Design choosen for the honeybee hive project
The desire to have a robust and economical honeybee program meant that a top bar hive is the way to go. The top bar hive is a hive box where you can see all of the frames at one time. There are no additional boxes that go on top of the structure, and the top bar hive is believed to be the natural way honeybees make comb. Given that once these hives are built they don't need any additional modifications, and if the bees exceed the limits of the hive, then the hive would be split into a new hive. The top bar hive is traditionally more expensive to purchase than most of the other types of hives. We however found a way to build the hives where the program could be rapidly expanded and locals could build a hive without really specialized tools. Below is the photo from instructables.com where it shows what the exact design we will use for the La Gonave Honeybee Program. While the color may vary, the blueprints for this design has been obtained. The...