Restoring WBC Hives

[AnotherNewBee]

The bees beat me to it! The swarm we were given ended up in a cobbled together WBC made up from the best of the old parts that became available to me. The rest of the kit definitely needs some restoration and preparation.

I'll be starting to restore some WBC hive components soon. I'm assuming:

• Replace solid stands/floors with open mesh and varroa trays.
• Lifts: Fill any gaps. Rub down and paint exterior. No real need to flame interiors (?) but if I do it can't do any harm.
• Brood Boxes and Supers: Fill any gaps. Flame interior.
• Frames: Remove any old wax. Boil frames. Fit new foundation.
• Crown Boards and Excluders: Flame. What should I do with glass crown boards? I'm assuming remove and clean the glass, flame woodwork, refit glass.
• Roofs: Fill gaps. Check and repair vents and exit cones. Paint exposed wood on exterior. Repair covering as necessary.

Any additions, corrections, whatever?

Also, I'm planning to swap the lifts on the current hive when I have some ready. I can then restore the ones I've removed.

This might be a daft question. How important is the colour of the lifts? Having arranged them in a specific order, is it best to stick to that order so bees returning to that hive don't get confused? I'm assuming it's not important with only one hive on site as the bees can only drift to their own hive! I'm also assuming it's more important when there's more than one hive on site as they are then more likely to drift to the wrong hive. Personally, although I think the Liquorice Allsort look is appealing it would be better to just stick to one colour and arrange the hives randomly.

 

[oliver90owner]

Boil frames.

Boiling water alone (assuming here you meant this) will not kill AFB spores. For the cost of frames (around 20-50p each in the sales), is it worth recycling them?

 

[AnotherNewBee]

Boil frames.

Boiling water alone (assuming her you meant this) will not kill AFB spores. For the cost of frames (around 20-50p each in the sales), is it worth recycling them?

Replace it is, then. I'll be happier/more confident with that.

 

[Davelin]

This might be a daft question. How important is the colour of the lifts? Having arranged them in a specific order, is it best to stick to that order so bees returning to that hive don't get confused? I'm assuming it's not important with only one hive on site as the bees can only drift to their own hive! I'm also assuming it's more important when there's more than one hive on site as they are then more likely to drift to the wrong hive. Personally, although I think the Liquorice Allsort look is appealing it would be better to just stick to one colour and arrange the hives randomly.

Bear in mind that bees colour perception is different from ours so they may not detect different colours on your lifts, depends what colour they are.

With only one hive they can't go far wrong

 

[AnotherNewBee]

Bear in mind that bees colour perception is different from ours so they may not detect different colours on your lifts, depends what colour they are.

With only one hive they can't go far wrong

I'll not worry about it this time, then, but will try to stick to one colour (probably white) so there's less chance of problems when we have more than one colony.

We're skinflints so having one pot of paint and making it foolproof to interchange lifts as they need maintenance is probably the best solution.

 

[nonstandard]

I refurbed a WBC last year and as has been suggested replaced all the frames, I also did as follows:

• Built a new floor with OMF to replace rotten old one, used tanalised wood for the legs but plastic legs are available.
• Lifts: Filled any gaps, rubbed down and painted exterior (white gloss) also bought two new lifts in T's sale £9 each. (gives me 5 lifts if I need them)
• Brood Boxes and Supers: Beefed up where necessary, converted brood to 14x12, flamed and filled any gaps.
• Crown Boards were flamed.
• Bought framed excluder, I don't like the punched metal ones
• Roofs: Fill gaps. Check and repair vents and exit cones. Paint exposed wood on exterior. Replaced felt with metal and put on a hardwood ridge.

If you want to pm me I have a file that may help you if you need to build any bits but bear in mind that not all WBC's were built to the standard dimensions

If there's only one hive colour will not be a problem but I painted all mine white, unfortunately it's obviously cheap paint as after a year outside the hive now has a faint pink tinge

Hopefully I've uploaded some images of my WBC I sourced the inners and outers separately off fleabay but only paid £36 for both lots.

 

[For want of a better word]

My WBC hives are in two different sizes internally !
one lot of modern ones have 18" square inboxes the older Robert Lees have 17 x 18 ish boxes frames going from entrance to back ( cold way) as standard and shown in 1936 catalog

All have glass quilts now as little ones ( and non beekeepering visitors) like to see the bees at work
The old ones are cedar and not painted the new have lifts painted on all sides white.

These house my "garden bees"... too valuable for insecure out apiaries where some light fingered bum may think they would make nice garden ornaments!

 

[sherwood]

If you are truely going to do a refurbish, it might be worth replacing the legs usually the first thing to go with the plastic not rottable ones available from T*****s

 

[beesleybees]

ive got 4 WBC's that im looking to sell. There are only 2 years old and are quite tidy but im woundering wether if its worth the time and effort to re-paint them to sell on. A gut feeling says they wont fetch any more if i re-paint them

what do you think? Is it ok to use gloss or does it have to be the waterbased variety?

 

[Travelator]

Here are my WBC top tips:

Roof: Spend ages making it completely sound, sturdy and watertight. It takes the brunt of the weather.

Lifts: Don't need to be painted if they're cedar. If you do paint, make sure they're all the same colour, you will end up swapping them around as colonies expand and shrink.

Inner boxes: These are inherently un-bee-tight due to the daft WBC design, so don't get too hung up about filling gaps!

Floor: converting to OMF is quite easy - just cut a 16" square hole in the middle and staple on mesh! Converting to OMF with a varroa tray that's accessible without moving the lifts is highly desirable, but may be very difficult to achieve depending on the design of your floor.

Glass crown boards: These cause horrible condensation in winter. Buy or build some wooden ones. You can never have too many crown boards, they're useful for storing and transporting supers.

 

[AnotherNewBee]

All good news. Thank you very much!

The first priority is to sort out a couple of supers as they're foraging on OSR. They have had a few days of rain and a couple of days of foraging while they've been settling in. Last time I took a peek through the crown board (Wednesday morning) they were on top of 5 brood frames. Difficult to see what was going on further down, but I'm happy there's still plenty of room for expansion until around Tuesday. There's two days of rain forecast over the weekend.

After that I'll sort out a stand and floor, as they're the most likely bits to cause problems - and I don't particularly like having no easy way to check for varroa.

Then it'll be a roof. The one that's on is reasonable, but I want to make sure I have a spare that'll drop straight on.

Thanks for the tip about the glass crown board. I wouldn't have spotted that. I'll sort a few out quickly.

The spare lifts are usable. Cosmetic problems are the least of my concerns.