Bare minimum hive with no honey supers.
Necessary items not listed below are nails, screws and tools needed for assembling the hives; Mason jars or large pickling jars for inverted jar feeding; 40-80kg of granulated sugar for mixing sugar syrup and candy; paint for the hives; and the R5 hard insulation and Type 15 or 30 asphalt felt used for wintering the hive. (Again, see our How-To page for more info on all that.) Those extra items will come to about $100.
Then add $200 for a nuc box (i.e., the bees) from the one supplier of nucs on the island. (You can contact me for their email address, though I’m not sure they’re actually in the business of selling nucs anymore.) You may have better luck getting your bees from another NL beekeeper instead. (I might be able supply nucs by 2013.) But let’s just assume the bees will cost about $200 no matter where you get them.
Okay then, here’s the one-shot hypothetical order for anyone interested in starting up a single Langstroth hive in Newfoundland in 2012. It’s everything you’ll need for your first summer, fall and winter of beekeeping.
Read on . . . »
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
My patented mouse-proof entrance reducers worked well enough for us last winter. They’re cheap and easy to build. But I decided to try something different this year. It’s not as cheap and easy, but neither is it complicated. I simply stapled some half-inch mesh over the entrances of the hives like this:
 |
I got this tip from a Brushy Mountain video (I just can’t remember which one). I chose this method for mouse-proofing the hives this winter because it provides better ventilation. I just hope it doesn’t provide too much ventilation by allowing more cold wind to blow through the hives.
Read on . . . »
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
That’s right. I made a screened entrance reducer and it looks like this:
 |
The wasps or yellow jackets hanging around our hives have become intense in the past few days. They’re constantly trying to get into the hives. I’ve added entrance reducers, but the entrance reducers also reduce the air flow (the hives don’t have screened bottom boards). The humidity builds up fast inside the young 2-deep hives when the sun comes out. So I made this screened entrance reducer from scrap wood, a piece of mosquito mesh, some duct tape and a piece of corrugated plastic from an old campaign sign I stole from a local politician who didn’t get re-elected. It’s just a prototype, but as you can see in the photo, the entrance has been reduced to about one bee-length while the bottom entrance space is still fully ventilated. Theoretically, it seems like a good idea. We’ll see how it works out.
UPDATE (Sept. 26/11): The screened entrance reducer works fine. Some of the bees get confused by the screen and it takes them a little longer to find their way back into the hive, but I doubt it holds them up any more than a solid entrance redcuer would. The general concept works. Now I just need devise as easier way to make them.
I got creative this summer and built a solid bottom board and a screened bottom board from scrap wood in my shed. I can’t continue to use either of them for long because the wood I used is old and half rotted and I’m afraid the boards will collapse under the weight of the hives during the winter, and around here that means damp and soggy, great conditions for softening up old plywood. So I went ahead and got more creative with my limited carpentry skills and woefully inadequate tools (or maybe it’s the other way around), and I built a new and improved sturdy bottom board that is both screened and solid. I won’t have a chance to put it into action this year, but I’ll show it off anyway. Here it is as a screened bottom board:
 |
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
I noticed the bees fanning the humidity from one of the hives today and thought, “I wish I had a screened inner cover for that hive.” So I built one. (They’re also known as ventilated inner covers.) I had already built a rim or eke, constructed exactly like a ventilator rim, but only about two inches high and no holes in the sides. I simply cut an entrance at one end and stapled on some screen. It looks like this:
 |
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
I made another bottom board from scrap wood I found in my shed, just like the first one, but this time I cut a big hole in the bottom and stapled a screen over the hole. Hence, the world’s cheapest, ugliest screened bottom board:
 |
I made this bottom board from scrap wood I found in my shed today:
 |
I cut the thick plywood 16.5 inches wide (about 42cm) and 2 feet long (70cm). The brace wood, if you want to call it that, was the same dimensions as a super, 20 inches by about 15 inches, something like that. The hive entrance (once a hive is placed on top) is about 1 and a quarter inches high, which is fine. It’s not pretty but the bees don’t care about pretty. I think it’ll work. I’ll post a photo of it in a day or two when I put a hive on top of it. I should have been making these all along. It’s way cheaper than ordering them from a supplier and having them shipped here. If you had to pay for the raw material, though, I’m guessing it would be less than $5.
I made some improvements to the design of my ventilator rim (a.k.a. a ventilation eke). It’s still cheap and easy to make and should do a fine job at improving the ventilation of any Langstroth hive. First, I cut four pieces of wood for the front, back and sides of the rim. Here’s a shot of the side pieces:
 |
THE FOLLOWING WAS LAST UPDATED ON AUGUST 22, 2011.
Well, not really making a ventilator rim. I already made it and it looks like this:
 |
Like the name implies, it provides ventilation for the hive. And as far as I know, it’s good to have on the hive any time of the year, though for the winter we might stick with our insulated inner hive covers. They worked out well for us this past winter.
Read on . . . »
THE FOLLOWING WAS LAST UPDATED ON SEPT. 14, 2011.
I finally got around to making two dummy boards today — also known as follower boards. Rusty over at Honey Bee Suite says:
- “…the bees can collect on the follower boards without sitting on the brood. In hot weather, the bees have a hard time keeping the brood cool enough, and sitting on it makes it worse. So both follower boards and slatted racks give the bees a place to “hang out.” This also reduces the feeling of congestion in the hive and congestion is a major factor in swarming.”
The dummy boards also reduce the risk of rolling the queen during inspections. All of which means nothing if you don’t know what dummy boards / follower boards are or why I’d want to make some, so read the following posts from Honey Bee Suite for an explanation of what it’s all about: Follower boards in a Langstroth hive and How to make follower boards for a Langstroth hive.
Kinda cool, ah? (I assume you just got back from reading those posts.) I made the two dummy boards by following Rusty’s instructions, though I did it all without measuring anything, and then I got creative and added a little extra something to the design at the end of it. I’m an incompetent carpenter, so by necessity I have to keep it simple.
I began by using a hand-held jig saw to cut the top bar down the middle:
 |
People with fancy schmancy table saws can cut in a straight line. I’m not one of those people. It wasn’t exactly a smooth cut but close enough.
Read on . . . »
Latest Comments