Building The Bee Hives In Pictures

[Sydneybrewer]

i was actually thinking of building one of these next to some hops plants that i planning (still in research and cost comparison atm), would hope they would work in conjunction hoppy flavoured honey and more flowers on the plant. what do you guys think, and does anybody know where i can get bees in Sydney?

 

[pdilley]

Chappo and fellow builders.

Some swarm catchers want you to provide a box to put bees in when they catch swarms so right away they draw comb and don't waste energy building wax on cardboard boxes.

Be sure to budget in an extra half sheet of plywood to build swarm hives which are small cute versions of this hive that fits in the back of a car and only has a small number of top bars.

I will get back with the number of bars needed unless Chappo finds it on his forum. When they put a swarm in the short swarm version of this hive you just lift out the bars and put them in your big hive to transfer the hive over.
Simple as!

And yes, this hive uses the least amount of wood and fastest to build. Save money and resources. More money for malt and hops!


I am going to build two short swarm collecting versions and bring to the next Canberra Bee Club meeting as I told the president about them and they're really excited to learn about them in a show and tell session. The president will be capturing the swarms for me so I'll give him the two small swarm hives at the end of the meeting to take home and put in his car the next swarm catching hunt he goes on.

By law the frames (top bars) need to be removeable which these are so you comply with any inspection requirements. If your local club is open to new ideas you can do show and tell with your small swarm hives. If they are crabby old farts just smile and say you have langstroth hives at home.


One word of warning. Swarm season is usually 6+ weeks away. However warming trends made last years swarms start only two weeks from now. So get cracking if are thinking of doing it.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[chappo1970]

What! I need a swarm box too? Anything else Pete? What about bee handling gear? Whips, bike chains and or fly swatters.

I've downloaded the plans for the hive boxes which are easy to build and the swarm boxes are just a shorter version then, say what 10 bars or 350mm? 35mm for the bar width right Pete? I've filled in the DPI form and faxed it in easy as. Any recommended reading there Pete, Dave and whoever?

I'm not a real buggy/insect person, in fact I flinch at the slightest creepy crawly sensation so this is going to be very interesting. I have had a huge fear of bee's since living in the US when I stung severely by Yellow Jackets (a form of wasp IIRC) when I was about 8yrs. Funny before then I used to help Grandpa with his bee's at every chance I got so I'm torn but pretty excited.


Cheers

Chappo

 

[Leigh]

For those in Victoria, this is from the Vic DPI's website:

Registration as a beekeeper
The Livestock Disease Control Act 1994 requires anyone who owns one or more hives of bees to register as a beekeeper with the Department of Primary Industries. The current annual fee when 1-60 hives are kept is $11.50. When 61 or more hives are kept the fee is calculated at 19 cents per hive. DPI will routinely forward application forms for renewal of registration to all registered beekeepers.

A registration number is allotted to a beekeeper when registering for the first time. It is compulsory to brand (by painting or firebrand) this number on each of your hives.

 

[pdilley]

10 bar hives are what I'm building this week during nights.

Books? I have tons but maybe Beeking For Dummies is a good all rounder book. Bees are fascinating and relaxing if you let it get you. And not much to read about brcause they will do their own thing no matter how smart you think you are So they teach you to work with them.

Bee keeping gear will let you get over your fear slowly bit by bit if you need to. Soon you'll find gloves clumbsy so you might forgo them. Soon maybe the veil and hats keep you hot and sweaty so you might forgo that. You'll stop where you feel comfortable and thats right for you.

I've driven straight into a swarm of yellow jackeys before at 80mph and had them smash into me and down the jacket and undet my shirt so I know them first hand

I got a suit and smoker just in case and will do the same progression to see what I work best with and have the goal to bee like beeguardian in his videos on youtube.

With a suit a good one will have velcro as well as zippers to make sure they dont get in. Zippers only and they can sneak in where the gap is on the end.

I ordered beeswax, about 2kg from penders as well and have a few litre bottles of boiled linseed oil. Mix the two together to make natural beeswax paint to protect the wood and weatherproof if you don't want to paint. Just have to apply it hot so it melts and mixes together. About the same for wax and oil as buying a small tin of paint from Bunnings.

For top bars I could have just gotten another sheet of ply and rip them out of that but at Bunningd they had a hardwood natural untreated exterior decking wood at 70mm width. I figure i'd rip two bars per length of that. Cost is roughly same as another ply sheet so figure hardwood better go for trying.

My calc said about 20metres of that should rip out enough 480mm long bars at 32mm wide (1 1/4" if Im correct at US to metric) as that would be about 39 bars per large hive. So 78 bars in all. I won't make bars for small hives yet because you end up putting them on the big hive when transfering your captured swarm from the small hive to the big hive. When both biggies are full I'll work probably get the 3rd hive built and top bar'd and just use its bars for small capture hive so again no need for its own set of bars if you follow me.

I picked up some pine (70mm wide boards) by 1.2 metre but really needed 1.25 so just glue some end cuts on to make up length to span the long side of the big hive and the two 21mm thick end boards to build a border edge and attach sheet of 9mm C/D glued on top to make a simple cover that slides over all hive edges resting on top and forming a flat roof. This is to keep rain out and keep the bars from shifting when in the back of a car (really important for the small swarm capture hives). Building the simple flat box cover roof for all my hives and later on adding a gabled roof when time permits. The gap between the flat roof and gable is whete you could put some straw in for extra winter insulation.
This is so the bees eat less honey during winter from burning energy to warm the hive in interior during the winter months.

I think I found Penders best online order place. Some prices lowest and others low enough that I went with them for 2kg of wax blocks, suit, gloves, aussie smoker.



Excuse any typos as Im on my mobile.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Henno]

How much did the suit and smoker and stuff set you back Pete? If I'm to get this one past the boss with my work as slow as it is at the moment it's gunna have to be a cheap hobby. She has twigged onto the fact that my beer isn't that cheap per litre after doing some beer to bling ratio sums.

 

[pdilley]

I am also using the 9mm C/D for the divider boards. Just take a couple bars and kerf for 9mm. Cut out interior shape f hive from 9mm ply and glue into the kerf. Now have a dividing board/bar. I think the large hive can take two. This lets you split the hive into 3 hives to manage small swarms as your swarms grow you got some time to knock together more hives and transfer one into the new hive giving the remaining two more room to grow until again you build another hive and split them up into two separatw hives.

Lots of managing tricks can be done with big long top bar hives and divider boards like this. You can simulate a swarm in one hive and trick the swarming half of the colony into thinking it swarmed when instead you split them up down to the other end of the box

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

How much did the suit and smoker and stuff set you back Pete? If I'm to get this one past the boss with my work as slow as it is at the moment it's gunna have to be a cheap hobby. She has twigged onto the fact that my beer isn't that cheap per litre after doing some beer to bling ratio sums.

Suits and smokers are one off purchases like brew gear. Smokers are not recommended as it stresses bees because you can just spray the bees with a bottle of sugar water and it does the same thing but better as the bees instead simply stop what they are doing and lick sugar water off them. I just got one in case (but its a savings area to skip it and get a plastic sprayer from bunnings) A stainless steel aussie smoker is about 68.

Suits again are more psychological. Ive been stung in my tear duct by a guard bee as a child so nothing could top that bee sting wise for pain and tobe honest it didnt really bother me much even then as a kid.

Most beeks work without gear. There is a MS sufferer who likes getting stung as he said he gets a 2 to 3 year remission from symptoms from being stung with bee venom. So maybe it isn't all bad after all. Long history of bee products and bee stings in medical books and current practices in other countries.

That said a full body suit with velco + zippers + built in veil will be 150-170.

Next down is just the jacket and veil.

Next down is just the viel alone.


If you want cow hide gloves with covers that go up to your elbow its about 30.

Wax blocks are about 8.80 a kg. Need some to prewax your bars and optionally to melt into boiled linseed oil to weatherproof your hives in a safe non toxic bee friendly way.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

I have not settled on bar width yet until I start ripping but in general it seems bees naturally space their comb two distances. One the prefer for brood comb and the other for honey storage comb. You can build the smaller and add spaces or build large and small and mix or just go with one and deal with the knowledge that no matter what you do the bees dcide for themselves what they want to do.

I have to read up on both widths but 1 1/4" width is stuck in my head so thats what 32mm but 32, 33, 35? Only time will tell what your bees like so I'll probably just go with the flow and rip them all one width, the smaller brood length and try spacers but then maybe not as I may just prefer to let them do what they want during the first year and learn what they prefer and try to adjust the next season.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Moray]

how much space do you need for a hive ?

I live in inner eastern melbourne and have a small to medium size block, about 500 square meters.
would that be big enough for a small hive ?

 

[pdilley]

Enough room to fit a box 1.2 metres long by roughly 48cm wide on legs or two of them

Bees fly; you only need minimal room for hives. They will sort out the rest.

Some apartmemt dwellers even have run hives so space is not a huge issue.

EDIT: In the previous post spaces should read spacers (small strips of wood that make the smaller bar seem the wider bars dimemsions)

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[white.grant]

how much space do you need for a hive ?

I live in inner eastern melbourne and have a small to medium size block, about 500 square meters.
would that be big enough for a small hive ?

Having the space for a hive is one thing, having forage for the bees is another. In urban areas it's well worth checking out the available flowering trees within a couple of kilometers of where you live to make sure the bees have good forage and its going to taste like you want it too. Unlike country areas where its possible for a single flowering species to dominate, urban areas have have smaller concentrations of the usual nectar producing plants and this will affect the final flavours.

A mate and I kept a hive in Islington for a couple of years on a very small block near a large park with big trees so we thought we'd be ok. The bees thrived, and while the honey was fresh and I was very proud of it, it tasted like dandelions and was a very acquired taste. The dandelions were the most prolific available sauce of nectar and the bees went for it every time.

Reading this thread is giving me ideas again though, thanks for posting it Brewer Pete.

cheers

grant

 

[pdilley]

What a great example of bees doing what they want and not what the beek wants

Bees are in survival mode. They wany to expand the colony as fast as possible and get as much stored up food to eat through winter to survive until food is available again in spring. All of this while using the least amount of expended energy possible.

Maybe a bit advanced or intermediate but you can train bees like fox hounds on a scent by feeding them the varietal of honey you want them to go after (provided you have supply around you of that flowering plant/tree) when spring and the nectar flow starts.

I grew veggie garden in Melbourne, neighbours keen on gardening -- seeme like a Melbourne thing: was in South Eastern suburbs when there.

Pollen is protein, the bees meat equivalent they eat. Nectar juices are what they store and make honey from. Both are stored in comb but both are capped with different looking wax seals that you can see and just cut out capped honey to process and use. Same with brood.

Its lots of learning as you go so a quick catch up on the nectar flow(s) and dates in your area can be had from your local bee club. Even single varietals of honey are mixes of other nectars unless your flow is strong and plants dense of the one you want.

Im happy to get wild flower honey. If targeting a varietal I would neef to truck the hive across the state(s) at different seasons to chase a variety of flowering plant.

I will have to add some YouTube video links as this is supposed to be pictures post
That and stop posting and do more building in the shed at nights if I am to make my self imposed weekend deadline for getting small 10'bar collector hives to the swarm collectors of the local club.
Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[mikem108]

Check this out, set up a speaker box on a pole outside and the bees will come. This came from Homebush Show ground, the guys reckon they pulled 40kgs of honey/honeycomb out of it once the bees were dispersed

 

[pdilley]

Construction Notes

METRIC lumber sizes and metric measurements.

Sheets of construction material like plywood is 2400 mm x 1200 mm in Australia.

Designs must be built around these critical dimensions (2.4 metres by 1.2 metres).

I find I can get two long top bar hives built from a single sheet including two 6" wide floor strips using the 1200mm length. 48" is 1,219.5 mm so it wont be as long as a long hive in Barefoot Beekeeping plans but you have to work with local materials.

With 21mm thick ply the ends add 21mm length for each end so total length is 1242mm when thinking about building a cover lid to slide over the box.

I found enough wood left over for wider floorboards than 6" but I went for 6" wide (152.4 mm) for my first two.

I cut my sides 12.5" (317.5 mm) wide and use the entire 1200mm length of a sheet of plywood.

To cope with Australia's hot summer I increased the angles of the sides to 120 degrees angle. This lets me set my circular saw to 30 degrees to counter cut the ends of the sides of the hide to sit flat on the 6" floor board and have nice flat level tops to place top bars on. The resulting comb is wide but not deep so less chance of comb collapse when wax is soft during the occasional 45C days in summer (113 F).

This gives a top bar length of 48cm length (18.9 inches) I will cut the bars to 19 inches (48.3 cm) to fit standard hives in case I end up with some (supers plus top bar hive combination tests?).

Brood Bar Width = 32mm
Honey Bar Width = 35mm or slighlty larger, 36mm

Brood bars along 1200mm length is 37 bars with 1/2 a bar to make up in spacers at each end of 8mm thickness each if using 100% brood bars.

Honey bars (35mm) along 1200mm length is 34 bars with 1/3rd of a bar gap to fill in at each end in spacers of 5mm thicknes each.

Honey bars (36mm) along 1200mm length is 33 bars with 1/3rd of a bar gap to fill in at each end in spacers of 6mm each.

Combination of different bars is calculated on individual basis:
1200 - (brood bars x 32) - (honey bars x 35or36)

I will also make a/two/three small 10 bar swarm capture hive/s to give to the swarm collectors. As they catch swarms these small hives fit in their car to drive to the swarm location instead of them using cardboard box or a Nuc or Standard hive. Bees collected will draw comb on the top bars immediately after capture which saves wasted energy by them drawing wax on cardboard boxes or horizontal standard frames only to have to draw new wax out in the top bar hive. I simply remove bars from swarm hive and place in my long hive to transfer the swarm as bar length is identical between capture hives and long top bar hives I build.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

Ok I had another 21mm sheet of C/D Ply I bought last night from Bunnings.

Coming home from work I went into the shed. In the time it took for dinner to be prepared by SWMBO.

I had cut out and diagramed all parts to glue together to make

1. 1 Long Top Bar Hive (2 end pieces plus two long sides plus one 6" wide floor board)
2. 2 Short 10 bar Swarm Capture Hives ( 4 end pieces plus 3 short sides plus 2 6" wide floor boards)
2a. I cut out one length for Long Top Bar hive and then sliced out three 320mm long sides.
2b. I will have to glue up two sides of C/D ply then draw out and cut out the fourth and remaining side for the 2nd Swarm Capture Hive.

No one can say these hives are not some of the fastest hives using the least amount of wood to build. I should be well on my way to getting 2 swarm hives finished and perhaps painted (will use exterior paint as they hold bees only for a day or two on swarm collecting -- saving the special weatherproofing for the long top bar hives only -- the mixture of bees wax melted into hot boiled oil I got from Bunnings earlier to make a non-toxic bee safe weatherproofing as the beeswax smell will help the bees stay in the hives as it smells like a bee home already.

Other than that you get all those hives out of a single cut from the C/D ply board from Bunnings.

All parts are pre-drilled to accept tacking nails after applying wood glue to the sides of the boards where they butt up against the end boards.


Tomorrow night after work I will set the circular saw to 30 degree angle and cut the sides of all the side boards so they sit flat against the floor board and hold top bars flat against them when sitting at 120 degree angles.

I will build the 3rd Long Top Bar hive (wow 6 swarms easily I can house, or 9 swarms if an emergency collection then start building more long bar hives before they run out of room! Awesome!) and Both Small Top Bar Hives. I will glue up and ready the last side to be cut out when dry for the 2nd Small Top Bar Hive.

If time permits I will start cutting down the lengths of hardwood decking into 19" long pieces ready to rip them down the middle into 32mm wide brood bars. I will need 20 bars for the 2 small capture hives so that is 10 cuts of the decking wood at 19" long each. (ripping them in half makes for 20 total bars).

I expect Thursday To be all ripping top bars at brood bar width of 32mm. And Start building a simple frame (45 degree cuts) out of the Pine. Glue them together then cut out a top cover piece from the 9mm C/D plywood.

and then Friday is last minute checks and making more brood and then honey width (35-36mm) top bars in preparation for the following weeks after getting swarm.

Saturday is delivering the swarm capture top bar hives to the president of the Canberra Bee Club and show them quickly how to use them.

All on track! -- Now Imagine if I was retired and had an 8 hour day to work on this! I could knock out the entire mass of bee hives in 2 days.



Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

Top Bar Hive / Bee Videos

Bee Guardian
Shows that you can dress in a trucker shirt, hat and blue jeans and work a top bar hive with no smoker, not even sugar water spray. If you take your time its an enjoyable past time out with your bees and your bees are happy as well.

Out of a sky blue
Shows that if you rush a top bar hive and smoke your bees and smash and jostle them around you will get stung!
That Said he has some of the best wild bee hive capture and transfer videos for top bar hives.

That should get you going with watching videos to learn about Top Bar Hive Beekeeping!


Edit: With his top bars looks like I can just rip the 70mm down the centre and use them for brood bars. Will need to get wider bars for bigger honey bars (38mm or larger width).

Edit #2: His top bar hives have entrance in front so brood comb in front. This is different design to the Biobees which I like better. Main holes are in centre so brood is in centre and build out to honey on each end. Each end has holes so you can split and divide a hive and do a fake swarming to trick the bees. But his videos are still good to see construction techniques.

Edit #3: Most of his hive is reclaimed wood. But you can see how cheap wood is in the States and how much we are forced to pay for wood here in Australia compared to most places in the word



Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[OzMick]

Thinking I might go a Warre style hive... but could be moving interstate in the next month or two so everything is on hold right at the moment. :/ Hopefully can still establish a colony late October if swarming is still on, will have to see. Won't stop me reading up all I can though, so thanks Pete. You've been an inspiration.

 

[MHB]

Pete

Just a couple of points, I have kept bees before, that's what started me brewing making mead. My experience has all been with the conventional brood box and super system, which brings me to my first point.

How do you separate brood from honeycomb? In the conventional hive queen excluders (and a couple of other tricks) keep the brood out of the honeycomb you want to rob. Having been inside a few wild hives, I have noticed they tend to scatter the brood about a bit and you don't want to be caught stealing their young, they get a mite testy about that.

Hives have personalities; some hives are friendly and some are grumpy, you can change the queen and change the personality of the hive (this is the sort of thing that your local bee keeping club can help you with), basically you encourage friendly/productive hives to make spare queens then transplant her into the nasty hives. One of my hives I could work in a tee-shirt and stubbies, no smoke no veil nothing, another well, if you went with in a couple of meters you could hear the angry hum rising. Point is until you get to know your hive, dress prudently, the odd sting is inevitable 20 or 30 in a few minutes can be very unpleasant.

Lastly if you live in Cane toad areas, the entrance to the hive must be at least 450mm from the ground, again talk to your local beekeepers, but Cane toads have an appetite for bees that is frankly unbelievable, they will sit there and eat bees until they die from the stings, or you run out of bees.

I do miss my bees, one day it's something I would like to get back into.

MHB

Edit

You added the answer to my first question while I was typing, I sort of thought the bar width might be the way to go.

Mark

 

[pdilley]

The top bar design I am building has the entrance in the middle.

The bees build brood comb there. As they build out to the sides they switch from brood to honey comb.

The worker bees will actually send the queen back away from honey comb towards the centre of the hide and back into brood comb so a queen excluder is not needed. But you can still buy queen excluder material and cut it out to the shape of the hive and try and work it in. I have not met any Top Bar Hive beeks that do this or have tried and continue to do this yet on the forums. The cross-over combs with some honey and some brood is part of the honey stores that you leave for your bees to eat over winter so again its not an issue as you don't harvest the cross-over comb only the next combs over which are all honey.

Yes the hives will all be different. Thank you for pointing that out

With the Langstroth hive you manage the whole system by forcing the brood down below putting a queen excluder on and putting supers stacked on top.

With TBH thats not the way. Its more of working with the bees, getting less honey, using wild swarms (and hoping that you don't get a 3 year old queen ). And letting your bees interbreed with the wild population to mix the genetics instead of cloning a set of queens.

Breeding queens you get full control of putting new queens full of eggs into a hive and make it peak productive. With TBH most beeks are more interested in getting good genetic mixtures so one disease does not wipe out your entire set of bee hives from a common genetic trait that might be a weakness to a particular disease.

Nothing wrong with either style of bee keeping. Just if you want massive production but push your bees to almost factory levels then Langstroths shine in production output. TBH are for giving up factory honey production for less reliance on Bayer drugs. If the hive is weak genetically let it die off like Darwin pointed out so that only the stronger resistant genes keep going back into the next breeding of honey bees.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete


Edit: These hives all have legs attached which keeps them at your waist hight level. Plenty off the ground to get away from all sorts of pests that can get to ground level hives - A weakness of the Langstroths unless you build tables or frames to put your Langs on.