- Hey there!
We're here today to talk about some of the accessories that we use for our beehives.
Little things that we've found helpful, we'd like to share with you.
I'd like to emphasize that we use standard beehives.
I don't think you can beat the good old Langstroth hive, so we're not changing anything there,
just modifying a few of the accessories that we have.
Wendy's gonna help me out and Stephanie's gonna help me out, and so we'll start with
the bottom hive and work our way to the top.
At the bottom of the hive, we have our entrance right here, pretty well-standard entrance,
but what's different is we use a bevel entrance reducer.
The top edge has a 10-degree bevel on it.
There's an inch and a quarter by one quarter-high entrance notch cut into that.
Anything higher than a quarter of an inch, and a mouse can get in.
So, this prevents getting drafts getting in the hive, but also keeps the mice out too.
So, we'll just snag that into place there, and that bevel makes it wedge into place,
and then it's quite secure and won't fall in.
There's the entrance reducer.
Moving up from there, we've got our ID tag for our colonies.
Every hive has a number, and what we use are pig ear tags.
They're really, really durable.
They last a long, long time, and we just screw them to the hive.
You could order them in whatever numbers you want, and they're easy to read in that yellow
and black.
Moving up from there, we have the ID tag that we use that indicates the age of our queen,
and what her her heritage is, what the mother is, and who she's been mated with.
So, that's the queen ID tag right there.
Just make a little space here.
We have an upper entrance hole in our colonies that's 7/8 of an inch, and the center of that
hole is one and 7/8 of an inch down from the top of the box.
7/8, one and 7/8 there.
That gives bees an upper entrance for the winter time when they need to expel excess
moisture.
We don't have a standard inner cover with a notch in it to provide an upper entrance,
so that's why we have to drill those holes in the box.
The inner cover that we use is made out of canvas.
It's a real heavyweight canvas.
We like that because we could just peel it back and have a look.
They don't build excess comb in between the inner cover and the lid, so there's no scraping,
no disturbing the bees that way.
They're cheap, and easy to make.
I started shifting into this because we needed a whole bunch of new inner covers and this
seemed to be an economical way of doing it, and we really liked it.
We've been using them for quite a while now.
They start off looking like that.
It's 18-ounce canvas.
It's a very heavy canvas.
It's also known as number eight duck.
So, you can see, that's what it's like when it's brand new.
After the first year, they coated it with propolis on most of the surface.
Eventually, we want that to be thoroughly saturated with propolis.
It works well that way.
It sticks down well, seals the hive up, and bees love to coat the inside of the hive with
propolis, so they really do a good job with that.
You could see how there's no propolis on that other side.
But, over time, what we do is we just flip it from one side to another, so we get it
coated on both sides.
One year, one way down.
The next year, the next way down, and we just keep flipping it back and forth, like so.
Moving up from there, we use supers that are a little bit different.
In this jurisdiction, most people have supers that have just a rabbet cut, a dado, rather,
cut, handhold, so you're using your fingertips to carry the supers around.
What we like to use is a cleated super here.
These cleats are fastened to the box, and you can grab it wherever you want there.
You got a really good handhold on it, and that's much more ergonomic than the rabbet
kind of, or dado cut in the box.
To fasten that into the hive, we actually put four screws going through from the inside
of the box up into the cleat there so it's really securely fastened on.
After that, I'd like to show you the bottom board that we use.
Our standard bottom board does not project out in front of the hive.
There's no landing for it.
We can get two extra these bottom boards out of a sheet of plywood so they're more economical.
They last a lot longer because without that projection sitting, sticking out, the hive
sheds all the rain.
So it's basically, exactly the same size as the box.
To make them last a little bit longer, what we do is we soak them in very hot paraffin,
and that acts as a preservative.
So, these bottom boards will last at least 30 years when they're coated that way.
We drill holes up through from the bottom so that we're securing the bottom board to
the brood chamber with long screws going in there, and that, I find preferable to nailing
staples on to the side of the hive.
With staples, you have to put four staples on.
You're banging away on the hive.
We just use a cordless screw gun and screw those on to it.
It's really a quick, easy way of doing it.
When we're monitoring for Varroa mites, we use, we have the bottom board.
We turn it around backwards, so there's the entrance there.
We turn that to the back of the colony, and then we use our Varroa screen on here, and
this sits on like so.
It's basically a eight-mesh screen sandwiched in between strips of pine.
There's plans for this on our website on our tips, tricks, and tools section.
So, we put that in place there.
Now, this provides the entrance.
To collect the mites, what we do is we have a masonite slide there, and then we use a
file folder, a manila file folder that we coat with Crisco.
We heat Crisco, roll it on with the roller, makes it kind of sticky, so when the mites
fall on there, they stay in place.
So, that slides in here like so.
And when we're done collecting mites, I always leave this masonite in place because that
gives us a clean-up tray.
Debris falls down in through that screen, and it becomes a haven for wax moth down in
here, so we need to, every two or three weeks, we pull this out, clean it off so we're not
providing a habitat for our wax moth.
So, we slide that in and slide it all the way to the front to make sure we're catching
that debris.
At the back of the screen bottom board, we use a block that also has a 10-degree bevel,
so when they push, when we push that into place, it closes up the back of the hive,
and there's not too much cross-ventilation rolling through the hive, like so.
So, that's a screen bottom board for monitoring for Varroa, and our bottom board to explain
there.
Now, we're gonna talk about the wheelbarrow that we use.
We use a two-wheel wheelbarrow.
We just modified it in a way that we're able to carry supers to and from the colonies,
queen excluders, bee stakes, and all sorts of things.
We use this all the time.
It's very stable with those two wheels, and we made it in such a way that the spacers
get the deck almost level.
We've got a bit of a slight slope, and then there's a 90-degree headboard at the front
here, so the supers get stacked up against there, and at the front of the wheelbarrow,
we have a sheet metal, stainless steel sheet metal, bent into the shape of the bellows
of a smoker, so we won't carry a smoker around.
We just drop it in there like so.
We have those on our trucks as well to carry the smokers from yard to yard.
It works really well, keeps the smoker from tipping over and potentially opening up and
starting a fire, so it makes it a little bit safer for handling them around.
So, we're gonna load up the wheelbarrow, pack things up here, and that's what we want to
share with you today.
Just a few little things that we do, you may want to emulate.
Things that have helped us out, so hope it works for you too.
Thanks very much for watching.
Enjoy your bees.