I never go without a slatted rack in my beehives, and I extoll the virtues of them every chance I get. David Manning, a beekeeper in Missouri, makes some seriously good-looking slatted racks that you can see in the photos below. For those of you who are handy in the woodshop, David has graciously shared […] Read more
The following comment came yesterday in response to the post, “How to use a slatted rack.” I’ve decided to answer the allegations one by one. Your comments about slatted racks is inaccurate. First the original designer was a man in Hawaii by the name of Bovard back in the 1960s, hence Bovard Racks was the […] Read more
Summer is coming to a close even though it was nearly a “non-summer” here on the Pacific Northwest coast. The corn hasn’t tasseled; the peaches look like walnuts. Nevertheless, my bees are healthy and I had a good honey harvest—much better than expected. My honey was capped and my hives are dry inside. What more […] Read more
Since I published “How I overwintered ten out of ten” several people have asked me what I did with the slatted racks during the winter. Since I always leave slatted racks in place, I didn’t think of them as an overwintering strategy, so I left them off my list. Now I see that my way […] Read more
After making some Langstroth brood boxes with nine frames and two follower boards (in positions one and eleven) I began to think that it would be easier to make a ten-frame Langstroth into an eight-frame Langstroth by putting follower boards in positions one and ten. In this way you could use two standard Langstroth frames […] Read more
My inbox was full of questions about slatted racks this morning. One of the questions concerned the direction of the slats. The slats should go the long way—they should run from the front of the hive to the back of the hive. The idea here is that the slats should line up with the frames […] Read more