What is Natural Beekeeping
Rather than treating bees as ‘honey production units’, the natural beekeeping philosophy is about providing optimal conditions for the health of the honeybee colony.
Modern conventional beekeeping and agricultural practices, such as crop spraying, hive movement, frequent hive inspections, artificial queen rearing programs, routine medication, and sugar water feeding, reduce the vitality and weaken the immunity of the honeybees.
Natural beekeeping is a gentler bee-friendly approach that prioritizes care for the bees, allowing them to build natural honey comb and to harvest only when sufficient honey is available. This results in healthy bees and delicious raw honey!
Source: https://www.beekeepingnaturally.com.au/natural-beekeeping/
*********
Source: https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/sun-hive-introduction
The Sun Hive (Weissenseifener Haengekorb) is a key element of the Natural Beekeeping Trust’s commitment to bee guardianship. Based on the principles of bee-centred apiculture, the Sun Hive is an ideal conservation hive for our pollinating friends the honeybee. Although one may be favoured with some surplus honey from time to time, honey ‘production’ is not the main purpose of the hive.
Made from an ingenious combination of skep baskets woven from rye straw with wooden support structures, the Sun Hive is intended to be installed at a height of at least 2.5 metres (8 feet). The bees are thus in their aerial realm and fly above the heads of passing onlookers. The shape of the hive harmonises with the movement gesture of the bee colony and enables the bees to design their brood nests according to their own innate criteria.
The hive was designed by German sculptor, Guenther Mancke, and represents the fruits of many years of research into the nature of the honeybee colony. In the introduction to his book “The Sun Hive” he says:
“The impetus for its development came from the need to free the bees from a principle at once earthbound and cuboid, one that goes against every law of form – we are dealing here with laws that are particular expressions of a creature’s life. There are many reasons for bees’ present-day afflictions. We can be sure, however, that one of these reasons is the fact that the creature, as a physical and ethereal entity, can no longer live its life as it is meant to.
Our attempts have therefore been directed at counteracting the debilitation of the bees’ vital forces by means of those stabilising forces that are inherent in form. These latter forces act subtly in a generally therapeutic way on the living organism that is the colony, but they must be supplemented by methods of animal husbandry that abandon some of the old customs and replace them with new ones.
On the one hand, the new skep we have developed allows the bee to live its life in a way that accords with its being, and on the other hand the system of movable combs offers the beekeeper the means of laying hand to the hive and taking any appropriate action that may be necessary. The Sun Hive is therefore an intermediate form between a fixed-comb hive and one with a movable comb system.”
*******
Videos
********
Articles
Beespoke Info – The Sun Hive and How to Make One
http://beespoke.info/2020/10/12/the-sun-hive-and-how-to-make-one/
***
The Sun Hive: experimental Natural Beekeeping [Australia]
un Hives are a hive design coming out of Germany and now gathering interest in Britain. They’re part of the world-wide movement towards ‘apicentric’ beekeeping – beekeeping that prioritizes honeybees firstly as pollinators, with honey production being a secondary goal.
The Sun Hive is modeled in part on the traditional European skep hive, and is aimed at creating a hive that maximises colony health. The main thing I love about this hive and the enthusiasm surrounding it is not the hive itself, but the philosophy behind it, that of apicentric beekeeping.
In brief, the Sun Hive has an upside down skep hive at its base with curving frames in the top section and no frames in the bottom section. The hive is placed well above ground level (optimal for bees – they never choose to create a hive on the ground).
Like a Warré hive, the Sun Hive allows the queen bee to roam freely through the entire hive and lay eggs where she wishes to, which in turn allows the colony to manage the location and progression of their brood nest, which is great for colony health.
Read more
***
How the Round, Bee-Friendly Sun Hive May Help Save the Bees (Video)
There’s ongoing debate in the backyard beekeeping community about which type of hive offers the best balance between what the bees need and honey production. From top bar to Warré, there are plenty of different hive designs, each with its benefits and peculiarities. Made with “bee-centred” apiculture and conservation in mind, the Sun Hive is an alternative format for natural beekeepers. Created by German beekeeper and sculptor Guenther Mancke, the Sun Hive is a based on the form of hives as found in the wild.
Read more
***
Origins of the Sun Hive
The “Sun Hive“, designed by German sculptor Guenther Muncke is a combination of skep weaving and circular inner wooden frame. The inspiration for the hive design came from observing a wild bee’s nest in a forest near his home, with it’s combs covered in a protective layer of propolis and wax. Below is a drawing he made of this bee’s nest.
Based on years of bee colony observation the unique hive is designed to fit the natural comb building tendencies of the honey bee. Similar to the Warre Hive the Sun Hive allows for unconstrained downward vertical comb building (Natural Hive Comparisons). It is built in two segments which allow for expansion where the two meet. The segments are constructed of woven straw similar to a traditional skep with a wooden dividing board and platform in the middle (D below). The entrance is at the funnel shape bottom of the hive (N below). The hive is designed to be installed at a height of 2.5 meters (8 ft).
Read more
*******
