You are here: Home » Blog » Archives for equipment

Twenty-five holiday trinkets for beekeepers

Here’s a list of twenty-five handy holiday gifts for your favorite beekeeper.

  1. Duct tape: can’t live without it necessity in the apiary.
  2. Hive tool: these get lost. So if one is good, more is better.
  3. Essential oils, especially spearmint, lemongrass, tea tree, or anise: used for making dietary supplements for bees.
  4. Paint strainers, one- or five-gallon size depending on the number of hives: these can be used for filtering honey or beeswax (or paint).
  5. Isopropyl alcohol: for removing propolis from everything that’s not propolis. That’s why it has p-r-o-p in its name.
  6. Sugar, white granulated in 10-, 25-, or 50-pound bag: for making candy boards, syrup, or candy cakes. Also useful for pie.
  7. Seeds, flowers or herbs: provide bee forage—choose flowers that are attractive to bees such as five-spot, bird’s eyes, baby blue eyes, or borage.
  8. Tree or shrub: serves the same purpose as above except feeds a crowd. Try cherry laurel, California lilac, or black locust.
  9. Velcro ankle straps: the little darlings really like tender ankles and legs.
  10. Mason bee condo or bumble bee house: once hooked by honey bees, there’s no turning back—all their relations become fascinating.
  11. 5/16-inch drill bit, extra long: allows the beekeeper to make his own bee condo. This will save you money.
  12. Yellowjacket traps: for trapping . . . you guessed it . . . yellowjackets.
  13. Florescent green spray paint: for marking drone frames, a useful tip learned from Randy Oliver.
  14. Fishing line, 50# test for wiring frames: it is still springy like wire, but it doesn’t kink or break. Forget melting it into wax, however.
  15. Ratcheting tie down: for tying hives together, to each other, or to something else; they are good for hurricanes as well.
  16. Wood filler: to replace those chunks missing from your masterpiece.
  17. Butterfly net: a long handle is good for removing bees from inside your skylights or snaring flyaway queens.
  18. Double boiler: for melting wax; try to find one at Goodwill because it won’t be good for anything else after the first melt.
  19. Uncapping knife: one of those things beekeepers skimp on, but they are really nice to have.
  20. Bee brush: same as above, and a paint brush just doesn’t work.
  21. Air compressor: a small, three-gallon, 100 psi air compressor is about $50 and can save hours of time.
  22. Brad gun: although I use screws on my bee boxes, I use brads on the frames. A pneumatic brad gun is about $20.
  23. Air hose: to connect compressor to brad gun, somewhat necessary to make the system work. About $10.
  24. Brads: several sizes, such as one-inch, three-quarters-inch, and half-inch. If you are on a tight budget, just gift the brads. This will force the beekeeper to buy the rest.
  25. And if you are on an even tinier budget, you can always give them a free subscription to HoneyBeeSuite. That will save you the most.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Pancake-style air compressor, hose, brad gun, and box of brads—all for less than $100.
Pancake-style air compressor, hose, brad gun, and box of brads—all for less than $100.

How many hives to start?

It’s fall. You are pouring over glossy bee catalogs about to order your first hive. Your bee club advises you start with two, but you are thinking one is best. After all, it looks expensive and you might not even like it. What to do?

My advice? I have to side with the bee clubs on this one—you really don’t want to start with just one hive. Start with two. If you have no experience with bees at all, don’t buy more than that. Two is a perfect number.

That said, be careful what you buy the first year. The first year you are unlikely to harvest much honey, if any. And you probably won’t be raising queens, splitting colonies, or building nucs. Your bees might not even make it until fall. So take it easy on the purchases until you begin needing things. The bee suppliers will be just as happy to sell to you later.

More than once I’ve seen a new beekeeper buy a hive, a complete bee suit, and an extractor all at once, only to have his colony die before fall. And believe me; it’s hard to multi-purpose a honey extractor.

So I suggest buying two hives, two colonies of bees, some protective gear, and a hive tool but don’t buy everything in the book. Nearly every new beekeeper complains about the expense, and rightfully so. The individual pieces don’t seem so expensive, but when you add up the cost of a hive, then tack on shipping, handling, and sales tax, the number at the bottom can be breathtaking. And that’s before you double it.

If beekeeping is so expensive, why do I recommend two? It’s hard to understand this before you’ve tried it, but the answer is flexibility and choices. Sometimes a colony is not strong from the beginning. It could be queen health, queen genetics, or something else. But there are strong colonies and weak ones. If you have two colonies, you can use the stronger one to strengthen the weaker one, to produce a frame of brood now and then, or a queen cell so the weaker colony can raise a better queen for itself.

Then, too, some colonies don’t make it an entire year. Many things can go wrong through no fault of your own. If you have two colonies you have a much better chance of bringing one through the winter. And then, come spring, you can split the colony and be back to two. If you have only one and it dies, you have few choices until you can order another package or catch a swarm—things that can be done only at certain times of the year.

So buy two. Then, while you are waiting for your new colonies to establish themselves, you can consider what equipment you will need for the fall and winter. To save money you can make things yourself, perhaps find some used equipment, or look for sales. Once you get started you will have a better idea of which equipment you want. Every beekeeper does things differently than the next, and it won’t be long before you, too, have your own ideas about the things you want or need.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Two hives: a perfect place to start. Flicker photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/30822869@N03/">S. Zelov</a>.
Two hives: a perfect place to start. Flicker photo by S. Zelov.

Through a screen darkly

Yesterday I fixed up a small hive with upper and lower ventilation, strapped it together, and added a Brushy Mountain Bee Farm moving and robbing screen, partially painted. My plan is to move this hive further from the house–away from the dog–and I will use the method I outlined in the post, “How to move a hive.” Although I’ve moved hives before, this is my first time using the moving and robbing screen, and so far I’m impressed.

It is designed to be left in place all the time if you want. But I just plopped it down in front of the hive yesterday, then strapped it on with a tie down. Once the bees were in last night, I simply closed the three entryways. Very quick and easy. I can’t say the bees are real happy, but I am. I like the fact that there is a space for the bees to go out on the porch for some air and go back in anytime. It’s also reassuring because I can see that they are fine, that they are only annoyed and perplexed.

I will move the hive to its new location, leave them locked up for three days, and then remove the screen. It seems more secure than trying to stuff an entrance reducer in the opening and trying to make it stay there during the moving process.

The entrance at the top left (mounted over the metal sheet) is designed to let the bees come and go without letting robbers in. If you had robbers, you would keep the two lower entrances closed and only use the top one. From what I’ve read, robbers follow their noses and will continually try to fly straight in from where the scent is coming. The metal sheet diverts the scent to the side, so the robbers keep working that area while the real entrance is just above the metal screen. Apparently the bees that live there can figure this out, but the bees that don’t belong are continually flummoxed by this arrangement.

I purchased the screen recently to use against robbing bees, but yesterday as I was painting it, I remembered I could use it for moving this hive. So I stopped painting (mid-stroke it appears) and set it up. Of course, it’s been rainy and miserable for weeks on end and now that they’re locked up it’s sunny and warm. I told them I was sorry . . . it’s the best I can do.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Moving screen with all three doors open.
Moving screen with all three doors open.
It's dark on the screened-in porch.
It's dark on the screened-in porch.

Even painted boxes warp

Warped boxes are irritating. The boxes in the photo are only about two years old. They were painted and assembled when I first got them, but they still managed to warp. As you can see, the middle portions shrunk away from each other until a space large enough for bee passage appeared between them.

Will the bees let this go? Of course not! It has turned into their entrance of choice.

There is nothing really wrong with this as long as a hive is strong. It gives them a second entrance and probably saves some bee energy because they don’t have to walk so far once inside the hive. It also prevents congestion at the main entrance.

The problem occurs if a colony becomes weak and prone to attacks by robber bees or yellow jackets. In that case, one of the entrances has to be sealed off so the bees can better defend the hive.

Rusty

Bees enjoying a pair of warped boxes.
Bees enjoying a pair of warped boxes.

How to use an eke

Okay, I admit it. I’m enthralled with the word “eke.” But even though I called them “spacer rims” until recently, I’ve been a fan of ekes for a long time.

An eke in the Langstroth world is just a very shallow super. Most are between two and three inches deep, but there are no rules. You can build them from scratch, or you can slice an old super into several ekes.

An equivalent structure can be made for a top-bar hive and placed between the walls of the hive and the roof. Warré and National beekeepers seem to be much more familiar with these tools than Langstroth keepers . . . and they are also the folks who come up with cool words.

So what do you do with an eke? Here are some examples:

  • They can be placed above the brood nest to house baggy feeders. Or you can stack several ekes together to enclose jar feeders.
  • Anything that requires extra space can be enclosed by an eke including pollen patties, sugar cakes, grease patties, or mite treatments.
  • You can put deep frames in a medium box or medium frames in a shallow box if you put an eke under it. This is handy if you really want to move brood around and the equipment sizes are incompatible.
  • When I’m working a hive, I like to set brood boxes down on an eke so I don’t squish anything beneath the frames. I can just toss an eke on the ground and stack the boxes on top.
  • In the summer, you can place an empty eke with vent holes above the inner cover to provide extra ventilation. The warm air goes up through the hole in the cover and then out the vent holes.
  • Rumor has it that Sherlock Holmes wrapped his valuables in oilcloth and placed them in an eke where no ordinary burglar dare venture!

Many apiary problems can be solved with these small supers. Don’t hesitate to make them in various sizes and feel free to stack them . . . or not. For overall apiary versatility, they are second only to the hive tool.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite