What did you do in the 'workshop' today

[ugcheleuce]

This evening I sawed the planks for the t-MFGH hive...

Halfway done... and now some of the planks are too long (thankfully not too short!). Back to the drawing board, for now...

 

[victor meldrew]

Check my earlier caveat ' measure twice cut once '
VM


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[ugcheleuce]

Check my earlier caveat ' measure twice cut once '

Oh, I cut them correctly, all right. You can measure as many times as you want, but if the plans are wrong, you'll get it wrong. What happened was that I replaced one part of the original design with something of a different measurement, and then recalculated all the other dimensions... and got it wrong. But no matter, I just trimmed the planks down a bit, on the spot.

.

Quite happy with this hive.

 

[dpearce4]

nice cat box lol

 

[sugarbush]

It looks like a great vanity. I am not so sure about a beehive. Who "invented" this monstrosity?

 

[ugcheleuce]

It looks like a great vanity. I am not so sure about a beehive. Who "invented" this monstrosity?

I'll assume your question is meant seriously. I think the bulk of the invention credit goes to the German group Mellifera e.V.. They popularised the 22-frame version. The 13-frame version that is similar to the one that I build was designed by a leading member of the Dutch anthroposophic "organic" beekeeping group, a Mr. Grasstek.

I'm not an anthroposophist myself, but at least the hive has been in use for a number of years and there is an existing body of literature about it (unfortunately mostly in German). The layout of the planks used in this box comes from a Dutch hive from the late 1930s called the "fruit grower's hive", which was smaller than this one (much too small for Buckfast bees).

The hive that I built here uses the same frame as the other two modern hives. The individual frames have the same comb area as a US Dadant deep or a UK Langstroth jumbo. The 13 frames in total have the same total comb area as two 11-frame British National brood boxes, or the same total comb area as one Commercial deep plus one Commercial shallow.

 

[pargyle]

OK ... for all those frightened to ask ...

Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development. More specifically, it aims to develop faculties of perceptive imagination, inspiration and intuition through cultivating a form of thinking independent of sensory experience, and to present the results thus derived in a manner subject to rational verification. In its investigations of the spiritual world, anthroposophy aims to attain the precision and clarity attained by the natural sciences in their investigations of the physical world.

It is a bit of a wierd hive Samuel ... not sure how it is supposed to work as I couldn't find anything about it on the internet. Good luck with it ... we will wait to hear whether the bees like it ...

 

[sugarbush]

Certainly let us know how that works out. Does it have a name?

 

[ugcheleuce]

Certainly let us know how that works out. Does it have a name?

I'll name it when I decide whether it's male or female.



The German hive is called the Einraumbeute (one-room-hive), though it is marketed in some English-speaking countries as the Golden Hive due to its golden section dimensions. The Dutch version of the Einraumbeute is called the Natuurbouwkast (natural-[bee]keeping-hive), but I refer to it on the Dutch forums as the Grasstek hive because that's more googleable, and because you can practice "natural" beekeeping in practically any old box. The original hive that my design is based on was called the Fruitteeltkast (fruit-growing-hive).

The local bee store guy tells me he can make the frames for this hive at a price that's practically the same as the standard frames in this region.

 

[ugcheleuce]

For all those frightened to ask... anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner...

Steiner actually wrote a book about beekeeping. But yes, he had this unified theory of the world which he applied to many things (some of which survive to this day, e.g. the Waldorf school system). I find that many of his ideas make sense, if you look at the practical side of things (e.g. bee-friendly beekeeping), but please, please, please don't make a religion of it and come up with weird ideas about cosmic rays to explain why. If something is bee-friendly, just say so... don't say "you must do this because otherwise the magnetic fields of the apiary will do this and that". That's just my opinion.

I refer to the Grasstek hive as an anthroposophic hive because the designer is an anthroposophist from an anthroposophy society and he markets his hive and his beekeeping methods in terms of anthroposophy. But at the end of the day, it's just a wooden box.

It is a bit of a wierd hive Samuel... not sure how it is supposed to work as I couldn't find anything about it on the internet.

Don't evaluate the box by the religion of the original designer.

There is nothing special about this hive, really -- it's just a box like any other tall hive box. It's a "non-supered tall-framed hive" (the German version is so big that you don't need to super it, but the Dutch version is smaller and I've seen pictures of it with a regular shallow box as a super on top). You start small, with a divider, and then move the divider and add frames as it grows. You can do splits inside the hive, if you want. The brood nest tends to be taller and narrower in this hive, and you can't harvest honey that's directly above the brood nest. But these comments apply to all tall-framed one-storey hives, really.

 

[lebouche]

The brood nest tends to be taller and narrower in this hive, and you can't harvest honey that's directly above the brood nest. But these comments apply to all tall-framed one-storey hives, really.

So should I not harvest honey from above a 14x12 or would than not be called tall?
Nice woodwork btw.

 

[ugcheleuce]

There is nothing special about this hive, really -- it's just a box like any other tall hive box. ... The brood nest tends to be taller and narrower in this hive, and you can't harvest honey that's directly above the brood nest.

So should I not harvest honey from above a 14x12 or would than not be called tall?

I have no idea what other people call a 14x12... tall or not tall. I use the word "tall" to mean a box with a frame that is noticeably taller than it is wide. I would call the 14x12 "deep"... but... I don't think these terms are standardised. I apologise if I used a confusing term.

I think my comment about harvesting honey should be read in the context of the fact that this box has only one storey, so if there is honey above the brood nest, then it will be in the same frame as the brood cells, so you can't harvest it unless you cut it out with a knife, leaving a gaping hole in the frame above the brood section. (I'm not sure if any tall-hivers actually do that, i.e. cut honey comb from the top of the frame, leaving the brood cells in the bottom of the frame, but I suppose one can do that if the frame is tall enough.)

 

[lebouche]

Ah, thanks for edifying me.

 

[pargyle]

.

Steiner actually wrote a book about beekeeping. But yes, he had this unified theory of the world which he applied to many things (some of which survive to this day, e.g. the Waldorf school system). I find that many of his ideas make sense, if you look at the practical side of things (e.g. bee-friendly beekeeping.

Yes ..Steiner was way ahead of his time in some of the things he wrote about but the 'wierd' stuff clouds the really sensible ideas that he had.

Having said that, there are many instances in the past when the most serious of thinkers had very strange peripheral beliefs ... Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding .. Chief of the RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain in WWII was probably one of the most brilliant stragegic thinkers of the entire conflict - he believed in Fairies, ghosts and spoke constantly to dead pilots killed in service. There are many other examples of what could be termed extreme eccentricity amongst great thinkers.


I refer to the Grasstek hive as an anthroposophic hive because the designer is an anthroposophist from an anthroposophy society and he markets his hive and his beekeeping methods in terms of anthroposophy. But at the end of the day, it's just a wooden box.

Don't evaluate the box by the religion of the original designer.

I'm the last person who would judge a hive by it's designer ... you only have to look at me to see that would be terribly hypocritical !!

There is nothing special about this hive, really -- it's just a box like any other tall hive box. It's a "non-supered tall-framed hive" (the German version is so big that you don't need to super it, but the Dutch version is smaller and I've seen pictures of it with a regular shallow box as a super on top). You start small, with a divider, and then move the divider and add frames as it grows. You can do splits inside the hive, if you want. The brood nest tends to be taller and narrower in this hive, and you can't harvest honey that's directly above the brood nest. But these comments apply to all tall-framed one-storey hives, really

I still can't find anything on the internet about the hive .. do you have a link ?

As a tall, framed hive it replicates the cavities that colonies of bees in the 'wild' would actively seek out and some would say, prefer, so it should be a successful 'bee box'. How practical it is to use I can't tell at present but anything that requires 'non standard' parts or sizes is going to mean that you are a bit out on a limb. Whilst my hive is 'non-standard' in many respects I deliberately stuck with 14 x 12 frames in the design phase to make life easier when/if I need to add/swap components.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Oh, I cut them correctly, all right. You can measure as many times as you want, but if the plans are wrong, you'll get it wrong. What happened was that I replaced one part of the original design with something of a different measurement, and then recalculated all the other dimensions... and got it wrong. But no matter, I just trimmed the planks down a bit, on the spot.

.

Quite happy with this hive.

Damn - I thought it was a cocktail cabinet cum bar
Nice bit of woodworking though Samuel

 

[protheroe]

bought rough cut cedar for 25 brood boxes,just got to dry it out now for around 6 weeks and then plane it.very few knots and no sap wood,well happy with it.

 

[Hachi]

made the first of the three snelgrove boards I need.

 

[Torq]

Made a swarm catching box (one that you put over the entrance slot of your hive) out of a bit of timber and a wire queen excluder.

Remade one of my Dartington style floors using screws, won't be using the nail gun again. One almost fell apart in my hands!

 

[madasafish]

Painted first polyhive (MB) its first coat..24 hours before repainting..(the frost slows overnight drying in a draughty garage.)

 

[Itchy]

Painted first polyhive (MB) its first coat..24 hours before repainting..(the frost slows overnight drying in a draughty garage.)

Who is MB?