Bees for Development Journal 141 January 2022
Is disability a barrier to beekeeping?
Zec Richardson, British Beekeepers Association Member, Southend-on-Sea, UK During the summer of 1994 at every lunchtime when I was at work, I would sit outside - behind an aircraft hangar where bees had nested in an old hut that had a hole in the door. I sat close by, and some bees would land on me before going into the nest. It was then that I first became interested in bees.
I was determined that the dream of having my own hive was worth me trying everything I could to make it come true. Luckily, there is a wealth of information available via the internet. That is if you can figure out whose opinion is the right one: I could write about any subject and publish it on my website - it does not mean I know what I am talking about! I decided that due to finances and making the hive as accessible as I could, I would have to go down the Do It Yourself (DIY) route.
My wife always said that if we had a garden over 20m long, I could have a hive (she is not the most confident with bees, wasps or anything that flies near her). When we moved into the home where we now live now (the garden is 30m long), she laughed and said “no chance” before I had said anything. Therefore, it was a shock when, one day out of the blue, she said “Okay you can have a hive!”
I can pull my wheelchair right up to my top-bar hive and inspect the brood with ease without needing to reach forward
Accessibility
However now I am a wheelchair user and in constant pain. I have ME (also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which means I suffer with physical and mental fatigue), and I was very unsure if it was even possible to start beekeeping. The National frame hive that people (in the UK) automatically think of as a bee hive was instantly out of the question: its height and the weight of the boxes would make it unmanageable for me, so I knew that it would have to be a horizontal style hive. As well as accessibility issues, there is also my health, which makes me unreliable as I do not know how I will be feeling from one hour to the next, and attempting to join a beekeeping association and/or course would be difficult. That is in addition to the question of accessibility a wheelchair user faces with every decision about attending somewhere new.
Top-bar hives In the beekeeping world opinions on which hive is the best will always cause disagreements, but without any doubt, the top-bar hive is the most accessible for wheelchair users. Yes, you can make or purchase a long hive that holds frames, but it is not as accessible as a top-bar hive. It is not until you use a wheelchair that you fully appreciate the issues you must face.
A 30m long garden puts enough distance between my bees and my wife. Everyone is happy
The shape of the top-bar hive allows me to pull right up to my hive, my legs tucked slightly under thanks to the ‘V’ shape and the hive is almost like a desktop in front of me. If I could not do that, I would be forced to reach forward and that makes tasks more difficult: it takes more energy, and I would manage only a few minutes at the hive. Our kitchen is not accessible and simple tasks become very tiring by being forced to reach forwards all the time. A long hive could be a suitable solution if a top-bar hive was not available, but I would have to approach the hive side-on, and work that way, but this could be awkward and cause more muscle fatigue.
DIY
The DIY hive was built to the perfect height and the pitched roof means that I can keep a few tools under it. And because of mental fatigue (what is known as ‘brain fog’ where thinking is like swimming through wet
The problem of being unable to work because of my health means that finances are not available to join an association and pay for a beekeeping course. However, 10
