What did you do in the 'workshop' today

[Hachi]

Made up a clearer board for my bee buddy and realised I need even more so will be doing that over the weekend.

Made up another Comrcl BB

Made more national BF's

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Knocked up another four Demarree boards and cut all the timber ready for making half a dozen U/F entrance floors

 

[Hachi]

made more BF's up for the nucs and swarms I collected earlier. Need to order/make more kit I'm sure someone is nicking it

 

[Hachi]

Clean the extractor following yesterdays excitement. Work out what more kit I need.

Ha a near fatal experience earlier, Snr Mngt in a rare moment of kindness stepped into the garage "crawling with Rats" to bring me a cool refreshing drink.

When did you get that??

Where did that come from??

Is this yours as well??

Whoops! All I could think of was to shout "RAT"!!!

 

[Erichalfbee]

Not quite the workshop but had an enjoyable afternoon helping out at beginners' course. One of our members gave a good presentation of swarm control which was completely overwhelmed by another's talk on swarms and collecting them which had hardly an iota of decent accurate fact behind it. I despair at the junk some beginners have to swallow.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Clean the extractor following yesterdays excitement. Work out what more kit I need.

Ha a near fatal experience earlier, Snr Mngt in a rare moment of kindness stepped into the garage "crawling with Rats" to bring me a cool refreshing drink.

When did you get that??

Where did that come from??

Is this yours as well??

Whoops! All I could think of was to shout "RAT"!!!

I find the threat of Rattus rattus very handy - SWMBO won't venture anywhere near the chamber of secrets.
Unfortunately it's harder to conceal nigh on a hundred supers and a few dozen deeps in an open sided shelter!

 

[Hachi]

thankfully just this past week I dropped the hammer on one taking liberties on the bird table.

Damn this weather lol

 

[ugcheleuce]

Yesterday and today, I made a couple of mating hives.

The queen breeder said the queens will be ready by Tuesday, so I had to hurry. This year, instead of introducing the virgin queens into hopeless queenless colonies, I'm going to let them get mated first, and then add them to small shook swarms colonies.

The mating hive design I used is based on the "Celler" mating hive (wooden version here), whose main deviation is the fact that there are no frames or top-bars, but instead the bees build comb from starter strips attached directly from the roof.

I made a prototype yesterday (power jigsaw only) to get an idea of what would work and what wouldn't. Today I used my table saw and miter saw to make straighter, more accurate cuts. However, my "accurate" cuts are not really accurate... they're just more accurate than they would have been otherwise. And of course I mess around with glue.

My main problem was that the original Celler mating hive assumes that the bees and the queen are added to the hive at the same time, so there's no hole to put the queen cage into. In the end I opted for adding a ceiling to the hive, and making the queen cage hole in that ceiling.

These mating hives are 20 cm tall on the outside and 14 cm wide on the outside.

 

[pargyle]

thankfully just this past week I dropped the hammer on one taking liberties on the bird table.

Damn this weather lol

I shot one that was chasing the squirrels away from the bird table, mid morning - I could see the rat trail across the lawn from the edge of the wall to the bird table so it was just a case of waiting as I knew it would be along sooner or later ... 'er indoors will only let me shoot the rats ... not the rats with fluffy tails !

It was a big female so hopefully that will keep the rat population down a bit at chez Argyle ...

 

[nantmoel]

Made Obee1 an over wintering queen hive, a national 14x12 split into three compartments.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Made Obee1 an over wintering queen hive, a national 14x12 split into three compartments.

Sounds good.
Have you entrances facing different directions?

 

[Erichalfbee]

PS
Can you make me one?

 

[nantmoel]

Sounds good.
Have you entrances facing different directions?

All three entrances will face different directions, they are quiet simple to make. I split the internal dimensions to 140mm, I used a small hand held router to route 6mm grooves on the centre line (2 each side), I then made two top bars so you can fit three separate crown boards. I use a standard OMF but with two pieces of wood to stop the bees moving to each separate compartment, these are screwed and the OMF stapled to each piece.

I will take some pictures and post them here. Three queens in one brood box each on three frames.

 

[BMH]

Ive built something very similar although I will be stealing your idea of using 3 separate crown boards. I have just been using a single piece of poly carbonate so I can inpsect without disturbing them.

I also have 3 different entrances in 3 different directions but no OMF. Just use a solid one as they are only 3 frames my train of thought was I want to keep them warm and cosy and can treat for varroa when they get transferred to a full size nuc.

Be interesting to see both the finished articles.

I plan to make another one this weekend and then I am going to try and overwinter both (6 colonies)

 

[Motobiman]

I bet the centre colony does best . . . . .

 

[BMH]

You'd think so wouldnt you?

Time will tell.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Mike Palmer overwinters his on top of full size hives for the warmth

 

[BMH]

That's a great idea. The fact mine have solid floors anyway make that easy.

Sorted!

thanks..

 

[tidymeup]

Mike Palmer overwinters his on top of full size hives for the warmth

I thought he didn't do this as much anymore but wintered in side by side format?

 

[Erichalfbee]

Happy to be corrected. Thank you