WE STARTED MAKING OUR OWN BEE-HIVES!!

Hey everyone, how cool is this? My landlord and partner has a factory (among other business interests) and has been making doors for years, before we get to the beehive I posted a few pics to give you a better idea as to what super cool wooden products he makes.

Here they have made some nice Meranti (wood) louvres!

A couple of solid Meranti Wooden Doors.

Here we have a general overview of the factory and many of the machines!

The hives boxes or brooder chambers. These are the boxes at the bottom of the hive that houses all the brood, eggs, majority of the bees and the Queen. As you can see these are just half assembled. Slow and steady progress is key.

The little strips at the top of these are the un-assembled frames made from Pine yet to be assembled and installed! We used off-cut wood for everything which equates to some substantial cost savings!

We are making the boxes (brooders and supers) out of excess Meranti Wood a much harder wood than Pine so hopefully will last much longer than our traditional Pine hives. These will still be treated with a product to withstand the rigors of extreme weather conditions.

Below we have a few assembled hive frames. These still need to get wires and wax foundation to ensure a solid base on which the bees build their combs and fill with honey, this is rather important because when we take these out for harvest and spin off the honey in our centrifugal spinner the wax combs do not come apart, ensuring the honey spun off effectively!

The frames that go inside the hives still in the assembly process. These will not be treated as they are indoors and filled with honey, wax etc, the bees will treat these as and if they must! Nature truly is incredible!

Now what needs to be done is to treat with a product called WAXOL, this is the most commonly used product for the treatment of bee-hives and ironically derived of and comprising of mostly wax. More of the product here as per one of our South African based paint outlets www.warriorpaints.co.za http://www.warriorpaints.co.za/paints/warrior-woodtreat-2/warrior-woodtreat-waksol-f/

This is going to prove to be a big saving for us. Hives normally cost us around R1000 or $80 odd. Making them ourselves we will be cutting costs by half or more.

I shall keep you posted with pics once complete and bees in and happy.

Have a super cool weekend and be sure to stay tuned for more of my epic bee-keeping adventures.

Cheer$;)