Bees for Development Store

The Rose hive method

£16.00GBP

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2010 128 pages (R800)

Tim Rowe manages 100 colonies of bees in Ireland. Like Abbé Warré and David Heaf he has considered the way bees live in nature and endeavoured to create a simpler hive, enabling better and simpler management of honey bees. As the author says of Langstroth–style hives: ‘They are restrictive and awkward and difficult to keep clean and healthy’. Instead the Rose hive uses boxes that are all of the same size (when full they are the maximum weight that can be carried comfortably), each containing 12 frames. These boxes are added or removed from the colony, above or below the brood nest, or between two occupied boxes, according to the season and cycle of the colony. This book describes the method very clearly indeed, and like Warré beekeeping, Rowe advocates that bees overwinter only on their own honey. Plans for the Rose hive are included in the book, and have been downloaded by people in more than 40 countries. You can do so too at www.rosebeehives.com

This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 25 January, 2011.