bee – Peacock Orchard

Home made bee feeder

I have two hives this year and I want them to make it through the winter. On advice of a local bee expert I took the boxes with honey and condensed the bees into a single box each. As such they absolutely need to be fed. I wanted to be able to feed them without having to open up the body of the hive while it’s cold out. I also want to prevent the bees from having access to the empty box where the food is to be. Being cheap, and searching the internet for various ideas, I made this up out of items we had in the garage.

Strips of wood, this is cut from our porch. I cut them into 1 foot pieces.

I stapled it around the wood long ways first.

Then I folded over the ends and stapled it. This makes it firm and helps prevent the bees climbing out the ends.

Bees- costing way more, way more quickly than expected

Our bees are doing great. Really great. So great we’ve already had to purchase 3 additional boxes to expand the hive. I am thankful for all of the bee food we’ve been laboriously planting all these years as it’s made bee keeping a breeze. Well, except for how bee like my bees are being.

It turns out my bees really could care less about where they build their comb. My hive has foundation in the first two boxes and I have a lot of cross comb and burr comb happening. I was opening the hive every 2 weeks to cut this out but it matters not, they are still doing it. I know what you bee people are thinking. Is your hive level? Yup. Is it facing the wrong direction? Maybe. I did move it around though in the hopes it would help. It didn’t. My bees are just busy and they don’t care if I can access the hive or not.

So when I put the honey super on I took the foundation out. I really hoped that doing so would encourage the bees to build on the frame better. What did they do? Well they built their comb across every frame. Now I can’t even lift any of those frames out. What a pain!

I wanted to be a “good” bee keeper. I’m finding though, my bees think keeping away from them is as good as it gets. We aren’t planning on harvesting any honey off them anytime soon. In fact if this hive can simply be split to produce other hives, we’d be happy with that. Plus, pollinating the orchard and other plants is a huge plus!

So we are going to go into winter with a strong colony. I hope to either catch them swarming or split them next spring. Stay tuned!

Bees- Take 2

Last years bees didn’t quite work out. Not to be deterred we are trying again. This time we bought a small langstroth hive. When they outgrow it we will move the established colony into the top bar hive I built.

We had a lot of debate about where to put the bees this year. Last year we discovered ants had taken over the bee feeder. I was concerned about that this year as well. I researched the ants, as I had no idea what kind they were, and found they are Formica ants.

This years feeder has the same cage on it, to keep the birds away, but I’ve moated it off from the ants. The bees have the benefit of food and water all in one place as well. I thought it quite brilliant.

I also thought placing the bees in our established tree line was brilliant. I was told by members of the Southeast Wyoming Beekeepers Association that the hive needed morning sun. The wind absolutely howls from the west here and our tree line blocks most of it. Placing the hive up against our thickest line of trees for wind protection was brilliant. Elevating it above the lilac bushes in front, even better. We screwed a nice pallet into the spool we placed so that we are able to strap the hive down, keeping the lid from blowing off and the whole hive from blowing over. It also left a nice space for the feed/water. I’m tall so getting into the hive isn’t a problem. I did prop a nice pallet up for stairs should I need to get all the way up there. All in all I am extremely pleased with the set up this year.

Installation went much smoother this year as well. The only issue I had was the marshmallow falling out the second I turned the queen box over. I just quickly dumped half the bees on top and closed the lid. It took a few hours for everyone to make their way inside but it has been several days and they are still there. I’d consider that a success.

We don’t have much food available for the bees at the moment. Just some dandelions that I haven’t seen a single bee on.

The lilac are close to blooming and all indications point to a bumper crop of sweet clover, so they’ll be overwhelmed with food options soon.

All in all, a hopeful start to this years bee keeping.

Top Bar Bee Hive Construction

I found this Instructable last winter and knew I had to make it myself. It seemed easy and fairly inexpensive. It took some time for me to get around to it but here it is, my beehive.

I started by cutting a plastic water barrel in half. I then washed it as well as possible.

Then I measured and made a frame for it from 2×4’s.

I put the barrel in the frame and nailed it into place, which resulted in some major thumb whacking and a band-aid applied by Son.

Don’t worry, Daughter has a toy hammer she’s “helping” with.

Then I screwed on the legs.

It turned out surprisingly tall which then required some bracing lower on the legs.

We caulked the gaps between the barrel and the frame with regular latex caulk.

Next I built the roofs out of 2×4’s and metal sheeting that we already had on hand.

I cut a small circle of hardware cloth and glued it over the entrance to the hive. I didn’t want anything bigger than a bug taking up residence in these things.

Then we cut the bars and ran a line of wax down the middle of each to guide the bees.

Lastly we coated the entire inside of the hives with beeswax and lemongrass oil. We hope the oil helps attract a swarm.

The original plan was to keep the hives inside our large lean-to. However, I now believe I am going to build an addition to the lean-to specifically for the hives. That will follow in a later post.