It turns out I don’t always cut straight. Fortunately, the bees won’t care, as I tried my hand at making swarm traps. Basically you make a deep box turned on it’s side, and place it in a tree for the bees to find. I used the plans available at hacknbuild.com, that uses a single 4′ by 8′ sheet of plywood to make three swarm traps. See the image below.
Continue readingBuilding Equipment
2023 Inventory
It is time to order some supplies for the year. In preparation, I did a full inventory of my bee stuff last month. I have equipment spread out between the basement, the garage, the shed, and the bee yard, and as my hives have expanded I haven’t kept track of exactly what I have as well as I perhaps should.
So I counted everything everywhere, from boxes to feeders to covers to frames. It turns out I have a lot of stuff. I have never done such an inventory in the past, so it was a bit eye opening.
Continue readingA world without nucleus hives would be less stable and more dangerous
After my success at reducing a standard deep nuc to a medium one (see Busy beeks are always metaling), I decided to take on the more daunting task of building a top bar hive nuc. After an adventure with hardware stores (yes, plural) and some minor angst on my part, I deem the effort a success.
Busy beeks are always metaling
A quick post about a small project this past weekend. If you are following along, you know I am interested in making some nucleus colonies this spring, or nucs for short. Our local beekeeping club (PWRBA) coordinates sales for new beekeepers and this should be a good way to help prevent swarming in my existing hives.
One problem for me is that the standard wax cardboard nuc box is only available for deep frames, while I am trying to move to medium frames. So I kind of want to fit medium frames into a deep nuc box. I found a solution this weekend. Continue reading
