill the honeycomb. Then nearer the time of harvesting the honey, sometimes the Queen will only lay her eggs on the first few bars of honeycomb near the hive entrance. This makes it easier to extract the honeycomb without destroying or damaging the brood because they don't appear in the bars of honeycomb further on down in the hive.

See the image below for an example of a Queen Excluder. Because of the Queens shape and size and long legs she can not get through the gaps in the Queen Excluder, but the worker Bees can.

The other thing with a Top Bar hive is the fact that you can use a Separator to block off a number of bars so that the Bees can't get to them. The reason for doing this may be because the colony is not a strong one and so as it grows you can allow more bars to be used by the Bees to attach honeycomb to.

To make a Top Bar hive in Zambia, many are made from scrap pieces of wood that have been collected and glued together to make the sides, ends, floor and roof of the hive. This makes the hive cheap to make, but unfortunately even though this makes the hives cheap, most people in Zambia still wouldn't be able to afford to buy one, as ²/₃ of the people in Zambia are in poverty.

This is where 'Bee Against Poverty Zambia' comes in!