"The Appropriate Beehive" by Marty Hardison, free on 303beekeeper.com

If the hive is a 5-hr drive away, is it still local honey?

I want to keep offering Marty Hardison's book, The Appropriate Beehive, free on 303beekeeper.com, but paying for the 303beekeeper domain name just so I can give away his book doesn't make sense. All beekeeping is local, and a more appropriate URL for me right now would be 703beekeeper.

My domain registrar says a 9% price increase is coming, so I switched to CloudFlare, which is free but still cost me $9.77. 😕 After blogging for 15 years, I've only just learned that there is no such thing as a free domain name. Everyone with a .com domain has to pay Verisign and ICANN fees, currently $9.59+ $0.18, respectively. The only way to have zero cost is to give up the custom domain and revert to the Blogger platform's free URL, which is bbhb.blogspot.com.

If you want to own the URL 303beekeeper.com, just leave a comment. If you contact me before 303 Day, I will transfer ownership to you, free of charge.

Marty Hardison's Appropriate Beehive

The URL 303beekeeper.com is for sale! Just comment on this post if interested. Happy 303 Day!

A new hive design, adjusting for climate change. Building specs to come.

Here's a sneak peek at Marty Hardison's redesigned top bar hive. He's having better success getting colonies through winters with this revised appropriate beehive.

Appropriate Beehive?

ap·pro·pri·ate
🔈 /əˈprōprēət/
adjective: suitable or proper in the circumstances

The NOAA climate forecast for Colorado predicts more heat, more drought, and greater amounts of winter snow, changes which have implications for colony survival. Good beekeepers give the bees what they need, when they need it, so Marty's adjusting what constitutes appropriate.

Having observed colonies in bee trees that have been surviving for years, whose combs are long not wide, he's made his hive 4 inches deeper to allow the bees to build longer combs. The new design still uses 16 1/2" top bars, which allows for interchangeability between hives and makes this design appropriate for both the bees and the beekeeper.

Marty isn't actively teaching the craft anymore, so he and I have been working on updating his booklet, The Appropriate Beehive. An instrumental guide, it includes building plans for the original Hardison Hive. On clicking through, you will need to request access to the document but if you do, I will send you the updated PDF as soon as it's available. I'm not sure I can promise instructions on adding the additional four inches to the top, but the new edition offers more details on keeping bees in a top bar hive that beginning topbar beekeepers will appreciate.

This blog's URL will revert to bbhb.blogspot.com by next 303 Day (March 3, 2025). Bookmark it!

And just because I like to experiment with coding… here's a visualization of your visiting the Backyard Bee Hive Blog! unless you're using Firefox :/