In a nutshell, beekeeping started with honey hunting and then moved to log, woven, pot, calabash, and box hives. All these different hives have one thing in common, the combs are permanently fixed on the bodies of the hives and that’s why they are referred to as fixed comb hives.
Well as modern innovations came up with ideas for the purposes of convenience during manipulation, moveable comb hives were introduced and these types of hives include frame, and topbar hives. Therefore these are classified as moveable comb hives simply because, one comb can easily be moved out and in without destroying anything unlike in the fixed comb type where when a comb is moved out of the hive, it can’t be moved back in!
Many beekeepers in WBA use both top bar hives and log hives. Despite of the assumed productivity of top bar hives, members are complaining about the following common problems found in top bar hives:-
-Take long to get colonized naturally
-Low production in comparison with hive size
-Swarm so often
-Abscond so easily
-Easily affected by wax moth and ants
-Rats move in (especially between the bars and the cover or eat one corner from the top to move inside the hive)
Yet the above mentioned challenges are very rear to find in log hives. Therefore the above challenges are just opposite when it comes to log hives.
Leaving the above challenges aside, members complain about the production so much whereby 80% of the members say they harvest only once a year from a top bar hive yet they can harvest two to three times a year from a log hive. The amount of honey obtained from a topbar hive is lower than the amount of honey obtained from a log hive.
Well, the log hives have drawbacks too such as:-
-Inspections are not accurate since combs can’t be observed well.
-Colonies can’t be split to obtain new hives!
-Log hive producing trees are no longer easy to obtain
Against all odds, members have come up with ideas of making rectangular boxes with fixed sides to emulate the log hives. This has attracted the attention of many beekeepers because the bees easily colonise them and behave the same way they do in the log hives. And they are cheap to make compared to topbar hives.
Many reasons have been put across as to why bees are not performing well in top bar hives in Nakasongola areas to every beekeeper’s expectations and these reasons include:
-The size of the standardized dimensions is too large in top bar hives
-Bees are cultured and costumed to live in log hives
-Bees find it convenient to move end to end on long combs
-Bees work easily by building long combs ie end to end than many combs that cut across
-African bees enjoy small nests
-Natural and race reasons
Therefore beekeeping in Wampiti especially in WBA members and non-members is taking a reverse direction to utilize the productivity of log hives over modern hives while employing modern skills and equipment while working the bees.
No comments:
Post a Comment