Our Hives
Apiaries
We strive to find the most suitable places to set up our apiaries. Farmers and people who volunteer space for our bees are a crucial part of this. Our experience is that bees perform better when hives are placed in open spaces with direct sunlight, although we aim to shelter them from the wind. Trees and shade provide shelter to wax moths and other insects that may harm bees. Other elements we consider, is the amount of forage as well as the proximity of a water source. It is imperative that a location is able to sustain the bees and this capacity differs depending on the area. Some areas are able to sustain more bees depending on the available forage and type of farming activity within a six kilometre radius. We place between 3 and 6 hives at a given apiary, from here the acronym in our name NECTAR (“tiny apiary repopulation”). It is important that the apiary is at a location where the bees do not reasonably pose a threat to people or animals and is usually around 150m away from buildings or busy roads.
Concrete Beehive V1
THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF OUR CONCRETE BEEHIVE VERSION 1
The concrete beehive was designed to alleviate a number of problems experienced with conventional hives, such as theft, vandalism, runaway fires and maintenance. The conventional Longstroth wooden hive does not guard against any of these threats. Theft is a major problem faced by beekeepers. Honey or complete beehives are stolen, and in many cases the swarm is destroyed, which is a great loss to the beekeeper and bee population.
Concrete Beehive V2
THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF OUR CONCRETE BEEHIVE VERSION 2
The weight of the concrete beehive makes transportation challenging. The Concrete Beehive version 2 was designed to improve mobility of the hives to provide pollination services to farmers who require crop pollination.
The concrete hive was adapted to house a standard size wooden hive that can easily be removed from the concrete hive with no disturbance to the bees. This wooden hive may then be transported to where pollination is required.
The design of Version 2 provides all the protection features of Version 1 with the added benefit of housing mobile wooden hives. The wooden hives will only be outside the security of the concrete hives for short periods of time during the pollination period and will be returned to the safety of the concrete hive after pollination has been completed.
