Spectacular first swarm for the Sun Hive

Celebratory mood on the last day of April 2012 - came home to find a beautiful big swarm in a little cherry tree. A great start to the Sun Hive Project of Tablehurst Farm and the Natural Beekeeping Trust in Sussex. The first Sun Hive is occupied! Nine more to go .... and hopefully many more will be offered to bees in this country.The Sun Hive is a gift to the bees, an extraordinary design by German sculptor Guenther Mancke. Read about the Sun Hive in Star & Furrow, the beautiful magazine of the Biodynamic Association in Britain, summer issue 2012, coming out soon. Come and see the Sun Hive at the Natural Beekeeping Conference 2012 at Emerson College, 10th-12th August 2012.
PS: Sun hive workshops planned for autumn this year at Tablehurst Farm.

• Category

  People & Blogs

[Alison Knox]

I don't understand why it has been placed in a location that will obviously get a lot of traffic on the porch near the house! I also don't understand how you harvest the honey or make your inspections. Is it intended that the sun hive is just left to its own devices and the bees are not manged? It is an interesting curiosity but I am not sure I would want to have to work with one. How did it overwinter now we are in Feb 2013? x curious!

Alison ~ NBKA

[Heidi Herrmann]

Survival as of February 2013: Excellent

Harvest: No harvest from hive itself, all honey in there strictly for the bees! Super can be mounted when needed.

Positioning: Works very well and lets lots of people admire the beautiful bees.

Interesting curiosity? We consider it a hive perfectly suited to the being of the bee.

[NotWatching666999]

I dont get how you harvest the honey out of this type of hive.

[Heidi Herrmann]

You don't - that's the beauty of it. The bees need it more than us, we reckon,

[conqueredbybugs]

Not trying to be a jerk I KNOW we could make a productive and bee-friendly hive

It's always the same thing, ideologues knocking heads and going no where to "solve" what they both claim they want

CLEARLY, ALL the box hive styles are stupid and outdated design. They are nothing more than disease attractants and traps

Many small timers have ideas, but no funding, the big shots all want us to medicate our hives to their deaths?

Gee, sounds strikingly familiar to what they want us to do to ourselves

[conqueredbybugs]

We always green-solve with things that don't help and no one but elitists millionaires will buy. If an org is really trying to better - beekeeping, then make a hive that will be used?

I understand the whole "live in harmony" with the earth mantra, but you can push these til' you're blue in the face & you won't stop the continued growth of "production" beekeepers

Instead of wasting money on tea & crumpet bee gazing parties maybe invest our resources in making a productive & disease resistant hive

[Alison Knox]

Hello Heidi, Thank you for the update I am delighted that your bees have survived excellently. It is indeed a fascinating and curious thing. . . just like bees! I really wish you success, if it keeps the bees happy and healthy that what matters most. x Alison