Let's Build Gonave, Haiti!

When we setup our hives on La Gonave, most of the honeybees will be in the form of brood.  Brood are the honeybee larva that are put into the cells from the queen.  Within the frame will be some drone, worker, and queen comb.  This is the best way for the island to develop it's initial honeybees. Some may question why not put full active hives on the island.  When you look at 80,000 honeybees foraging for food, it can potentially tax out the food system we are developing on the island.  That would then mean death to the honeybee hive.  So by starting with mostly brood and a few thousand honeybees say, 8,000, you have enough that can take care of the hive, and build up the hives food stores.  Logistically transporting full hives can be difficult due to getting from the mainland to La Gonave is done by boat.  So transporting a heavy hive will be very difficult.  Having a few frames of honey, brood, and bees will be easier and safer to move...

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...