Taste of West Cork - Children's Bee Keeping Workshop with Bee Keeper Trevor Danann (age 14)

             Trevor Danann - Children's Bee Keeping Workshop

8th September at Liss Ard Estate 

CHILDREN’S BEE KEEPING WORKSHOP

Liss Ard Estate, Castletownshend Road, Skibbereen

4 - 5:15PM | €12 PP (FAMILY DISCOUNT AVAILABLE) | BOOKING ESSENTIAL | 087 236 1616

In the natural honey-bee friendly habitat of Liss Ard Estate, Trevor Danann (age 14), certified Bee Keeper and owner of 12 hives, will host a Bee Keeping Workshop geared towards children aged 7 to 16 years. This workshop will include demonstrations, a slide show and talk, with question and answer time and honey tastings. 

***There will be no live bees at this demo 

My children working on their hives 

April Danann's - Honey Bee Tea

Honey Bee Tea

We’ve decided to feed our bees, mainly because we are not at all certain they are getting the food requirements necessary to sustain them. Another reason is that we have seen them become weaker over these past 5 years with more losses and smaller hives with fewer stores of honey.

Critical point has long been reached.

We add mushrooms to our Honey Bee Tea because we have seen the extensive research on how beneficial these organisms are to both humans and bees, in particular the Immune Strengthening properties of medicinal mushrooms. It’s as simple as steeping mushrooms in hot water for ½ hour along with the herbs….

The plastic feeders are probably better suited – the bees are able to cling on the sides more efficiently, however the bees don’t like plastic. A wooden feeder is preferred because it is natural material – rough up the sides to enable them to cling to the surface and not fall into the sugar syrup. Or use an inverted container with small holes in the bottom, either way get started with a method that works for you and your bees. 

Ingredients:

•    16 cups white cane sugar (raw cane sugar gives them diarrhoea)

•    6 cups hot tap water

•    2 cups strongly brewed chamomile, dandelion and/or thyme tea

•    ¼ to ½ teaspoon mineral salt

•    Mushrooms steeped in with herbs (shitake, miatake, oyster etc.)

•    1 – 2 drops therapeutic grade Essential oil of thyme or oregano (optional)

Method:

•    Dissolve sugar and salt in 6 cups hot/chlorine free water and stir until gains are gone

•    Boil 2 cups water, pour over tea, and let it steep (covered) for 10-15 minutes

•    Gently mash & stir mushroom/tea mixture, strain carefully then add to sugar water

•    Mix together gently by hand for about 3 minutes

•    Fill feeders (wooden is best)

We use therapeutic grade Essential Oils to boost properties of the sugar solution and also to discourage any mold growth in the short term, inside the hive. Make sure there is a float for the bees to land on in the frame feeder. Monitor the feeders closely for wasps, damage, mold and usage. Change out herbs from time to time – use elder flower, hawthorne flower, rosemary and so forth for many different health benefits.

 

Danann Design Top Bar Bee Hive with viewing glass

Come On, Bee A Rebel!     

The importance of reserves

Having enough to eat during the winter and early spring is an important topic for Bees. Bees store their food source because they do not hibernate during the cold months and must have enough food stores to last until they can get back to foraging when the weather turns.

It is important that there is a variety of honey within the hive, summer honey as well as honey stored from late autumn because honeys from different seasons and plants will store at different hardness. Ivy honey stores, gathered in the Autumn and Winter, is very hard and would be impossible to digest if not mixed with softer honeys.

I saw more activity from my hives in January than I have in March, this is due to a mix of very cold days with milder very wet days neither of which are good days for foraging. So that means the Bees are  continuing to eat last years honey until they can get out again. This honey from last year must be very good quality if they are going to survive. I cant expect the Bees to live on sugar water, because there is no nutritional value in this supposed honey replacer, so I don't give them any at all.

My own rule of thumb is about one third of the total stores gathered by the end of August could be harvested from the hive after a very good summer of fine weather. If the summer was very wet, then less or no honey would be harvested. This way I am not interfering with the only source of food and nutrition available. There will be some good weeks of foraging weather in the Autumn and this will boost their stores before the colder weather settles in.

We have all been, at one time or another, without any reserves of cash or cache and it is a frightening situation, so don't overtax your bees by taking more than they can afford to spare.

Natural Beekeeping for Children

Trevor Danann is instructing a Natural Beekeeping course for Children in Leap, West Cork on May 12. He is the ideal instructor as he is himself 12 years old and has been a certified Beekeeper for the last four years.

After attending and passing the FIBKA Gormanstown Beekeeping Summer School, he has participated in managing several Top Bar hives, as well as assisted in numerous hive builds, Bee installations, inspections and extractions.

Trevor has also been assisting in the previous 10 Natural Beekeeping Courses and is keen to present this course himself to an audience of children.

The course is designed to introduce children to the skills of Natural Beekeeping, covering topics such as: Bees, Honey, Commercial Beekeeping, Natural Beekeeping, Bee Health, Getting started and Research. The two hours duration of the course will include time outside observing Bees around the onsite hives.

Any younger children attending the course must be accompanied by an adult. The cost is €25 per child.

Trevor can be found at the Skibbereen Farmers Market every Saturday at our stall and ready to answer any queries on the Hives on display or Natural Beekeeping in general.

Regards,
Max

Building a Top Bar Bee Hive

One search for images of Top Bar Hives on the internet will show you how many variations that have been developed in different regions of the world. It is nice to see so many beekeepers building and using Top Bar Hives, the interest has certainly grown exponentially over the last few years.

I have found that proper ventilation is key in Ireland to deal with the excess of rain that is a year round constant. Also being able to fit National frames into the box ease the start up or transition to Top Bar Beekeeping. Most of the hives I build are made from solid Larch, which is a long lasting timber that stands up to the local weather without much need for coatings. My hives are also free of any toxins, glues, paint, sealers or preservatives to provide a toxin free environment, essential to the health of the bees.

Each hive I have built has been an improvement over the previous ones, applying what I learn from beekeeping into each new hive. I guess that I must be on the 6th or 7th generation of design adaptation resulting in a robust hive that will last for years, providing a safe, dry and clean space for the bees to live.

Beginning each new project is first spent visualizing what I what to make and then looking at the material at hand to see how it can be used efficiently. Sometimes it takes longer to plan the hive than to build it and a proper plan means less waste of material. I have added a few machines to my workshop since I first started building hives but basic hand tools are all that are really needed to build a hive from scratch.

I will be hosting a Top Bar Hive building workshop this spring and hope to see both old hands at beekeeping as well as aspiring beekeepers take part.

Regards,
Max

Thinking outside the box

The standard beehive, as most people know, is a square box. This box contains all the latest and greatest in beekeeping technology, but still just an ugly square box. No wonder then, the growing interest in a hive that does not look like a box or even a hive for that matter.

Top Bar Hives buck the trend of sticking with what everybody else is doing. They are so different from standard commercial hives that most beekeepers scoff at the very idea that they could even work. When in fact, its the Top Bar Hive that has been around for hundreds of years and the commercial hives that are the new and strange way of beekeeping.

The basis of the Top Bar Hive design lies in the simple hollowed out log, which was used by early beekeepers to create a copy of the naturally formed hives found in old hollow logs or hollow tree trunks. These are the same bees that get into your attic space and set up house. These bees are not looking for a box to move into, a box is not a natural shape. What the bees are looking for is a sheltered spot to build their hive without risk of disturbance.

Bees forced to live in a modern box are under stresses that include crowding, dampness, lack of proper ventilation, diseases, pests, toxins and removal of most of their precious winter stores. (The winter stores are then replaced with a sugar water that offers no nutrition) All these symptoms of box life result in a far weaker hive population that is easily susceptible to disease and parasites.

Its no wonder that people are looking for an alternative to the box and Top Bar Hives are the answer for a steadily growing collection of beekeepers that are looking for a better way of keeping bees healthy.

Top Bar Hives - Thinking outside the box

"Yeah, I like bees"

"Yeah, I like bees but my Mom, you know, is afraid"

This was a comment from a little girl I spoke to at the local Farmers Market in Skibbereen, where we have a stall and display a Top Bar Hive. I had asked her a question after seeing her looking at the hive and trying to sort out what it was, I gave her a flyer for our Natural Beekeeping for Children course and she was very pleased.

I feel it is very important to introduce beekeeping to children because it develops an understanding of the extremely important relationship between mankind and the natural world around us. A lot of people have created an illusion of separation and distance from things natural but its still there, just outside their door, or tap tap tapping on the window.

Creating an understanding of the natural systems that we depend on to survive, instills respect and consideration for all the many facets of nature that surround us.

The Natural Beekeeping for Children course is being presented by Trevor Danann (age 12) who has been a certified Beekeeper for the last four years. This course takes place in May in West Cork, Ireland.

Regards,
Max

Natural Beekeeping is easy

Most people think Beekeeping is a lot of work, this is true for the Commercial Beekeeper but quite a different picture for the Natural beekeeper.

Commercial Beekeeping on a large scale is time consuming for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the scale of the operation requires time to be spent with each hive to monitor and intervene at specific stages of development of each individual hive. Secondly, the techniques followed by Commercial Beekeepers require a high amount of attention due to the intensive nature of the practice. Commercial hives are crowded and cramped damp boxes that are more akin to a sweatshop than a home.

Natural Beekeepers follow a different path, using a technique that is in tune with the bees natural behavior. Providing a hive that is spacious and well ventilated creates a healthy population of bees that require no interference or treatments with toxins. A healthy hive that is undisturbed until it has built up enough comb to have an excess of honey for the winter, which takes one to three years, depending on the weather. The amount of comb/honey that is extracted does not jeopardize the winter stock required by the bees, so that there is no need to feed the bees a poor diet of sugar water. The bees always have their own honey which has the best nutritional value for the bees. Feeding the bees sugar weakens them and make them susceptible to any diseases.

Providing the bees a healthy environment and leaving them to their own devices is not only the best way to a healthy hive, but also the easiest way to make the best honey you will ever taste.

Natural Beekeepers, working smarter, not harder.

Max

What is a Top Bar Hive?

This is a question that is asked most often by people who stop at our stall at the Skibbereen Farmers Market, so I thought I would explain it here.

A Top Bar Hive is an imitation of a hollowed out log with the added advantage of being able to monitor and extract honey with minimal disturbance to the hive. The hive shape and size are a more natural configuration than the common square box widely used. There is also a great amount of open space in the hive that aids in ventilation, which is a major factor in a healthy hive.

The hive stands on four legs about three feet high, which makes it very easy to work as the whole hive is at waist height. The bars that the bees use to build their comb upon are just a piece of timber with a groove, there is no foundation wax or frame. The bees are able to build the comb of varying sizes as they see fit.

The hives I build are made of local Larch, which is very weather resistant (used in boats and fencing) and assembled without toxins, glues, plywood, paint or preservatives. This creates a toxin free environment for the bees.

When you create a healthy environment for the bees to build their comb, you end up with the best honey possible. The bees are also less stressed and very easy to work without much need for smoke.

For a first hand look, stop by the market on Saturdays or even attend one of our Natural Beekeeping Courses.

Regards,
Max