Check out our Top bar hives for sale. They are an easy to manage; natural environment that supports the bees' natural systems - without using any toxic chemicals or antibiotics.
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Beekeeping Classes, "Natural Beekeeping in
Top Bar Hives"
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The Author of "The Thinking Beekeeper"
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Buying bees
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WELCOME to Gold Star Honeybees' BEE page! There are two good ways to start bees in top bar hives: ==> Click here for the directions to Bee Pickup Day <==! Package bee sales for 2016 are now complete. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all your support! ⭐️🐝🐝🐝⭐️   Gold Star Honeybees are raised treatment-free. This means no chemical treatments. They are 3-pound packages with naturally mated, unmarked queens. They are raised on small-cell foundation, ideal for top bar hives. (And fine for other hive types too.) They are "mutt bees" - a very hardy mix of Russian, Italian, and Carniolan genetics. They are "four season bees" - acclimated to a climate with four seasons and winter hardy! They are raised in northern Georgia and the great state of Tennessee. Wondering what to expect when your bees ship? Download the .pdf here - "What to Expect When Your Bees Ship" Our shipping success rate is over 94%! Wondering what ship dates work for your locale? Visit the Farmer's Almanac here. Choose a date later than the last frost in your area! Wondering how to get the bees into your hive? Download our FREE Top Bar Hive Start-Up Handbook here. Step by step instructions for hiving bees in your new top bar hive. Wondering whether your bees have made it through last winter? Order a "Just in Case" package! Only $25 Please review our Bee Order Refund and Cancellation Policies here. ========================================================== What the heck's the difference!!!??? What's the difference between package bees, swarms, and nucs? Good question!  With a swarm. The beautiful thing about a swarm is that swarming is the natural reproduction process of honeybees. That means that the bees in a swarm are a finely tuned, well organized "colony". The bees are the right ages for the tasks they will be performing in their new home when it is found, and they are all related to each other, and they are all related to their queen. This is about as close to natural as you could ask for! A natural swarm's ability to build wax and fill your top bar hive with honeycomb is amazing! The difficulty with starting a hive with a swarm is that you cannot predict its arrival time - or whether a swarm will come your way at all.  With a package. A package of bees has advantages for the beekeeper. You can "order" a package. So you know you've got bees coming. While not as natural as a swarm, at least you know when the package expected to arrive. At Gold Star Honeybees, our goal is to offer you the very best in package bees with emphasis on natural cell size, treatment-free management, and seasonal acclimation. So - you need to make some choices. Do you cross your fingers and hope for a swarm or purchase a package? Download your FREE copy of the Gold Star Hive Start-Up Handbook here (.pdf format) If you are a top bar hive beekeeper, here is WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:  For top bar hives, you don't want to start out with a Langstroth "nuc". Just what is a nuc? A nuc is the nickname given to a "nucleus colony". It works like this - you buy a nuc, which is small starter hive of bees - usually five frames. You take it home, remove five frames from your Langstroth hive, replace them with the five frames and the bees, from the nuc. Voila - instant beehive. If you are using Langstroth equipment, this works great... because it comes on Langstroth equipment!  Sometimes novice beekeepers don't realize that a conventional "nuc" isn't going to fit in a top bar hive. And they may not be quite sure what questions to even ask, so the company they are purchasing from doesn't even know how to keep them from making this error - buying bees that won't work in their top bar hive. Here's a video we did that talks about the differences between package bees and nucs... On the face of it, this is a matter of non-interchangeable equipment. They don't fit! (And yes, that's on purpose but that's a story for another day.) But the deeper reason to avoid a nuc is to avoid introducing contaminated foundation wax into your natural wax top bar hive. Wax foundation has been found to contain about 170 different chemical contaminants, including the pesticides for varroa control that have been in use since the 1980's. Let the bees make their own wax - it is cleaner and supports their natural systems. Make sense? We thought it would. Thanks for listening! |