Bees & Chickens Make for Healthy Food
The other night as Mitzi and I were working in the square foot garden, some of our acquaintances (who incidentally purchased a set of Catawba Brougham ConvertiCoop plans), dropped in to ask some questions about chickens in general and about specifics of the coop. As I was showing Dean our FrankenGarten, a patch of land where I am experimenting with companion planting, he brought up the subject of bees.  My pop has bees, except that his bees have gone feral. Dad doesn't spend a lot of time tending them nor harvesting honey. I guess he figures if the hive has made it this long, they can keep their hard earned sugary goodness. But they're still out in the woodline by the bottom-land. When I go to visit him, we'll kinda poke around the remaining hive and watch the little critters go about their business. I sometimes like to intentionally stand in the flightpath so that I have bees flying all around me. What a neat sensation. Surprisingly, I've never been stung doing this. I like bees too. Not as much as chickens, but I still like bees.
I've researched topbar hives and how they contribute to creating a healthier colony. I can imagine the emails now... "We have Langstroth hives and haven't lost a hive to colony collapse disorder yet!" I'm cool with that. I know quite a few people who successfully operate Langstroth hives. Our neighbor Larry and his wife own TLC Bees. Mitzi purchases raw honey from them. Chances are his bees pulled nectar out of my garden this past summer. So you could say I am paying Larry a "processing fee" to buy back my own property when I purchase a pint of his honey. I understand that Larry mostly rents out his hives for pollination purposes. My biggest beef with Langstroth hives is the wax foundation the bees build their comb upon. It has little haxagonal shaped pressed into it that essentially forces the bees to build a honey comb cell that is an unnatural size. Most beekeepers use a 53mm diameter cell. This forces the bees to use less wax to create more honey. Sounds like a good thing right? Except that these same bees would make a 49mm diameter cell in nature. Research has shown that the larger cells encourage the growth of varroa mites. Update: I've been talking with Todd Warner of the Carolina Bee Company about bees. Todd writes this about the large cell vs. small cell controversy: Just FYI, the whole small-cell, large-cell thing is still very controversial. The most comprehensive small-cell scientific study had mixed reviews of the practice. Small-cell in fact seemed to encourage the varroa population, for whatever reason. Regardless, more study is needed and only time will tell.
From my experience so far, foundationless is the ultimate way to go if you have the time and patience. I have some foundationless frames in circulation. The bees will build all kinds of cell-sizes, larger and smaller. It's fun to see what they do. The neatest thing is that they build more drone comb (larger cells) than they would normally with foundation to achieve a more natural population proportion (up to maybe even 10% drones instead of the usual 2% with foundation).
 So when Dean asked me if I had considered a topbar hive instead of a white box Langstroth hive, I knew instantly what he was talking about. He then proceeded to tell me about a website similar to CatawbaCoops.com called www.BackYardHive.com. Beekeeper Corwin Bell has done for urban apiarists (beekeepers) what Catawba ConvertiCoops has done for chickens; created a functional, simple, yet elegant piece of equpiment that is as much a work of art as a storage vessel for communal animals. Corwin has a really neat website. I could only hope that CatawbaCoops.com one day grows to the size of the site he maintains. He's created a free PDF file download of his hive plans, and also sells preassembled hived if you're not interested in building it yourself. I am converting Corwin's plans into a Google Sketchup file that's pretty fun to play with. It's in the righthand menu for download. --->
 The Original BackYard Hive
The BackYard hive is hand crafted with care to provide you with the best possible home for your bees. It includes precision-milled top bars, an important feature that helps encourage the bees to construct perfectly parallel combs. Another special feature is the glass observation window that is built in to the side of every BackYard hive. This window allows you to watch the progress of your hive without having to open the top every time you want to take a look. Price: $295.00
Size: 36” L x 14 1/2” W x 9” H
 The Golden Mean BackYard Hive
The Golden Mean Hive has a larger volume than the Original BackYardHive, it is deeper yet shorter in length. After accidentally creating some hives in Golden Proportion several years ago and watching year after year how much honey these hives produced, we figured we should take a deeper look as to why this may be occurring. We then studied the width of the honeycomb the bees drew out and we measured the width of the bee. All these measurements were coming out in Golden Proportion. The top bars are based on the size of the bees and our observation of how far apart the bees build their combs. Then PHI was used to build the dimensions of the hive.
We love this hive as it produces more honey! And with the larger volume colder climtes can benefit as it can hold more bees and honey to overwinter.
 We used the Pentagon to derive angles because the pentagon is the geometric representation of the golden mean ratio PHI. Length of the hive is PHI times width : i.e. the length of the hive is in PHI ratio to the width.
The same great craftsmanship is used: milled hardwood top bars, observation window, falseback and entrance reducer. The only difference between the Golden Mean Hive and the Original BackYardHive is the volume. The wood is from lodge pole pine from beetle kill wood. We're taking a bad scenario and turning it into something positive!
Price: $350.00
Size: 28 ½” L x 18” W x 10” H
BackYardHive Top Bar Tool
We've created a new hive tool for the top bar! Finally a sturdy tool to scrap off comb and pry top bars loose all in one tool. Plus it looks good! We figured that the top bar hive deserved a tool with a little class. We were feeling left out since there are so many tools to buy for the traditional hives we wanted a tool for the top bar hives! It's made of forged steel and brass. Price: $32.00
Getting Started in Beekeeping with The Top Bar Hive - DVDBackYardHive.com's video "Getting Started In Beekeeping with the Topbar Hive" gives you experience-tested techniques and step-by-step instructions to successfully start and manage your very own beehive. This DVD video includes 6 complete chapters that take you from set-up to harvesting and processing your honey. So, instead of wading through hundreds of pages on the Internet, reading a book, or taking a local beekeeping class, you can pop a DVD into your player and get answers to your questions rapidly and easily. Instead of continuing to wonder if beekeeping is right for you, you can take the first step into the fascinating world of back yard beekeeping. (Run Time 15 minutes) Price: $14.99
 
Pre-Built Top Bars for Your Self-Built HiveNEW! If you choose to build your own hive based on the free BackYardHive.com plans
, you may want to consider buying these pre-made top bars. We now
offer "triangle" bars, milled from hardwood. We have had excellent
success with the bees drawing absolute straight comb. They work so well
they are the only top bars we offer. The bars are available individually and in packages of 24. Bar Dimensions: 1 3/8" width x 1 1/2" height x 14 1/4" length All packages of top bars come with 1oz. of Pure Beeswax to coat the "spine" of the top bar. Prices:
Corwin's developed a new product to convert your Langstroth hive to the advantages of a foundationless frame - Dave
 Foundationless Langstroth Frames
Whether you have the traditional Langstroth hives or want to add a
super to your Golden Mean top bar hive, these frames require no wax
foundation. The frames are custom made Langstroth frames and have a
triangle wedge on top where the bees will draw out their comb. These frames fit a medium super and are 6 1/4 frames. Prices:
 Top Bar Super for Golden Mean Hive
A Langstroth super for your Golden Mean top bar hive. If you would
like to harvest more honey from your hive add a super. This meduim
super has 8 foundationless frames (6 1/4 frames) Prices:
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