Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health

I've been a Backyard Bee Guardian using organic and ecological practices for 15 years and mentoring others to support this amazing mediterranean honeybee in their backyard havens for over 10 years! This book is ESSENTIAL for success in Top Bar Bee Guardianship for new and experienced TOP Bar enthusiasts and will aid my teaching and mentoring greatly. And... by reading this book before you choose whether to do Top Bars or Langstroths may help you decide that Top Bar Hives are the right choice for Homesteaders and Backyarders! While I still teach how to run a Langstroth HIve like a wild or top bar hive more or less, allowing bees to draw their own comb - allowing bees to swarm (yes I believe in contributing to strong local genetic variation and acclimation by allowing some of the swarms to get away and attempt to make it in the wilds of Santa Cruz) - I have begun to initiate new Bee Guardians into the magic of Top Bars because ultimately I believe that Langstroth HIves are designed primarily for the ease of industrial monocrop and chemical based bee manipulations and that Top Bar Hives are designed more for the ease of the bees. Yes you can get more honey with Langstroth Hives, but for Backyarders there are other inspiring goals and ultimately a TOP BAR HIVE with a viewing window supports less non essential interventions by overly manipulative humans and supports the shape of the colony's skeleton (the comb) to mimick what they do in the wild for example. Honey production is not my driving purpose in serving Honey Bees. I keep bees to be of service to the Greather Good and the gifts I recieve are superior fruit and food production on my homestead, contribution to locally acclimated genetic diversity, more beauty and food in my local landscape and enough honey for my family needs and some special gifitng occasionally. I'm not in it to produce commercial crops of honey, and definitely not supportive of commericial pollination practices of forcing honey bees to forage on wastelands of chemically fertilized GMO crops with dead soil, no diversity of plant life and the bees themselves are constantly dowsed in antibiotics, fungicides, miticides etc. Langstroth HIves have a dirty history - not their fault but the whole point of their design was to serve exploitation of Nature's gifts through mass production in the commercial food industry. Choosing Top Bar HIves is for me part of my recognition that the commercial food system is broken and Slow Food and Go Local approaches are one of our most important empowered actions for healing the rift between humans and Nature. This book is well organized, knowledge heavy and is the first to clearly articulate methods for rotating blackened brood comb out and supporting the reduction of the colony to the winter ball to the best placement in the Top Bar Hive. The authors are writing from experience and have great photos through out the book and explain clearly, seasonal skillsets for Top Bar Success as well as how to raise your own queens. Top Bar HIves are gaining alot of popularity for Homestead and Backyard Honey Bee Guardians - no heavy 50-60 lb supers to lift, less chance of bee stings, the best designs include windows for observation, they get easier and easier with more experience, and from a design standpoint are more in alignment with a BEE CENTRIC model of connecting with Nature in a way that nurtures us and heals our sense of separation from Nature and listens to what Nature wants rather than imposes our presumptions on it. Do not start Top Bar Beekeeping or Beekeeping at all without having this book in your Bee Guardianship tool kit, your night table, in your backpack, on your favorite reading chair. Its essential for your success in SERVING the BEES and Nature! With so much gratitude for the bees, and human beings who approach them with curiosity, respect and a service attitude!! YES!

I've just about finished building a Top Bar Hive (my first hive of any kind) and have been researching beekeeping fairly extensively to prepare to keep bees this coming spring. I've purchased 4, and read 3 1/2 books on beekeeping (The Thinking Beekeeper: A Guide to Natural Beekeeping in Top Bar Hives; Beekeeping For Dummies; The Beekeeper's Bible: Bees, Honey, Recipes & Other Home Uses) including this one. I'm still working my way through the Beekeeper's Bible, which covers everything (and probably more) that anyone would want to know about bees and beekeeping (citing, for example, information dating back to before the time of Christ), but surprisingly only mentions top bar hives once or twice. IF you are interested in keeping a top bar hive, this is the book I would recommend above all others. It covers general beekeeping information well, and gives very practical advice specific to top bar hives. For instance, no other book I've read (or internet source I've come across so far) covers the various reasons and methods for re-arranging the bars of comb so thoroughly. This book also includes a number of illustrations to accompany the explanations of bar rotation. It also (as the title implies) spends time covering the benefits of chemical-free beekeeping, and gives organic methods of handling issues as they arise. It has been my experience that most resources either: 1) Thoroughly address beekeeping with Langstroth-type equipment (leaving the reader to further research how to translate these practices to top bar hives) or 2) Cover top bar hives very well, but assume that the reader is already familiar with general beekeeping methods including disease and pest management. In my opinion, this book covers general beekeeping information and top-bar-specific methods better than than any other. In short, this book is the most thorough single source of top bar beekeeping that I have come across.

Before I got my first little group of bees I had studied on the net, joined a local very active bee club and read a couple of books. I can honestly say that this is by far the most informative source of info that I have found. It is now my number one info guide with my bees. I first went with a top bar hive because as a very petite, retired lady, I simply would not be able to lift and move 30 to 60 lb lang.hive boxes around and like all the other critters I have, I try to raise them all as natural as possible. While all of my other sources preach chemical treatments, raising bees on plastic frames, taking all their honey/feed stores, then feeding sugar water for their health through the winter and then wonder about colony collapse ??? This book was by far the most informative, easiest to understand, most logical, and natural way to keep bees that I have found and by using his methods my little swarm of bees have been thriving and growing from a handful of bees with a grafted queen (from a friend) to a 16 full bars of natural comb bees, that are thriving and still building going into winter. I highly recommend this book especially to any thinking about keeping bees or to anyone looking for a more natural way to keep your little insects chemical free and healthier, for you and your family, too.

Got this for my dad for Christmas as he’s started beekeeping a couple years ago. He loves learning about more natural ways of beekeeping, so many resources say you HAVE to do it a certain way or the bees will leave but that is simply not true.

Excellent information on what you need to know about top-bar beekeeping. Like the author, I'm convinced it's a healthier solution for both the beekeeper and the bees.

Excellent read for a beginner beekeeper. Nice photos and illustrations, pleasant to read and informative. Covers the management of the top bar hive techniques and compares the pros and cons with traditional hive designs. Top bar hives offers an alternative to pesticides and other chemicals traditionally used to keep bees healthy. Top bar hives are also less expensive to maintain, though not suitable for intensive honey farming.

Es ist interessant zu erfahren, wie Imker in anderen Gebieten der Erde ihre Probleme lösen. Die nach Angaben des Autors erfolgreiche Bekämpfung der Varroamilbe mittels Zuchtwahl müsste wohl auch andernorts in Betracht gezogen werden. Crowder hat kurz nach Einschleppung der Milbe 98 von 100 Völkern verloren, danach durch die Wahl russischer Bienenköniginnen das Problem vollständig in den Griff bekommen, da die russischen Bienen einen starken Putztrieb entwickeln und die Milben von ihren Schwestern entfernen. und töten Ob das auch andernorts funktioniert, müssen die nationalen Bienenforschungsanstalten herausfinden.

Chiaro, sintetico e completo. L'autore è un professionista che da decenni conduce oltre un centinaio di arnie Top Bar. Spiega bene le caratteristiche e lo spirito delle arnie Top Bar con un sano pragmatismo, senza scadere mai in un approccio "messianico" o massimalista. Le illustrazioni per la gestione delle arnie sono utilissime, chiare e ben fatte. Punto debole è quello relativo alla lotta alla varroa, che viene affrontato praticamente solo dal punto di vista della selezione genetica. Altra seccatura, per il lettore italiano, sono le misure in pollici.