Category Archives: Equipment

Repurposed

Synopsis: Think laterally, use your imagination, hoard stuff … there’s lots you can repurpose to make both your beekeeping and bank balance better. And it’s something to fill the months until the season starts.

Introduction

The big equipment suppliers – Thorne’s, Abelo, Dadant etc. – are very happy to sell you everything you need for your beekeeping … and a whole lot of stuff you probably don’t. A ‘hard sell’ approach to marketing isn’t needed, they simply provide an enticing catalogue or website and rely upon the long, cold, dark, wet and windy winter to do the rest.

It’s disturbingly effective … I’ve got the receipts.

An enthusiastic beginner might need a second mortgage after a trip to Rand or a winter afternoon in front of the fire browsing the catalogue.

Beekeeping is not an inexpensive pastime 1 when starting from scratch. Hives, beesuits, bees, smokers, hive tools, multi-purpose eke/clearer/insulated crownboards 2 and other essentials leave little change from a substantial chunk of moolah.

Buster the hivebarrow

Of course, with certain exceptions, buying shiny new kit makes things easy. Equipment is compatible, it’s been tested, built to a high standard and ‘just works’. It’s one less thing to worry about when starting out, and – midseason – it provides a quick fix to rectify an urgent problem.

However … as well as sometimes being painfully expensive 3, it turns out that the suppliers don’t sell everything you need. With a little effort, some opportunism, a sprinkling of imagination and those long winters you can rectify this and save money.

Today I’m going to discuss repurposing things you beg, borrow or steal find (or perhaps buy cheaply) to enhance, or even improve, your beekeeping.

And your bank balance.

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The Hopkins method (and more)

Synopsis : Three short(ish) related topics; the spring honey harvest, queen rearing without grafting (the Hopkins method) and a brief mention of swarm control. And, if that wasn’t enough, a bonus discussion on keeping virgin queens in an incubator.

Introduction

I started writing this post at sunset on the longest day of the year. In my part of Scotland it’s light enough to work outside from about 3:30 am until 11:30 pm which means you can get a lot done … if you have the energy and distant, deaf or understanding neighbours.

With the good weather we’ve had for the last 2-3 weeks the bees have been out well before I’m drinking my morning coffee and don’t stop until after my evening glass of Barolo.

In my experience, some of the earliest to start are the scout bees that appear at bait hives before foragers are really busy. Some might even stay overnight, though perhaps these are scouts ‘lost’ from a swarm that had decided to occupy a different nest site 1.

It’s lucky the days are so long as this is the busiest time of the year for beekeeping … at least for my beekeeping.

West coast apiary

I am, as the saying goes, ”running around like a headless chicken”.

Rather than write an in depth (well researched 2 ) post on an esoteric aspect of the coxa and trochanter of Apis mellifera scutellata or virus replication in drones (though I’d strongly recommend readers check out our latest paper on this topic, published today) I thought I’d write a few notes on three practical beekeeping topics that have been entertaining me recently.

I can’t promise something for everyone, or even anyone, and inevitably the focus will be on the trilogy of queen rearing, swarm control and the honey harvest.

If you’re a beekeeper and haven’t been busy with these three things over the last few weeks then either something has gone awry with your season … or you live in New Zealand.

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High volume beekeeping

Synopsis : The Spring honey harvest, heavy supers, extra supers, clearers and the space all that spare equipment occupies. You always have too much … until you run out.

Introduction

It’s usually about this point in the season that I start running out of equipment – brood boxes, supers, clearers, frames, buckets, jars 1 etc. Unusually, it’s not happened this year … yet. However, as I drove back home with a car bulging with weighty supers on Monday, it did make me think about the space needed for beekeeping.

Beekeeping requires quite a bit of space … both in area and height.

Is there a pastime that takes up more space?

Stray ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) in the apiary

Hot air ballooning perhaps? But the balloon is deflated and packed away when not in use, whereas unused supers take up exactly the same amount of space as those in use. They’re just in a different location.

Furthermore, for a significant part of the year, all those supers remain in teetering stacks waiting for the nectar to start flowing. They might only get used for 3 months a year.

And what about feeders and those other items that get used for a week or two a year, or in the case of clearers, only a day or two?

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Spot the queen

Synopsis : Swarmtastic! The first swarms of the season and a timely lesson on why swarm control is important and how clipping the queen really helps.

Introduction

Temperatures have finally achieved a ‘typical’ mid-May average of low teens (°C), and on most days the bees are out foraging well. If anything this is making the discrepancy between the strongest hives and the also-rans even more marked. I’ve just put my fourth supers on some, whereas a few hives are struggling to do anything much with the first one.

The oil seed rape in Fife is going over in a few fields, but most still has 10-14 days to go 1 … and the forecast is fantastic, so I’m hoping to still have time to snatch beekeeping victory (or what masquerades as victory for a beekeeper which is full buckets of honey) from the jaws of defeat.

It’s not going to be a bumper spring crop, but it might just about manage average.

I’ll happily take average after my early enthusiasm was so comprehensively dashed a fortnight later.

Of course, the combination of a good nectar flow and overcrowded colonies means that the bees are now busying themselves with swarm preparations. The post today is all about swarms, lost and found, the benefits of clipped queens and the importance of observation.

Or, to put it another way, more tales of slapstick beekeeping 😉 .

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Foundationless frames redux

Synopsis : Foundation is getting more expensive. Try foundationless frames; save money and reduce miticide contamination in your hives.

Introduction

While preparing some minor updates for a talk this week 1 I had cause to look up the price of foundation.

Flippin’ heck!

Foundation is one of the beekeeping basics. It’s effectively a consumable item that you periodically have to replace … or more correctly you replace the frames containing new sheets of foundation. It is recommended that brood frames are replaced every three years; this means you should expect to replace 3-4 frames per season in a National hive.

Like other basics, such as eggs and pasta, the price of foundation is rising inexorably. The last stuff I bought – premium National wired worker deep – was about £13 from Thorne’s. I bought ~15 packets and it hurt.

It’s now £15.60 a packet (for 10 sheets) 2. If it goes up much more I’ll have to trade in a kidney before visiting Brian at Thorne’s of Newburgh.

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