Mister Bee Concrete Bee Hive
We were not out to make a concrete hive, we were out to solve pertinent problems that have hindered bee keeping all along and hampered productivity and profitability of the bee industry. Below are the issues we wrestled with for five years:
The number one problem as per scientific research why bee keeping fails in Africa is the honey badger. The Guinness Book of records describes the honey badger as “the most courageous small animal in the world”. This tiny creature is so bold that it eats cobras, puff adders and even scares away lions! Lions give way to the honey badger! Its best meal however is honey. The honey badger is equipped with long metallic like claws that easily tear away wooden hives. A classic example is a farmer in Machakos county who lost 1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,…..17 hives in one night to the honey badger! The honey badger is strangely immune to bee stings! This really has been a killer to the industry. We had to solve this problem and yes! Our innovative Mister Bee concrete hive is the only hive that is 100% honey badger free.
Stealing of bee hives and honey is rampant in many places of the world even though a taboo in some. We designed our bee hives to be difficult to run off with as it is about 100 Kgs. We also designed our hive to be lockable hence deterring stealing of honey.
Stealing of bee hives and honey is rampant in many places of the world even though a taboo in some. We designed our bee hives to be difficult to run off with as it is about 100 Kgs. We also designed our hive to be lockable hence deterring stealing of honey.
Just like any other farming, bee keeping attracts pests. Wax moths and Varroa Mites are common pests that attack bees in the hives. They not only attack bees but they also chase away the bees. The only known sure treatment for Varroa Mites and Wax Moths is fire treatment. Wooden hives are obviously not fire treatable as they would obviously catch fire. Our innovation, Mister Bee Concrete Hive is fire treatable. On various occasions where our hives have been infested with Wax Moths, we just sprinkle methylated spirit and light a fire. The hive burns for about 5 minutes killing off all the Wax Moths, the larvae and their eggs too and we continue with bee keeping as if nothing happened in the first place. These hives have easily been recolonized and produced honey. This really brings hope and a big smile to the Bee keepers who would otherwise lose their bee hives in fire. A study done in Embu County in Kenya by a Danish University indicated that 35% of all the bee hives in the county are already infested with wax Moths. This means in every 100 hives, 35 hives are infested and therefore condemned for burning up. It is therefore not a small problem. We are super delighted to have offered a formidable solution to the Wax Moths menace.
Wooden hives tend to wear out due to weather extremities . On average, wooden hives wear out in four to five years due to rain, hot sun and the wind. This therefore means you have to replace your wooden hive every four years. We needed to present to the bee keepers an equipment that would be long lasting and we just did that! Mister Bee Concrete Hive is designed to last a life time of 100 years. This means that Mister Bee hives are hives for a life time. You invest once for yourself and the generations to come. It becomes an inheritance for your children and their children too. Eventually therefore the price of the concrete hive becomes ridiculously low compared to the wooden hive. In a 100 years, you buy Mister Bee Concrete Hive once whereas you buy a wooden hive 25 times! If the wooden hive cost 80$, then in 100 years, you will spend 80$ x 25 = 2,000$ assuming no inflation in 100 years…compare 2,000$ with a paltry 150$. We are glad to have made the bee keeping industry highly cost effective and hence profitable. It is a great way to empower communities by providing Mister Bee Concrete Hive.
We were keen to make hives with an alternative material to wood for environmental conservation. One mature tree makes about 6 Bee Hives. Remember every four years the wooden hives have to be replaced. In 100 years, the 6 Bee hives will have been replaced 25 times which means 25 trees will have been cut down to just sustain the 6 original Bee hives. A set of 6 Concrete hives therefore saves 25 trees in a life time from being cut. This eventually means that one Mister Bee Concrete Hive saves 5 trees in a life time! This is a huge environmental impact where we make Bee hives without cutting down trees. One mature tree absorbs 21 Kgs of Carbon dioxide per year which amounts to 2,100 Kgs in a lifetime. 5 trees would therefore absorb 10,500Kgs of Carbon in a lifetime. In conclusion therefore, one Mister Bee Concrete hive helps absorb a whopping 10.5 tonnes of Carbon in a lifetime! This is really huge environmental impact that has worn us an award with the Kenya Climatic Innovation Centre (KCIC). We were among the select few 20 companies from a pool of 2,200 applicants.
Wooden hives as they come, tend to be hot inside in hot weather and cold inside in cold weather. This is a huge dis advantage to the bees as they have to either spend lots of time and energy flapping their wings to cool the inner hive temperatures or stick together to get warm hence drastically reducing on bee activity. We were out to make a hive that has a conducive internal environment. With the innovative concrete hive, it keeps cool inside when the outside is hot and warm inside when the outside is cold courtesy of thermodynamic properties of concrete. In essence, the concrete hive maintains a conducive internal environment that is neither hot nor cold. As a result, bees spend lots of time and energy in the concrete hive doing productive work which has ended up in much more honey that expected! We are experiencing about 40% more honey production in the concrete hives as compared to the wooden hives due to the super conducive environment inside the Mister Bee Concrete Hive.
We are so proud to have come up with an innovative hive that makes it possible to set up a hive in the forest and come back to harvest honey and make money. It is indeed become a true passive earner!
