Chickens for the urban backyard flock

I'm a little torn. These are my top contenders all available from breeders near Birmingham except Araucana which I can't find anywhere.  Incidentally all the eggs from these birds are either brown or blue except the hamburg which is white. White egg birds are usually smaller (and eat less). Leghorns have the highest egg ratio for feed cost of any egg layer but they're flighty and not usually as friendly as these listed below

Heres a good chart comparison: http://www.sagehenfarmlodi.com/chooks/chooks.html

Blue Maran: has a really beautiful color and lays an unusual dark brown egg. Marans come in lots of colors but blue is my favorite and luckily there's breeder of just that color. They don't lay as many eggs as some of the others but if you tried to sell eggs, these would likely be popular. 

Buff Orpington: chunky little golden colored chicken that lays light brown pinkish looking eggs. Known for being friendly. 

Black Australorps: black obviously. Feathers get a pretty green irredescant color to them too. Broke records for most number of eggs (355 in a year or something).  Their eggs are pinkish brown.

Dominique: all the birds I've mentioned have been "heritage" breeds but this one has more heritage than most, I think. I see this chicken and think pilgrims. They're not as chunky and slightly more graceful than most the other chickens I've mentioned so far. Their eggs are a light brown but not pink. More of a yellowish brown.

Speckled hamburg: this little chicken is one of the prettiest but it's flighty too. That's good for free range birds that need to escape predators though. Their white eggs are small just like them. 

Amerecauna: they have cute feather puffs on their cheeks and lay blue eggs. Have had these before and they seemed super sweet, even the roosters 

Rhode Island Red:

That's the chicken in the back on the ameraucana picture. Their feathers are irredescant. Eggs are medium brown and they lay a lot! 

Deleware:

Fat white chicken with coloring under the wing

Aracaunas:

These are rumpless chickens with huge feather tuffs on their cheeks that lay blue eggs. They're really hard to find though in my parts. I've all but given up. They come in all colors

Free DIY Pallet Garden Shed

This man is amazing. He made this really pretty shed from pallets and oil drums, uses wooden dowels and dove tail joints instead of nails, and stains it with motor oil. It's a fairly long series of videos and the sound cuts in and out, but it's still relatively easy to follow along with what he's doing. I need to do this... We desperately need a garden shed, and how cool would it be to make one for free? I think I'd simplify with an actual purchased or scrapped door though, even though his door is lovely. His skills with wood working are quite a bit more advanced than mine, though.

I included some pictures of a few other pallet garden sheds that ranged from decent looking to amazing too.

Warre Bee Hive

This is a vertical top bar bee hive also known as the Peoples Bee Hive. It produces slightly less honey than the Langstroth hive, but requires far less maintenance as well. There are no frames with preformed cells like you see in the Langstroth hive, but rather top bars that the bees draw out their comb from. The bees will spend more time developing the comb thus the slightly reduced honey output. There's a sloped roof to draw off moisture/water and a quilt layer on top (made from shavings) for insulation.  Typically, the beekeeper only needs to enter this type hive twice per year (spring to increase hive body boxes up to three and fall for harvest and reducing hive body boxes down to two).  The bees in this style hive are typically less stressed and more docile. See picture below for the components of this hive.

Here are three online stores that sell these hives:

http://www.beethinking.com/collections/all/products/warre-hive?variant=441204841

http://www.thewarrestore.com/apps/webstore/products/show/1136749

http://handsoffbees.blogspot.com

Flow Bee Hive Prototype -- Honey On Tap

This is a bee hive prototype made by a father and son out of Australia that I think is just cool. The bee hive design has windows that make the activity within the hive highly visible without need of disturbing the bees. You can even harvest the honey without disturbing the bees. Plus, with a traditional hive, you'd normally only extract once per year, but with this hive design, you can harvest one frame at a time throughout the year (multiple times) so that you can try honey at different times throughout the season. No need for expensive safety gear, smokers, or extraction equipment in order to harvest (although you might still want it for inspecting). It's really a very pretty bee hive design. Since the bees are less upset during harvest, I think this would be a perfect hive for an apartment dwelling urban bee keeper (*cough*).

Seriously though, I'm considering buying this and sticking it in my apartment back yard. Always put off having a hive because our rural land is 90 minutes away and we live in an apartment in the city, so it just never seemed right to have a hive and keep a close eye on the bees, but this style hive is calling to me. Only draw back is no chance to extract bees wax, but I think it's a very fair trade-off. 

The complete 10-frame flow hive is available for $600 (but they have several other options). A similarly sized 8-frame traditional cypress hive with veil, gloves, smoker, brush and hive tool is about ($375) plus extraction equipment ($150). So that's $600 vs $525. Some might still want veil, gloves and smoker to do inspections, which might cost around $85. In that case, it makes it $685 vs $440 (plus potential shipping and bees) for start-up costs on one hive. 

Checkout this page for more info and to make donations to ramp up production on the prototype: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-beehive and check out the video:

I suspect/hope that once production on this takes off (which I think it will), the price might drop some. It's not terribly complicated a design, really, to warrant a huge price difference b/w the two hives, I don't think, just a matter of mass producing them.