New Home Construction

Spring is trying to break through, it really is.  And in anticipation of it I have been busy building boxes for bees.  Though I have utilized Top Bar hives in the past, I am changing my equipment over to Langstroth hives, for the most part, and keeping only a few Top Bars here and there for fun.  Since I have ambitions for a LOT of hives in the near future, I have been working on production methods for the new hives so I can turn out eqquipment on the cheap and when necessary.  Here's a look at five boxes and some other bits as well.

First off, we start with 1x8 pine lumber.  I grabbed four 8'ers from the local big box store and got enough for 5 medium supers, with just a few bits left over.  I like working as efficiently as possible with materials, and this counts as a win for the good guys.

After basic dimensioning, including rips and cross cuts, I run the pieces through the table saw using my handy-dandy box-joint jig.  I made this thing a few weeks ago, it works like a champ.  The ends get milled to fit together at the corners in a very strong joint that will eventually get glued and nailed.  I like working with sled jigs, they allow for some real fine-tuning and keep fingers safe when working with the saw.  I set the table saw up with a 3/4" dado blade and away we go.  You can see the stack of sides adding up.

A rabbet along the short sides is required to create a ledge that will hold frames eventually.  I use the stacked dado and created a custom top-plate for it using some oak scrap laying around the shop.  It is a cool little accessory, fits the table perfectly.  Cutting the dado on the short side, as well as planning the joint correctly, means that I can make the dado cut across the whole length, rather than stopping it and squaring out the cut.  Don't know why people bother with that, but plan after plan seems to suggest that route.

The sides then get glued up and assembled.  It's important to keep the boxes square, so I utilize no small number of clamps, including a 90 degree corner clamp and then some long ones to draw the joints together.  There are 32 nails per box, these things are not falling apart anytime soon.  But then again, they have to endure the elements as well as handle the weight they will carry when full of bees and honey.

Good jig design and careful layout means that I can bust out tight joints quickly and with regularity - it's a nice thing.

One of the little touches that I like on commercial boxes are the scalloped handholds that are set into the sides.  So I did a little research and found a handy design that can get a similar result using a skill saw.  It mounts to the finished boxes and cuts the handholds pretty neatly.  Not bad.

Making boxes is just one part of a whole hive.  Each box holds 10 frames, which the bees will use to build their comb on.  I got a bulk package with pieces for 100 frames, they have to be assembled one at a time.  But the pieces are all coming together, and soon spring will be here and all the separate bits will combine for a productive whole, much like the colonies they will house.  Looking forward to it!

Sweeter than honey?

There are a lot of benefits to keeping bees around.  Of course there is the honey, which is always dynamite.  I harvested plenty of honey from one of my hives this year, it has real flavor (which you just won't find in the grocery store varieties) and expresses a range of color depending on when and where it is harvested from.

This year I was able to capture four swarms for myself, which I have hived in three large Top Bar Hives up on the farm.  On top of that, I had opportunity to capture several other swarms which we placed with some aspiring new beekeepers - nice to get some other folks into the work of caring for bees!  My hope is that the hives will all be strong enough to weather the winter and will start next spring strong.  I will be able to split those colonies next year and continue to expand the apiary.

The wax not only looks great, but it smells simply amazing.

One of the side products that is readily taken from the Top Bar Hives is beeswax.  The bees build fresh comb which they use for raising young and for storing honey.  The honey storage comb is sometimes emptied out as the bees make use of the food during periods of colony growth or low forage availability.  That empty storage comb is good stuff for processing into pure beeswax.  Evie and I built a solar wax melter this summer and have been putting it to use to render out some beeswax for a special project she's interested in.  Pure beeswax has a lot of uses, but she has her eyes set on lip balm.  So we'll combine this wax with some other natural products and start turning out Evie's first line of lip balm soon.  It's sure to be the hot item this winter for all those chapped lips out there, so keep your eyes open for our young entrepreneur's announcement about available product.

A Taste of Honey

After some weeks away on various adventures, it was time to check on the bees and see about harvesting a couple of bars of honey!  The weather has been hot, hot, hot in Yakima, and I had some concern that the hive would be full of collapsed comb and angry bees.  But the girls seem to be getting along well and it looks to me that the colony is quite healthy as we move into late summer.

I've been getting a bit more practiced at hive inspections, and this time I was able to put my new inspection stand to use, something I cobbled together from scraps in the garage.  It allows me to put a bar up for inspection and photos, which is handy when working alone.  My new smoker works like a champ, though I try to not overuse it since the girls seem not to like it much.

The colony has expanded mightily since their installation in May.  They have more than tripled in size, and now occupy 16-18 bars and have a very solid brood chamber clustered near the entrance.  I harvested one bar several weeks ago, when I took some junior high students from the church on a hive tour.  I had one student fully outfitted in a suit working in the hive right alongside me, which was fun for me and for him.  The honey is really, really good, and I am glad that top bars allow for the option of cutting out comb as well as the crush-and-strain harvest method.

They had been busy over the last several weeks, constructing several new bars of honey storage, which they are slowly filling up. After checking out their work, I decided to harvest two bars from near the entrance which had been capped for some time.  This is probably the last harvest I will make this year, focusing instead on arranging the colony to survive this winter so that they will have a strong start in the spring.

I brought the honey home to crush and strain, but Tavish was into it before I could even get the buckets set down.  He "yikes it, reewy reewy yikes it."  After straining it overnight, I took the bucket of wax back up to the hive so that the girls can clean out any excess honey.


Meanwhile, Evie and I have started gathering materials for a solar wax melter.  Our plan is to melt the wax, and then use the pure beeswax as a primary ingredient in a line of lip balms that Evie is jazzed about creating.  We went to the Habitat for Humanity Re-store today and picked up a glass window, some metal flashing and some hinges.  A solar melter is basically a box that uses the heat of the sun to bring the wax gently to melting temperature and then sifting it out from any debris it may contain.  The finished result is pure beeswax.....pics of that will follow, should we succeed!

Busy Bees

The bees have been busy over the past several weeks, building comb just as fast as they can and filling them with brood cells and pollen stores.  They have built about 10 bars of comb, some of it fully formed, and are working on some honey stores.  The weather has been unseasonably cool this spring, but we finally seemed to have turned the corner towards summer.

I finally received gloves and a smoker, plus fuel, that I had ordered and was all ready to check on them on Monday.  Thunderstorms and a couple of really windy days delayed those plans, but I was able to go up during lunch today and do a hive inspection.  In truth, I have very little idea what to look for.  But I have noticed that the photos are hi-res and reveal a lot of details, so I am considering making digital photos a regular part of the inspection....then I can review the photos later for details that are hard to spot in the field.The small bit of comb that these bees are working on was drawn on the bar furthest from the hive entrance.  I had added three empty bars a couple of weeks ago near the entrance in order to give them room to expand their brood area.  They have filled all three bars in that time, really amazing.  I am not totally satisfied that I have optimized the brood area/storage areas, but they will deal with it in their own way, I am sure.

As I was inspecting some of the brood comb, I was able to watch a couple of bees emerge.  It was pretty cool to see.  I have always thought of bees as a flying insect, but when in the hive they are really better thought of as a swarming/crawling insect.  They have some personality, it seems to me, and I chuckled a couple of times as I was trying to close up the hive.  The girls line up on the edges of the top bars gazing up at the sky, making it hard to get the bars positioned close to one another.  Some brave few even venture out onto the tops of the bars, fanning themselves in little groups, seeming to congratulate themselves on their bravery.  Until the bars start to get put back, in which case they scramble to get back inside.

Evie and Piper are excited about some business opportunities that might arise from the bees.  Piper is going to be in charge of honey sales, Evie has decided to focus on wax products, especially natural lip balms.  Future posts may include shameless sale's pitches.  You are forewarned!

Good with the Ladies

Finally got the phonecall we've been waiting all spring for - Bill Bennett, beekeeper extraordinaire and a congregant at WestPres, got ahold of me last night just as I got home from work.  A swarm of bees had settled in the backyard of a house just minutes away.  It was time to go pick up the ladies and hive them in the Top Bar Hive that I built over the winter.

In the spring, bees get busy growing.  That means that they grow as a colony, and this sometimes leads to overcrowding in their hive.  When the conditions are right, they will produce a second queen who will lead half of the hive away in search of a new home.  What that means around here is that it is pretty common for an unsuspecting suburbanite to arrive home and find a ball of bees clustered on their house, car, fence, landscaping, dog, whatever.  The bees are very docile in this state, they are loaded up with food and clustered around the new queen to protect her, but it is still an alarming sight for a lot of folks.  For me, it meant a chance to capture a colony for the new hive.

The process is pretty simple.  The bees must get transferred into the hive, and then allowed to settle in until nightfall, when the hive can be moved to its final location.  Bill brought his bee gear, I brought the hive, and we got to work.  The swarm had settled in some arborvitae in the backyard of a suburban home.  The first task was to cut away any of the shrub that would be in the way.  The bees tolerated our presence very well.  I was able to get close for pictures without a bee suit on, and feel that I probably could have even done the whole job without being all covered up - they just weren't interested in a fight.

After trimming away some of the surrounding branches, I clipped the three branches that the bees had clustered on, holding on to them as I did so the swarm wouldn't fall to the ground.  The whole group came off neat as I could hope, Bill called it the easiest retrieval he'd ever experienced.  The swarm was then shaken off the branches down into the hive (really one big shake and the whole group dropped in).  The top bars were replaced, being careful not to squish any of the new bees (who were a touch more agitated at this point, understandably).  The hive had been pre-loaded with a frame of honey for them to eat on, and one frame of brood cell for them to start laying in.  The rest were just empty top-bars ready to be drawn and filled (more on all of these terms and processes later).

Bill and I returned at dusk, and the bees were all quietly settled into the hive.  I put the lid on, secured it with some bungee cords, we blocked the exit hole with duct tape, then we loaded it up into the mini-van.  Yes, a bee-hive in the minivan.  I had taken out the middle section of seats and we just loaded it into the car and I headed up to the bees home location.

It was a little disconcerting, I will admit, to be in the car with them.  After closing the doors, I became away of a low-level buzzing, the colony humming away in the hive just behind me.  I don't know that I have ever been so self-conscious about the level of craftsmanship I've put into a project than I was right then.  My mind was reviewing all the construction steps, making sure that I hadn't left a gap, attached something a little less securely than I wanted to, or worked out a poor design.  We made the trip just fine, and Bill and I carried the bees to their new home, a beautiful sage-covered lot overlooking the whole of the Yakima valley.  I will go check on them in a few days to make sure they are settled in.