I'm Happy to chat and discuss anything about bee's and bee keeping, but it is an enormous subject and very much the case that you soon realize that the more you learn how little you actually know. There is a vast amount of information in books and on the internet out there, a lot of it good and a lot of it a load of crap.
I regard myself as a natural beekeeper, though there is no such thing as keeping bees naturally, but such as it is I interfere with the bees as little as possible and this comes into conflict with modern farming practices and what in mainstream beekeeping fraternity is regarded as the correct way to manage bees. Bees are susceptible to some diseases that need to be reported and bee inspectors have the right to enter your property and inspect your bees for these diseases, a very difficult thing to do in either a Kenyan or a Warre hive with out great care.
If people on here are interested or considering keeping bees, I would recommend reading as much as you can find, make contact with a local bee keeper, get an experience of opening up a hive what ever type of hive it may be, see if you are comfortable doing that, some people aren't.
If you go down the mainstream methods of bee keeping it will cost you £300 - £500 just to get started, natural beekeeping no where near as much.
Here is the link to the Bio bees web site that I was unable to post before, has loads of info on top bar hives and the forum has input from beekeepers all round the world.
http://www.biobees.com/index.php
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