jethro.ws

So I got tired of reading how to manage a beehive so I decided to make a beehive that cannot be managed by anybody else except the bees. Maybe it’s not a good idea. Why would you have bees if you can’t get to the honey without destroying the hive? I guess the idea of a log hive was inspired when I was building my top bar hives and I wanted to give the bees the best advantage that I could. It turns out that the insulating qualities of thick wood and it’s ability to absorb and expell moisture were good things for a bee hive. The only tricky thing was getting the bees in the hive.

For the wine barrel I got one of mom’s funnels that was slightly larger than the opening of the wine barrel and taped it securely on top of the hole. Then I got some greenhouse plastic and made a funnel that completely enclose the package of bees. I attached the small end of the plastic funnel to mom’s funnel and then the shaking began. So no be could escape except into the barrel. Well, turns out the hole isn’t big enough and the bees hang on to each other like they’re gonna drown if they drop into the barrel. So after a long time I decided this isn’t going to work. I knifed the plastic funnel apart from mom’s funnel and turned the barrel upside-down. Thankfully I had sawed a hole in the bottom of the barrel to clean it out and had only used screws and a piece of board to close it up again. I dumped everybody in there, closed it up and set the barrel upright. All the bees were mad and I didn’t have a protective suit on either. I had some amazing plantain salve that keeps stings from swelling at all. I put that stuff on everytime I got stung. It’s weird, but everytime I get stung I get a runny nose and teary eyes. To fasten the queen cage to the top of the inside of the barrel where all the bees would cluster and build comb was a lot less hassle. I had drilled a very small hole in the top of the barrel and stuffed a wire down which I then fished out the entrance hole. I took the cork out of the queen cage where the candy was, attached the cage to the wire and pulled the wire back up to the top. I thought that was a smart idea.

The log hive was easier. Except when I took the queen cage out of the package of bees I saw that at staple had split the wood and the screen to hold her in the cage was loose. And she flew away. Now what. There was better than a 50/50 chance that she would come back. I knew if she would come back she would probably be killed by the bees who were not familiar with her yet. After some time I found a cluster of bees on the ground nearby and figured she was with them. After pushing all the bees back I found her dead body. Without the queen, the hive would eventually die off. That same day I met up the guy from Yule’s Apiaries who graciously gave me another queen. So now they are all buzzing around. The calves in the meadow knocked over the wine barrel before I put the bees in so I put stakes up around it. They knocked it over again so I put more stakes in. Maybe they’ll survive.