Innovations by Sweet Harmony Apiaries

Engineering New Hive Designs

Beekeeping today is quite different than it was 40 years ago, and it is radically unlike the way it was almost 200 years ago when the Langstroth hive was invented and gradually became the standard in many parts of the world. With the ever-increasing onslaught of new pests and diseases today, beekeepers and their hives face more threats than ever before. We need to be ready to update our understanding and equipment with improvements that do not require acaricides, chemicals, or other expensive treatments. Beekeeping without the use of chemical treatments is the best thing for the honeybees' future - something in which we all have a vested interest. Our survival is dependent upon theirs.

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Taking our cues from honeybees in their natural habitat, we are designing hives that mimic beehive conditions as found in the nature. Wild honeybees seem to have little to no problem with the threats facing manmade hives, leading us at Sweet Harmony Apiaries to hypothesize that we (human beekeepers) are largely responsible for the amount of colony loss (excluding insecticides, herbicides, and the like). This is due to the popular equipment used by many apiarists and its inability to enable a hive to defend itself and maintain a proper internal ecosystem. 

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We have begun mapping data to show temperature, humidity, real feel, dew point, and weight in comparison with one another and to the outside conditions. 

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The graphs below update every five minutes and show our two new hive designs compared to a standard wooden hive with a screened bottom board.