Top-Bar Beekeeping with Les Crowder and Heather Harrell
Here’s a video of wonderfully simple treatise on Top-Bar Hives, their construction, maintenance & on beekeeping itself. Top-bar hives produce perhaps little less honey than Langstroth hives, but they are far less expensive to build, require less maintenance, far less storage space (there is no need for extra supers and frames) and they do not require the heavy lifting necessary to the care of conventional hives.
If you are considering beekeeping, do yourself a favor, and see this video (or read the book of the same name) before committing to either type of beehive. You’ll be glad you did; whatever choice you make, it will be better informed.
If you have bees in Langstroth hives, but find their care harder to maintain than you’d like or can physically manage, Mr. Crowder’s top-bars may be just exactly the solution you need.
In backyards and on rooftops all over the world, the top-bar hive design is revolutionizing the art and practice of beekeeping. With top-bar hives the bees naturally construct their own wax combs rather than relying on prefabricated frames of plastic cell foundation in a typical box-type hive. And top-bar hives are now being used to raise healthy bees organically, without the use of antibiotics, miticides, or other chemical inputs.
In this instructive video, New Mexico beekeeper Les Crowder shares his thirty years’ experience in developing best practices for working with bees in top-bar hives. Les and Heather Harrell, authors of the book Top-Bar Beekeeping (Chelsea Green, 2012) discuss everything from hive management techniques to how to harvest and process honey and beeswax to the best plants to grow for the foraging bees.
The natural, low-stress methods outlined in the video are perfect for home or hobbyist beekeepers who have the time and interest that’s necessary to manage bees intensively and holistically.
The material will also be valuable for home orchardists, gardeners, and permaculture practitioners who are interested in bees as pollinators, as well as for their honey and beeswax.
Les Crowder has devoted his entire adult life to the study and care of honeybees. Dedicated to finding organic and natural solutions for problems commonly treated with chemicals, he designed his own top-bar hives and set about discovering how to treat disease and genetic weaknesses through plant medicine and selective breeding.
He has been a leader in his community, having served as New Mexico s honeybee inspector and president of the New Mexico Beekeepers Association. He is an avid storyteller and has spoken annually at the NM Organic Farm Conference for over fifteen years. Les is also a certified teacher and enjoys teaching children Spanish and science.
Heather Harrell moved to New Mexico in 1996 from her home state of Vermont to pursue her masters degree in Eastern Classics, having long had an interest in the art of meditation and yoga and a yearning to pursue a career in academia.
Her love of nature soon had her pursuing a life as an organic farmer, focusing on flowers, then medicinal herbs.
Over time, and through her work with honeybees, she has moved her focus to the study of multi-use permaculture plantings, which support a diverse network of interrelationships in the natural world. Along with a wide variety of vegetables, she grows medicinal herbs, which offer nectar and pollen to pollinator species. She is very interested in how soil biology is affected by using biodynamic methods of planting, and is currently studying compost teas incorporating various types of manures and plant materials.
Thanks for your time.
