Building The Bee Hives In Pictures

[pdilley]

Looks good for a first hive and surprising even the roof colour is the same as mine

I had one out of square so no worries. Need one of those corner clamping setups to get perfect joins.

Now to sort out some more

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[praxis178]

Looks good for a first hive and surprising even the roof colour is the same as mine

I had one out of square so no worries. Need one of those corner clamping setups to get perfect joins.

Now to sort out some more

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

Dang and here I was thinking I'd found a colour all my own! :lol:

I have one, I just mistakenly though I was "above" using such aids.....

Yeah, but that will have to wait till I recover from my little road trip to pick up my kegging setup from Crusty, long drive, and some exciting diversion along the way which I'll detail in a thread all their own tomorrow, right now I'm off to bed.

 

[pdilley]

From back on page 4, an update on the Chooks. I have built a feeder for water and layer feed from the old reliable Bunnings $15 25litre water barrel.

We use them for fermenters for beer so this may be hard to look at for some people.


Chickens scratch and shovel food around with their beaks. This can waste food if it gets on the ground and they don't peck it up. They also like to poop everywhere including their food. It is getting cold and wet and foggy during winter so I don't want to go out every day before 6am to feed them. They also have learned if they raise a racket I'll come out and feed them so I need to help them unlearn that behaviour.

Enter the ultimate easy to make chicken feeder.

It does not matter for water, but with chicken feed you make sure you fill it 50mm or more below the bottom of the chicken holes so when they splash feed everywhere very little, if any feed falls out. This keeps feed in your feeder and saves you money in the long run!

In the old days farmers had lots of tin laying around and made a simple feeder for less than a dollar in scrap material. The tin was rolled into a cylinder and places above a plate with a gap at the bottom. The feed went in the cylinder and gravity would empty it onto the plate as chickens ate food from the plate. This could be hung on a wire in the coop to prevent mice getting at it.

Today I called the Feed Store and they wanted $70 for one of these of any decent capacity so I only filled up feed once a week or more instead of every day. I was so angry!

Enter the $15 barrels from Bunnings!

Being Food Grade is a plus because any chemicals the chickens consume end up in your eggs and you consume. So keeping your chickens healthy and happy means keeping you healthy and happy...


Bits from Bunnings:


Cutting Four Opposing Holes:


Water:


Feed:




Four Opposing Holes means chickens are forced not to crowd each other and get upset and then peck each other fighting for a spot at the food.



Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Yeastie Beastie]

We have 60,000 of the little suckers, it may be on a larger scale but just thought id share another idea.

Each one of our sheds has 10,000 chooks in it. Inside there is basically 2-3 rows of feeders that is head height (chook head) which looks basically like a piece of guttering/spouting with a wooden board 2 inches above it. The chooks lay their head on the side, stick their heads in and have a feed. There is a series of these that run around the outside.

Put this on a smaller scale.
Run a peice of house guttering along the fence, put some 2" wooden chocks on top of that, run a length of timber along the top of these. Result is a nice tidy feeder that wont attract the local bird community.

Knocked up a pic of what I mean.

View attachment Chook_Feeder_PDF.pdf

 

[pdilley]

Sounds good.

I was originally going to build an L shaped feeder from 100mm plumbing pipe.

Pipe vertical with a cap on top stores feed and then at the bottom a 90 degree elbow join to another 100mm plumping pipe running horizontal at chook height with a cap on the end of that. The vertical pipe is longer than the horizontal pipe in the shape of the letter L.

Then near the end cap on the bottom horizontal pipe you cut out the top section of the plastic piping making a feed trough entrance.

It works great,

I just like the barrel as I get a solid lid so water does not enter easy and I can lift and carry it around. In the garden to free range during the day and then leave it inside the chook hutch at night so they don't make noise at 5:30am asking for food.

I may give yours a go in model form to knock it up. But the maximum chickens I have will be 6 or so. A bit overkills


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Yeastie Beastie]

I may give yours a go in model form to knock it up. But the maximum chickens I have will be 6 or so. A bit overkills


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

Yeah true.

Probably something to make if you already have the materials spare laying (no pun intended) around.

 

[pdilley]

Just a cap to the building story. An article on building these bee hives got published on the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia's web site:

http://permaculture.org.au/2010/06/21/home-made-bee-hives/

Hopefully inspiring a whole new group of enthusiastic beginning bee keepers


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[wakkatoo]

Recently did a 'intro to beekeeping' course at the local community college. Was run by a local beekeeper and I dragged my father in law along as I was eyeing off a bit of his bush block to put a couple of hives. After this course I am well and truly hooked and so is the FIL. If you asked him he'd say it was his idea all along.
Just in the process of getting the gear together now. Will stick to the 'standard' design for my first two hives but might get a bit more adventurous on the ones that will undoubtedly follow!

edit - he he, I just read the article above and if there is one comparision I can draw between brewers and beekeepers is that 1 question asked to 5 of either will result in 6 answers! The effect of smoke made me think about that. Some literature will say it causes them to gorge, other literature says it masks the pheremones. I'm no expert (bees or beer) but I like to tinker with things and do it the way I feel most comfortable. If I get the desired result (or a better one) then I'm happy...

 

[Brewing_Brad]

Brewing, beekeeping and chooks! This thread encapsulates the reason why I love this site!

Thanks for sharing everything Pete. I'll be building one of these hives when I get back to Australia in August - just in time for swarming season by the sound of it.

Cheers
Brad

 

[~MikE]

Hopefully inspiring a whole new group of enthusiastic beginning bee keepers

definitely inspired, am also currently allergic to the little buggers and living in a unit

 

[Wolfy]

Hopefully inspiring a whole new group of enthusiastic beginning bee keepers

Yep you did!
But my dad bitched when I told him he has to make me a couple of Warr Hives for me - he didn't seem to subscribe to my theory that they are just a few plain boxes stacked ontop of each other with a roof ontop. :unsure:

 

[pdilley]

Mike, shame, not a large unit complex with a flat roof on top with access??


Wolfy, perhaps giving him a copy of the free pdf version of Warre's book? Or the 3D piece assembly drawings. Kenyan Top Bar Hives would be dead easy to make in comparison. You may be able to do that on your own. A sheet of ply and six straight cuts gets you sides and floors, then 3 more straight cuts on the left overs and you have both end squares. Then just four uncut as-is pieces of pine wood from Bunnings and you screw/bolt/glue them together into a hive. Drill out some holes for entrances and you are off (without follower boards; they would be a bit more work but its mostly straight cuts and glue and you are done). Roof can be a bit of scrap tin, board, corrugated plastic, etc. Then just get cut your bars to length and place on top under whatever roof you use.

Bee Hive Done :icon_chickcheers:

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Wolfy]

Wolfy, perhaps giving him a copy of the free pdf version of Warre's book? Or the 3D piece assembly drawings. Kenyan Top Bar Hives would be dead easy to make in comparison. You may be able to do that on your own.

Yes I did have him download the .pdf's and that's when he decided it was so hard!
My skills (and setup here) with power tools are such that it's best to ask him to do it, he's just built most of my sister's house so has all the fancy stuff that makes life so easy.
But he's off doing the grey-nomad-thing in warmer climates until August so will see what happens before then, I need to contact bee keepers and get a license too.

 

[pdilley]

Building Warres is easy when you have a table saw.

Building Kenyan Top Bar hives is easy with just a circular saw, or even a good old fashioned hand saw and hand tools.

Thats why I say building KTBHs is perfect for beginners. I might say Warres have a "neat" look to them but the performance of my Warre is less than the performance of my KTBH in both bee and honey production. Disclaimer: 1st season results, more years needed to make a proper judgement.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Spoonta]

have you still got the plans for the bare foot bee hive the link does not work any more

 

[Wolfy]

have you still got the plans for the bare foot bee hive the link does not work any more

This link seems to work fine: http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/how-to-b...ar-hive/6288193
(Let me know if you can't download the .pdf, seems to work fine for me however.)

 

[Wolfy]

Two questions to those who built top bar hives last year or earlier:

1) What bar width works best for local Australian conditions/bees? Are two widths needed (one for brood one for comb) or is one adequate?

2) Does the bottom-mesh (and flap-door) provide any noticeable advantages or disadvantages? Is a wooden bottom just as good as mesh, or door setup?

 

[praxis178]

Two questions to those who built top bar hives last year or earlier:

1) What bar width works best for local Australian conditions/bees? Are two widths needed (one for brood one for comb) or is one adequate?

2) Does the bottom-mesh (and flap-door) provide any noticeable advantages or disadvantages? Is a wooden bottom just as good as mesh, or door setup?

I averaged the two widths and so far it seems to be working fine, being in the semi tropics I went with just the mesh floor and no bottom door (never really gets cold enough for the bee to go totally dormant).... Mind you this is my first season so things may well change a lot before long!

 

[Wolfy]

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.

FYI for Victorian's:
I spoke to the DPI Bee-keeping-lady on the phone today, the fee is now $15/year.
Application form, and DPI Bee Keeping website.
There is also a 'voluntary' honey-testing-service-thing, you can choose if you your honey tested or not, however if you don't get it tested, the annual fee is $30 not $15.

 

[praxis178]

FYI for Victorian's:
I spoke to the DPI Bee-keeping-lady on the phone today, the fee is now $15/year.
Application form, and DPI Bee Keeping website.
There is also a 'voluntary' honey-testing-service-thing, you can choose if you your honey tested or not, however if you don't get it tested, the annual fee is $30 not $15.

Hardly seems "voluntary" at a cost of $15 if you DON'T want to volunteer!