Progress, building our honeybee equipment!

 Here it is, already past mid-February!  In less than 6 weeks, the 1st week of Apr. will be here and that's when the 2 honeybee "packages" are scheduled to arrive.  Each "package" will have a new queen and about 3,000 to 5,000 workers.  They're being shipped from CA to here in WI, where we will pick them up & take them to our hive boxes to start our new hives.  So!  We've got to have our hive boxes ready!  We plan to start our hives with 2 supers each.  We've been making our supers (based on drawings available on the Internet) and frames to go into each.  At the right you can see a group of "medium" sized Langstroth supers containing home-made frames for bees to use to make their brood- comb and honey-comb.  The top super in the left stack also has a cover that consists of a clear plexi-glass panel so when it is on the top of a super, you can look down into the hive while minimally disturbing the bees.  (This is potentially, especially useful in WI in the winter, for hive inspections while retaining some of the heat from the bee cluster...)  On the top of the stack of supers on the right, are top or "outer covers".  Three are stacked there, with aluminum nailed on top to protect the hive from excessive weathering.
   At the right in this photo, you can see an empty super sitting on a "bottom board that has a removable screen panel.  This will allow us to monitor for bee mites.  More on mites in another post.













And... I've been making frames.  Frames hang within each super and provide structure from which bees will make their comb.  Since we are using supers which will each hold 10 frames... and so far we have 22 supers built and ready for bees (not just the 2 packages we have ordered, but also for wild... "feral"... bees we hope to entice into additional hives), we will need a lot of frames.  We did buy 50 commercial frames, but we've made 70 additional ones so far... so we only need to make around an additional 100 frames or so (!!).  The photo below, shows the assembly, of about 5 at a time (after the parts have been cut on a table saw).  Each frame consists of it's top & bottom & 2 sides, which are glued & clamped.  (Commercial frames have a more elegant shape, but these hand-made frames ... we believe... will work fine.)  When the glue is set, then ~ 2 inch long hardwood "bumpers" are glued near the top on the sides of each frame.  (You can see them in the frame I'm holding at the left...)  These bumpers hold each frame away from each adjacent frame to maintain the "bee space" (3/8 of an inch) between frames so bees can move easily between the comb they'll be constructing.

More, on all this, in another post!