Bee on lavender 2

I didn’t have any submissions for this week’s Blogging for Bees Carnival, but as luck would have it I have been reading a very interesting article in Permaculture Magazine (issue 61) about sustainable beekeeping.

David Heaf champions the use of the Warré hive for beekeeping. The Warré hive is easy to build and designed to keep the heat in so that the bees don’t have to work as hard to maintain the hive temperature. It also has no frames and uses no foundation, so the bees construct their own comb and can vary the size of the brood cells to suit the colony. Taking a smaller crop of honey allows the bees to survive the winter on their own food, with supplemental sugar feeding given only when absolutely necessary.

There’s more too it, but the upshot is bees that are less stressed, take very little management and are more resistant to the diseases and problems that are devastating standard modern hives.

A second article is due to be published in PM62 (published mid-October 2009), but in the meantime you can find out more about Warré hives from Warré beekeeping, download an English translation of Emile Warré‘s book Beekeeping For All or join the Warré beekeeping Yahoo group.

There will be no Carnival next week, as I will be manning my seed swap stall at the Big Green Gathering (and signing copies of my book!), but if you would like to contribute to the next edition then email me the link to your bee-friendly blog post or website.