Painting Bee-Hives!!

Hey everyone, in just a mere year we started making our own bee-hives. The Factory that my landlord owns has many spare pieces of hardwood. Generally bee-hives are made from off cut pine shipping crates, much the same applies here but they are using harder off-cut woods, such as meranti seen in these pics!

We heat the drums up with an open flame and a product contained herein called Waxol which is great for general wooden outdoor applications especially beehives!

Oh the right the raw bee-hives still to be painted and on the left the units which have just been dipped in a hot waxol mixture!

The hotter the waxol the better, once dipped it penetrates the wood very nicely and within a few days dries out well in the hot South African Sun!

This was a funny yet rather hair raising story. The waxol is wax based and flammable, an open flame managed to ignite this whole box. Always use in an open air area far from any flammable items such as dry sticks grass etc! Luckily no one was injured and we will still be able to use this brooder box!

Here we have Wynand and Eric busy dipping the hives as you can see in a nice open safe area, just as well, Safety First!

They look rather nice with the harder darker wood it will be interesting to see how they hold up in the rigours of the South African climate and hot sun.

Here Eric finishing up one of the hives, we plan to test our hives again in the next 3 weeks for harvest, the last time around we sadly were not lucky to harvest as coming out of Winter still not too many blooming flowers, hopefully we get rain soon and that all changes!

Be sure to stay tuned for more of my epic bee-keeping adventures and have a lovely week further!

Cheer$;)