Picked up our hive!

sphex · Mar 9, 2009

Hello all,
Exciting day yesterday, as we got our first hive.

Picked it up from a neighbour of the in-laws-to-be who retired from beekeeping a decade ago or so. He's had his stuff all nicely wrapped up and stored away since then. It's a National, plus he gave us lots of other kit. Our fantastic haul includes (from what I can tell):

A roof
4 supers, with frames and drawn comb in most of them. Seems they have castellated spacers.
2 queen excluders, 1 wire-type, 1 of the bendy ones with slots
1 solid floor
1 perspex crown board
1 solid crown board
1 clearer board (I think - there's a couple of bee valves that fit the holes in it)
1 hive-top feeder w/perspex cover
1 brood box
10 un-made 14x12 hoffman frames (these don't fit in the brood box. I think he had an eke, but didn't include it)
loads of wired foundation for the 14x12s and shallow supers
plus smoker, several queen cages, couple of hive tools, couple of suits, jars, books...

So. We're very lucky, but now have loads of questions about the kit.

Obviously we'll be scorching the hive before using it. I'm guessing we shouldn't use the drawn comb?

In terms of what we need to get, #1 is a second hive, I reckon. Also an open mesh floor for this hive. Do people think it would be best to get an eke for the brood box, and use the 14x12 frames, or leave it as is and get new frames?
So exciting, and so much to think about!

jimbeekeeper · Mar 9, 2009

Nice one.

I would bin (melt down) the foundation and bin the castelated spacers and go with new self spacing frames.

Busy Bee · Mar 9, 2009

I was recently at a seminar for Bee Health and my advice taken from the speakers (Dr's and researchers) would be to burn and discard all frames and wax and scorch the hive with a very hot burner. All other equipment should be boiled in boilling water for half hour and all clothing washed before introducing bees. Bee introduction would be better from a NUC of Bees with 5 frames of already established brood and assocated stages of bees ie nurse house and foragers. I don't mean to dampen your spirits but clean disease free equipment lends to better Bee Husbandary and highner honey yeilds. It would be a good idea to become familiar with Bee Disease and Infection so as you can understand where I am comming from.

It others don't agree don't be afraid to pass comment as I am only thinking of the Bees.

Kind regards

Busy Bee

sphex · Mar 9, 2009

Excellent, thanks for the quick replies!
Yeah, the spacers in the supers were already in my sights to remove. Thinking about Manley frames.

Don't worry about spirit-dampening: I've done enough research to already anticipate needing to do some serious disease management with a second-hand hive, and had already pretty much written-off the used frames. The 14x12s are all unused (not assembled even) so they should be fine, right? Also loads of foundation still in its packets.