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The life of a beekeeper can be rewarding and challenging at the same time.
Mornings usually begin with a visit to the apiary, where the buzz of active bees signals the start of another demanding day. Daily tasks include inspecting the hives, checking the queen’s health, controlling pests, and harvesting sticky-sweet, golden honey, all while enduring various weather conditions and avoiding stings. The true reward lies in the satisfaction of successfully raising a thriving colony.
It’s a job George Datto is very familiar with. After 15 years of beekeeping, Datto has spent the last four years helping improve beekeeping efforts at Delaware’s Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. He oversees 10 hives in the museum’s apiary, also educates visitors and sells locally sourced honey.
“Beekeeping is hard, hot work. “A gallon of honey weighs 12 pounds and a gallon of water weighs 8 pounds,” she described. “So the typical challenges that all beekeepers face are preventing swarms, (keeping) hives healthy and keeping hives alive.”
All that hard work could help limit the number of people willing to take on the difficult task of beekeeping. But Datto has been working on that problem. He has developed a new hive designed to alleviate many of these challenges called Keeper’s Hive.
The new hive design originated in 2016, when Datto and his team merged their experience to develop the hive. They have been working for the past eight years to test and perfect the hive to its optimal design.
Most hives in the US are of the Langstroth model, which features stacked rectangular boxes with frames that can be removed one by one.
“It’s been the hive that most people use around the world, and it’s a very effective hive, except that it requires a lot of lifting to manage it,” Datto said. “So, a lot of times when it’s used by the beekeeper, the handling isn’t done because it requires a lot of lifting.”
Originating in the 1870s, the Langstroth hive was created by Philadelphian Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth and has since become a standard around the world. Beekeepers should lift and remove three to four heavy boxes per hive, each weighing between 30 and 80 pounds, to properly handle them.
Within a hive, there are two main sections: the brood chamber, where the queen and bees reside, and the honey box. Typically, the brood chamber is below and the honey box is above. Hence, beekeepers have to move the boxes many times to reach the brood chamber, which is essential to prevent swarms and diseases that could endanger the colony.
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