Winter Activites: 2013-01-29

Since winter time activities for beekeepers usually involve sitting around and worrying about their bees freezing, it is a good idea to find something else to do for the bees.  Well, I've been busy with three different bee related projects for this upcoming season!

Nuc Building:

A "nuc" is a nucleus hive.  It is a smaller version of a standard hive.  They have many uses such as swarm capture boxes, bait boxes, hive split boxes, etc.  So it is a good idea to have some on hand if necessary.  Using the plans by D Coates, I built four nuc boxes out of a sheet of 1/2" plywood.  With a few minor mistakes here and there and two days out in the pole barn, I have them complete!  It was also an excuse to use the new air compressor and staple gun I received for Christmas this year!

Four waiting to be painted

Yes, Frames do fit!

All I need to do now is paint them and drill an entrance hole.  Nice!

Wax Processing:


The second project I accomplished was to take the beeswax I had collected and melt it down into a manageable form.  I have two different wax molds (another Christmas gift), a 1 oz. and a 1 pound.  After using both, I decided I didn't really have enough wax to use the 1 pound mold, so I re-melted that one down and made it all into 1 oz. bars.

I'll be using the wax for making lip balm and coating any plastic foundation I have.  I don't think it is enough to make candles out of.  It seems like that would really take a lot of wax.

Smart Hive/Arduino Development:

Thanks to another Christmas gift (do you see a theme yet?), I have a plan to build a "Smart Hive".  Basically a hive that I can attach an electronic monitoring station to.  I would like it to measure temperature, humidity and hive weight throughout the year.  I could then collect the data and see some nice trends as the bee population increases and when the main nectar flows are in my area by watching weight spikes.  All of this is possible through a little device called Arduino.  An Arduino is an open source electronic board that you can attach various sensors to.  From the reading I have done it seems like the temperature and humidity sensors will be easy to configure.  The weight sensors seem to be a bigger issue.  Most electronic weight measurements are affected by temperature changes.  In an outdoor environment, the temperature will obvious change quite a bit.  Hopefully I'll be able to post more as my progress on the Smart Hive continues!

Arduino

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Hives Deployed

After hours of meticulous painting and another few hours of artistic detail painting from my wife, the hives are complete!  I put a coat of primer and then two coats of paint on the outside of all the boxes, the bottom board and the telescoping cover.

My wife bought some stencils and put the flower and bee outlines on, filled them in with some color and finished it off with some dotted line bee trails.  I think she did a great job and the bees will have the best looking house in the neighborhood!!  Donchathink?

Before "empurtyment"

After

With the advice we received from our fellow beeks, we wanted to get the hives out early and empty.  The idea being that if any neighbor would react negatively they would probably do so as soon as they saw the hives.  It wouldn't prevent any issues but at least we might get an early warning of who might have concerns.  Well, we were hoping to have them out about a month early but I guess a week early is going to have to work.  I cut a strip of pine to exactly fit the entrance of each hive so no mice or other critters will get in before the bees arrive.

Speaking of bees arriving.......t minus 6 days and counting!!  April 19th is the day!  I still have a lot of work to do before they get here. 

Some of my tasks include:
  * Rototill the bee garden
  * build a bunch more frames
  * put starter strips in the remaining deep frames
  * melt the beeswax and paint it on the starter strips as well as the plastic Honey Super Cell frames
  * find a glass jar to use for a hive feeder (I have a top feeder for one hive but not the other)
  * buy some sugar so I can make some 1:1 syrup to feed the bees when they arrive