how to set up a top bar hive with an eco floor
Channel: Phil Chandler: Barefoot Beekeeper
Date: 2019-06-16

Demonstrating the setting up and populating of a top bar hive from a nucleus colony derived from a small swarm taken about ten days previously.

My idea for the eco-floor arose while I was considering the natural habitat of bees and their likely interactions with other organisms. Since fungi are omnipresent in the natural world, and certainly present in the nest cavities used by bees, it seems more than likely that symbiotic relationships must have evolved, by which the honeybee derives benefits from the presence of at least some of the pre-existing fungal species. Given their need for the efficient use of energy and resources, this would have been a better survival strategy than attempting to destroy such micro-organisms, although their use of propolis shows that they were capable of deploying this strategy against potential pathogens.

At the same time, I was trying to improve the floor design, as open mesh floors seemed to allow too much air exchange, especially in winter, resulting in the colony retreating towards the top of the hive and abandoning comb closer to the floor, and completely closed floors causing a build-up of condensate, leading to moulds and rot, as well as creating ideal conditions for Nosema apis to thrive, resulting in colony losses. Creating a permeable bed of organic debris seemed like a potential solution, while also providing a medium for dendrophilic fungi to become established.

I have no scientific credentials, although I do have a strong interest and I read relevant research when it is available, but I have been unable to take the matter much further, as this would necessarily involve controlled testing to eliminate other variables. I have not been able to make any accurate mite counts, but I can tell you is that bees do seem to thrive in hives fitted with eco-floors containing mixtures of wood chips, bark and sawdust, with some soil to provide local bacteria and fungi. Such creatures as earwigs and wood lice find their own way in, and as they are also omnipresent, I regard them as having potentially 'friendly relations' with bees.

If you develop this idea yourself, I would be pleased to hear your findings.

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