So why do any type of bee keeping in the first place

SO .........

This journey has taken a long time to get any real bees in hand so to speak.

My in-laws have a melon farm just out of Darwin NT Australia - for pollination of the seedless melons it takes a lot of bees - this due to the melons having a small pollination window in the middle of the day - when bees are less active.

So to ensure good pollination for their melons they hire a lot of bees each year. This costs several tens of thousands of dollars each year. The quality of bees, hives and the guys who look after them varies greatly. So there are always bees swarming - mostly due to cramped conditions from no one checking on them for several weeks at a time.

However, we can go back even further for reasons to get into bees. As ten years ago while still living in Sydney I did a commercial bee keeping course in the south of Sydney in prep for when moving up here to the NT and maybe one day keeping the pollination fees in the family. But since that time - two kids, a house being built, 5 acres being cleared for horses and other animals. Then there are careers being consolidated. a master degree completed, and the rest of life's hobbies (I fly fish a lot up here) and those every day instances - all of which have kept this idea of commercial beekeeping or even hobby bee keeping on the bottom end of the "to do" list. Recently things are settling into a nice groove in my life and I was looking for something else to do.

And here we are today.
Although there are other farmers around who need pollination services, the in-laws are almost retired, and I am only 10 years from it myself. So not the time to start a new career path of becoming a commercial pollination service - as we are talking a couple of hundred hives and then some. In the positive really only one guy doing this service currently - so maybe there is a market for it.

But from a hobby perspective - why not! The honey and wax would definitely not go to waste. More importantly before the in-laws stop hiring hives for pollination - I can get a few swarms for myself to start off my bee keeping on the cheap (i.e. not buying them from WA or QLD - expensive and transport issues)

Such a swarm has given impetus to this immediate need to start bee keeping. And it is this swarm I want to relocate to a hive from a toss-out old and battered kitchen cupboard in a farmer’s junk heap - into something more controllable - a wooden beehive that I can build.

But what type of hive will I build ???

Ancient or modern design??????,

Quadratic or Langstroth or other style ????,

Plastic, foam or wood or other ????????

My family had many Langstroth hives when I grew up on a farm west of Canberra - with the bees feasting readily on Paterson's curse (Echium plantagineum) and clover which both covered our sheep property extensively.

The brother-in-law who also lives in the NT, has a few hives also Langstroth style hives.

He had bought some hives but needed more. Due to my job as a secondary materials technology and design teacher, I have access to a complete woodwork workshop, so we used the table saw, routers and other tools to make a heap of super boxes with some timber he bought. He then bought a hundred plus frames and foundation.

This all gave me a taste for the hobby again. And the joy of making stuff with wood.

So I thought maybe I could make some NUCs to get started at least and buy the rest

(A NUC is small box to hold a 4-6 Langstroth frames of brood and honey - a baby bee hive in other words)

Frames, foundation and more!!!!!! So many things to buy

However, major repairs to my boat I fly fish out of put an end to buying anything! 45cm crack in hull near keel than needed major re-welding - as in lots of $$$$

Add to this - timber in Darwin is expensive - very expensive as it is all transported from southern more temperate states. But as a teacher who does a lot of woodwork design classes - I have access to a lot of scrap timber.

But you can’t build solid well-constructed Langstroth hives from scrap timber. As the OCD characteristic in me would not allow anything but an end product of high quality

So what to do??

search internet more..............

And while I love the concept of Flow hives, the the price tag is not favourable for me currently

I continued to search the web and I come across - Kenyan Top bar hives.
for a short overview see this video - top bar bee hive basics

Awesome - they tick so many boxes for my situation!

Also No exact mandatory measurements needed (though I did make my top bars the same dimensions as the top piece of a Langstroth bar if needed),

The Top Bar hives produces a bit of honey, lots of wax

So I watch every video on the web I could find on top bar bee keeping

I read everything I can find bout the subject - till facts, designs, figures and bees are constantly buzzing my imagination

For me - the top bar hives perfectly match my skills and my needs and my materials - and my "make it yourself cheap-arse" nature

Another supportive idea for the Top bar hive is that honey up here isn't the best

The honey up here is usually dark and watery due to the tropical conditions - the taste is passable but..........

Now that quality and taste depends of course on the flower and honey flow at the time - some honey can be the most gorgeous caramel coloured and is awesomely tasty - but not all the time - with high chances of a half a comb of dark and the other half honey comb light and tasty being a common occurrence

With most honey priced at $6 a kilo if ok but the wax is 5 - 6 times that

Better still Top bar hives produce much more beeswax due to the honey harvesting method needed for Top Bar combs

Perfect - well for me