wairegi wrote:As many have contributed this is a good venture..for hobby the hives can be as simple as the African pot, the round 20 litres tins(Need to insulate against the heat during. Lagging with glass or old sisal sacks will do. The african log hive not so common this days. For the topbar and langstroth hive they are both costly but yields are better.
We currently improving of the top bar and the other less improvised hives by separating the hive into two and confining the queen to brooding area with an extruder. The second potion of the hive will have honey and with the ' maanas' or the larvae and yield will be more. Practically we are able to get 10kg of honey per hive in a good season and two seasons can get as much as 20 or 15kg. Building the colonies moss moss.
Bees can be trained just like dogs and the rest of the animals. our hives are less 20 metres from the house with one less than 10 meters from the house. Unless disturb they don't bit. Retailing our honey at 500 sh per kg. The demand is huge
@ wairegi
unless you are constructing the top bar hive with hardwood and foundation frames, it is generally cheap to construct...also as a correction once the queen has been confined into her own chamber with her own comb, there is no way she can venture into the honey chamber and as such, on harvesting there will be no brood in the honey comb...just honey and wax.
If i may ask..for the improved top bar hive,
1. What is the overall size of the hive?
2. What are the optimised sizes of the brood chambers?
3. Are you subdividing the honey chamber into further smaller ones?
4. Are you using any frames in the brood and honey chambers?
5. What is the size of the mesh window for the queen excluder?
6. How do you handle bee swarming in this type of hive?
have you ever tried the langstroth beehive?
...besides, the presence of a safe alone does not signify that there is money inside...