MICRO FARMING HOW-TO: Micro eco-farmers can become sustainable beekeepers far easier and sometimes for free by using an alternative simple and natural beehive called the top-bar beehive (see video below).
The top-bar honeybee hive’s benefits to small scale farming:
– Build this uncomplicated hive with simple tools, free downloadable plans and recycled materials, possibly building a hive for nearly no cost. Free plans available here. These plans come through the online publisher “LuLu.” We have no affiliate with them but to get the free plans you first “register” with them for free. I always like to have a secondary e-mail address for situations like this, such as a free yahoo e-mail address.
– There’s no heavy lifting when beekeepers harvest honey and work with this hive so you can more easily add a small honey crop to your small scale farming crop menu.
– Multiply your crop yields with the pollination that comes with owning your own beehive.
– Experiment safely before going deeper into becoming a beekeeper. This low-cost, low-tech hive for honeybees allows you to experiment with whether you like working with bees and honey without a large loss of time and expense. You can then later add more top-bar hives or attempt to operate conventional hives in a natural way. The conventional hives take more honey from the bees, and therefore produce more honey for humans if you can keep the colony healthy. Here’s an affiliate instant downloadable book for conventional beehives and beekeeping with a natural twist – Beekeeping for Beginners. We especially like it because it discusses watering the bee colony, urban beekeeping, best nectar plants and other tidbits sometimes underused even by long-time apiaries. But it does focus on conventional hives. And one warning: When you go the page, it talks out loud for a few seconds. I’m still not quite used to that happening when I go to a web site.
– Have another environmental attribute to brand your farm. Many people know the honeybee population is suffering. If your small scale farming operation provides a natural and healthy home and habitat for honeybees, let your customers know, even if you’re not selling the honey to them yet.
– Create an agritourism draw. Micro farms often like to use agritourism – attracting customers directly to the farm – as a way to add revenue, attract direct on-farm purchases, and promote the farm’s name. An unusual and accessible “backyard beehive” can be a very attractive agritourism draw, either as a quick tour and discussion on natural beekeeping, or by putting on a longer workshop on building this type of beehive. Here’s an affiliate link to The Barefoot Beekeeper book, a downloadable, illustrated, latest edition written by the guy who offers the free beehive plans mentioned above, which really gets into sustainable beekeeping, top-bar hives, how to harvest honey and care for the colony in a natural way. –www.MicroEcoFarming.com