Crazy Bulls new honey shed thread!

[Incatatus]

wow, very impressive. i am green with envy, will your honey sales pay for all the work etc?

 

[crazy_bull]

wow, very impressive. i am green with envy, will your honey sales pay for all the work etc?

That's the plan, so far they have but i'm going to have to hold off on buying a few new bits for a month or two until the funds build up again.

 

[Somerford]

all proceeding nicely. your houses will put most of us to shame !

well done

S

 

[crazy_bull]

Electrics finally finished and new sockets installed

Api Melter installed and also probably the most important thing in the shed! A stereo!!

Tomorrow is the day it finally all gets used!

 

[jezd]

CB, you use the Api Melter as a warming cabbinet too?

JD

 

[crazy_bull]

CB, you use the Api Melter as a warming cabbinet too?

JD

It gets used for everything, when extracting i use it as a settling tank with just base heater on at about 40degrees leave till warmed through and skim off the dross then bucket up so very little needs filtering at a later stage.

It also use it to melt full supers full of set honey, you can get 4 in at once you can set it just enough to melt the honey out without damaging it, then once there is enough wax in it crank it up and melt the wax.

Then out of season it's washed out and used to heat buckets prior to final filtering and bottling, you can get 4 30lb buckets in no bother.

 

[beebreeder]

CB
Have thought about an Api Melter but they seem to cost an arm and leg or did you find a cheaper source, PM me if you like.
Kev

 

[crazy_bull]

Honey Racking:

The rest are not nessesarily the shed but what we got up to yesterday:


Clearing bees:

Loading Up:

Into the shed:

Lets get sticky:

 

[crazy_bull]

Into buckets after settling out:

Sorry the pictures have gone a bit grainy, they were all done on my phone. I'm banned from taking the 'good' camera near bees after getting it liberally coated in bee goo.

 

[Somerford]

nice to see someone else working hard !!

OSR extracting I presume ?

regards

S

 

[MrB]

Thats great to see, and heres me worying about getting my first nuc!

 

[crazy_bull]

nice to see someone else working hard !!

OSR extracting I presume ?

regards

S

Yep osr, should have done it last week though as i had about 30 supers with varying degrees of set honey in them, i have put one super under the brood box of each hive in a hope they will clear them for me, this sometimes works very well other times they just ignore it. But i really can't be bothered with cutting out good combs for the sake of it so worth a shot. I guess i might find some hives do it well and others not so will have to do some swapping about later in the week.

 

[beebreeder]

CB
So after 2 seasons use is the new setup working as you planned it, or is it too small yet.

 

[Chrisfnvs]

Hi CB, I agree with Beebreeder i would like to see some more pictures and an update on how things are going in the extracting house Chris

 

[crazy_bull]

Well resurected!!

Well the units have been working fantastically and have not been too small so far. A bit of box juggling required at peak times, this was re-solved by having smaller out apiaries of about 15 hives at each site (not 20+) so I took all the boxes from one site, extracted them and took them to the next site to replace the soon to be removed boxes and repeat around all the sites and return to the first site last (if that makes sense) more than 15 strong hives meant i would get a log jam of supers in the shed.

However we have taken the plunge and have bought a smallholding, with some serious out-buildings (old dairy farm) so have the opportunity to upgrade again, not sure how i'm going to do it or when (I might just bring the existing units over and plug them in for the time being).

Since I made the units exactly how I wanted them the extracting process became so efficient I could do it solo, so never had the handy assistant armed with a camera to help take photos of the setup in action, but i think i put about 2.5 ton through it this year relativley easily so might patent the design and sell prefab bee units,

I would finish work (easy work in the office) get home at 6pm load up with the empty boxes from the night before, go to a site take off the fresh boxes, return to the units as it got dark and then extract. During the OSR season this year, it felt like a never ending job as the rape kept flowering for such a long period I think I extracted something stupid like 18 days in May and June which should have been a 6-7 day job but they kept refilling the combs so i had to keep emptying them!

I did have to do some work to make them completely bee proof as last year i had a day when they discovered the shed and a good way in. Luckily the farmer who owwns the yard was very understanding but the scene was similar to the killer bee movie with bee's EVERYWHERE (main apiary is on the same farm with about 40 hives in it) when we opened the shed the walls were covered 2 bees deep all over. We opened it all up then waited until dusk, then armed with a leaf blower blew them all out and plugged up the holes they had found. This year we had no bee infestations however we did have a week were alot of wasps found their way in, still don't know why the bees didn't follow them in (they had eaten through some expanding foam). But the ensuing wasp frenzy enabled me and the farmer to watch where they were flying home to and mark and destroy most of the nests in the area.

Happy New Year everyone.

C B

Edit to add:

Never got round to finishing painting them properly or putting an extra roof on them (working at night meant it was never too hot inside).

 

[Winker]

Well resurected!!

Well the units have been working fantastically and have not been too small so far. A bit of box juggling required at peak times, this was re-solved by having smaller out apiaries of about 15 hives at each site (not 20+) so I took all the boxes from one site, extracted them and took them to the next site to replace the soon to be removed boxes and repeat around all the sites and return to the first site last (if that makes sense) more than 15 strong hives meant i would get a log jam of supers in the shed.

However we have taken the plunge and have bought a smallholding, with some serious out-buildings (old dairy farm) so have the opportunity to upgrade again, not sure how i'm going to do it or when (I might just bring the existing units over and plug them in for the time being).

Since I made the units exactly how I wanted them the extracting process became so efficient I could do it solo, so never had the handy assistant armed with a camera to help take photos of the setup in action, but i think i put about 2.5 ton through it this year relativley easily so might patent the design and sell prefab bee units,

I would finish work (easy work in the office) get home at 6pm load up with the empty boxes from the night before, go to a site take off the fresh boxes, return to the units as it got dark and then extract. During the OSR season this year, it felt like a never ending job as the rape kept flowering for such a long period I think I extracted something stupid like 18 days in May and June which should have been a 6-7 day job but they kept refilling the combs so i had to keep emptying them!

I did have to do some work to make them completely bee proof as last year i had a day when they discovered the shed and a good way in. Luckily the farmer who owwns the yard was very understanding but the scene was similar to the killer bee movie with bee's EVERYWHERE (main apiary is on the same farm with about 40 hives in it) when we opened the shed the walls were covered 2 bees deep all over. We opened it all up then waited until dusk, then armed with a leaf blower blew them all out and plugged up the holes they had found. This year we had no bee infestations however we did have a week were alot of wasps found their way in, still don't know why the bees didn't follow them in (they had eaten through some expanding foam). But the ensuing wasp frenzy enabled me and the farmer to watch where they were flying home to and mark and destroy most of the nests in the area.

Happy New Year everyone.

C B

Edit to add:

Never got round to finishing painting them properly or putting an extra roof on them (working at night meant it was never too hot inside).

Happy New Year Luke, Glad to see it all went well this year

 

[Poly Hive]

LOl CB.

Critical lesson #1 well learned. Bee tight is critical.

Best wishes for next year.

PH

 

[Chrisfnvs]

Thanks for the update CB, it all sounds good, i would love to see some photos next year if possible, good luck with the new project, i hope all goes well in 2012 Chris

 

[Red Bee]

but i think i put about 2.5 ton through it this year

Wow alot of honey, what sort of return could you expect back from that amount?