Can you smell the honey ?
Honey in the bee tower !
This bee tower, which was set up in the spring of 2021 on the edge of a large meadow, shows us that there is also a little honey left for us … but we leave the honey to the bees and come back in spring 2023. If this honey storey added in summer 2022 is still full of honey in spring, we know we can harvest it without taking too much honey away from the bees. The bees build as they like in our other hives – and sometimes true works of art are created with very thick honeycombs as can be seen here in the picture..
plus d’infos : https://beetower.fr/en/bee-tower-hiveswarre
2 Comments
Brenda Bergeron
Is the rest of the tower totally empty with no frames?
Jan Michael
Hi Brenda
No, there are no frames in the Beetower because how would that fit in a cylinder-shaped nest ? Inside there is a nesting cavity made of reeds and wooden rings, similar to a tree cavity, and there are no corners, nor are there any cross struts that are usually used for baskets so that the honeycombs do not tear off.
In my earlier models with 24 and 26 cm cross-sections, I used cross-braces every 20 cm, but these cause the honeycombs to vibrate less when the bees dance their information.
According to Prof. Seeley, bees like a cross-section of 20 to 22 cm where there is no danger of the combs tearing off and are also attached to the sides of the bees. The “bee telephone” works best on a continuous comb from top to bottom.
With best regards
Jan