Teaching Natural Beekeeping

A Course at the Crossing Bermagui

Introduction

Just wrapped up another great weekend at The Crossing Bermagui. There’s something pretty special about teaching beekeeping here – the setting really helps everyone slow down and connect with what we’re learning.

Getting Inside the Hive

We spent some of our time working with the Kenyan Top Bar Hive, which is perfect for showing how bees naturally build their home. The highlight was harvesting a couple of bars of honey – that first taste of honey straight from your own hive is always a moment to remember.

What really stands out with top bar hives is how they let us work without disturbing the bees too much. The horizontal design means we can check the honey area without disrupting the brood nest, the students could see firsthand how easy this is and why this matters for colony health.

Exploring Options

While we focused on the Top Bar Hive, we also looked at a few other designs:

• The Warré hive, which works beautifully with the bees’ natural instincts
• The Golden Hive which is built using the Golden mean numbers with its smart single-chamber approach
• The Dome Hive, which always gets interesting conversations going about bee space

Each design has its strengths, and it was great watching everyone think through what might work best in their own situation.

Looking Ahead

For those interested in learning more, I’ve got a few spots left in my final Melbourne course for the season on October 17th & 18th. We’ll cover everything from hive design to honey harvesting, but as always, we’ll keep the focus on understanding and working with the bees’ natural behaviors.