How much spare kit do you keep?

[SunnyRaes]

How much spare kit do you keep to support X number of hives?

Last year (second season) was a bad one for kit for us, in that, whilst we had some spare kit, most of it was all still flatpacked as the QC's were being capped or swarms were disappearing out the door, so it was a mad dash to make up the new hives. We went from 2 hives in May (with perhaps 2 spare) to 7 hives + 2 nucs (1 borrowed) by the peak of the season. Now there is no way we would have expected to require 4 times as much kit as we were using at the beginning of the season - I guess the expectation would be that each hive would require an A/S or split once, therefore we'd need another 2 hives. But we made it, and thought we'd have sufficient kit for this year.

We merged back down to 5 hives at the end of last season.

This year appears to have been better managed than last year (famous last words), but as the rule of thumb would predict, it appears that every hive has required 1 A/S, meaning we seem to require 10 complete hives to support a permanent apiary of 5. We can't, and don't particularly want to afford 10 hives. That's why we aim to have 5. We've split 1 hive into a mates first hive (a Commercial) to sell to him, 1 into a nuc, and 1 split (done today) is currently roofless with just a weighted crownboard till we can jury-rig something. We have enough kit to build 7 complete hives + 1 nuc, so we're now out of roofs, QE's, crown boards and floors, with a couple of spare brood boxes, which are of no real use without the rest!

It seems crazy to keep shelling out on bloody expensive kit that we may or may not need, when we know we're going to be either merging back down to hopefully requeen a nasty hive or 2, and hopefully selling on a couple of splits to give us 5 again, but what else can we do? You can't stop a hive from swarming, and you need the kit to split them into!

On top of that, most of the hives are supporting 2 or 3 Supers and we're now out of supers. We don't have an extractor, which is something we will, without doubt, have to invest in this year. However that means we can't easily recycle the full supers and put them back on yet. We also don't have any spare crownboards to make clearer boards out of!

So how much spare kit do you have? Double the number of hives? More? Less? What about Supers?

 

[Chris Luck]

How much spare kit do you keep to support X number of hives?


So how much spare kit do you have? Double the number of hives? More? Less? What about Supers?

As much as I can get my hands on but the simple answer is I don't know, it goes up and down with the season and what's "gone elsewhere" to a new home.

It's rather like firewood here, you can never have enough of it piled up.

Chris

 

[madasafish]

One pile of pallets stripped ready for use.
Several woodworking tools
Piles of cheap insulation.

 

[johncorne]

Always more than you need!

I scaled back at the end of every year and even now, hhave run out of crown boards AGAIN!

Jc

 

[raathistle]

It seems that there's never enough no matter what I do. Started the season with 2 hives, currently have 7 brood boxes in use with 9 supers and 3 poly nucs. In many ways I'm quite happy as they seem to bringing in a super a week per hive at the moment, but at this rate I'm going to run out of boxes again pretty quickly

 

[crazy_bull]

I work on roughly 1/3 more spare hives than I have hives, 1/3 as many nucs as I have hives, this enables timely splits and A/S when needed. Supers can become short but just extract a few when needed, (I think I have approx 4 per hive roughly)

A heap of foundation, new frames, and always find there is something I am missing!

C B

 

[Cazza]

No logic with me. As much as I can stuff into my beeshed. Currently it's full so that's that.
Cazza

 

[Erichalfbee]

An extra hive and four supers per hive and spare foundation.
Not enough this year as two,now three colonies are on 14 x 12 and a shallow for brood.
I put one poly super on today without time to paint it.
I have spare wooden supers but no more poly. Put an order in today.
One colony has four supers on and is capping none of it Grrrrrrrrr

 

[enrico]

Always more than you need!

I scaled back at the end of every year and even now, hhave run out of crown boards AGAIN!

Jc

Never enough!

 

[waverider]

Too much spare equipment.

 

[VEG]

Not enough as I have filled it all lol

 

[Queens59]

This...plus an 8x6 shed...plus (no - he might find out...) All this was in use this time last year, due to other peoples swarms...but this year no calls...

 

[TOBY-3652]

Not enough as I have filled it all lo

ME TOO

 

[thisgardener]

aint that the truth!!! 10 days of dry weather and spare equipment been used rapidly

 

[BeeJayBee]

Spare temporary crown boards and clearer boards - go into an estate agents and ask if they have any damaged or obsolete for sale signs. Building sites sometimes have some old advertising boards tucked behind temporary buildings - they'll only throw them away when they clear the site! Correx cuts very easily and can be held together with gaffer tape if you want to make a roof in a hurry.

... how much spare kit do you have? Double the number of hives? More? Less? What about Supers?

Double the number of brood boxes as overwintered colonies. Two supers per brood box. Three nuc boxes - bought one, made the others. Am currently using two Dadant shallows instead of a brood box, because a swarm arrived before the BB I'd ordered was delivered.

Not enough proper floors, roofs or hive stands and I could do with some more supers, not that the ones I've got are full, but they're all in use.

 

[BeeNice]

Last year was bad anyway, the best equipment saver if you don't have enough roofs, floors etc is the division/shelgove board. You can stack hives and only use the one roof floor etc, great if you have to make up a queen cell colony and a queen right colony on the same footing. This has been explained in spring editions of BeeCraft. If you have flat pack gear, make it up and paint it long before it is needed. And yes, I have spare everything, still ran out last year though.

 

[Shabro]

I've filled all my spare gear, I bought double what I set my colony limit at and I have already filled everything so that's 10 colonies instead of 5, plus the damn swarm that I accidentally received yesterday.....

 

[rosco]

Having thought I would struggle to get one colony and somehow managing to get three, I was a little unprepared in terms of kit!

This morning I was painting two brood boxes I started to fix together together earlier in the week, then after lunch I was building enough frames to fill them and as soon as they were made and the paint on the boxes dry I put them onto two colonies I'm hoping to build up to double brood.

I have a few flat packed supers still to make up but thats me out of foundation and frames again!!

Roll on the winter sales, I am going to be better prepared next year!

 

[Erichalfbee]

Roll on the winter sales, I am going to be better prepared next year!

Maybe

 

[Tdod]

Do all the main suppliers have so called winter sales as I need to be better prepared for next year going by what I needed this year..