okay so today we're gonna do another pyrography image on a mann lake box I've
got my boxes together and my last one is still disassembled and that's a perfect
time to do something on the end we've got some bee suits here for my grandson
little tiny one and we're collecting things of course for spring we still
have snow I invested in this little fan that will take the smoke away from my
face and eyes while I'm doing pyrography I highly recommend one of those and we
have a lot of different burning tips here which are from razor tip and in
this project we're only going to use three of them now this is the end of a
brood box so I thought it would be cool to put a queen honeybee on it so I
looked at be culture magazine here and I thought I would show you my reference
sheet again if you don't have this magazine it might be good to subscribe
to if you're into bees there's the Queen right there on this a closer look basic
honeybee biology book that they're selling here through the magazine but I
thought I would reference this image right here for my bee box and keep it
handy the whole time of course you can get sheets from coloring books or
anything you want to trace out onto your wooden wear that you're gonna do your
pyrography on I do a pencil sketch and then I copy it with graphite here and
then you can use a pen to transfer the graphite lines to your box try to make
it a little bit dramatic maybe even exaggerate some of the angles and bends
and contours because you want to make something striking that's gonna be out
in the weather in your apiary which is the case with this box so again close
like queen bee and I figured that's appropriate again for a brood box where
she's gonna be laying most of her eggs now mann Lake doesn't care about the
project I'm doing I have nothing to do with them but I did buy the box there
from them so I thought I'd give them a shout out here I get nothing for
referencing them so now we're going to turn this Opolar USB charged
fan it's totally quiet and it's better don't blow it straight on your work it
cools down the tips away so it draws there away in across
your work razor tip again here's my power pack and we're starting with the
ball tip I'm gonna kick that on we're a little over a six here on the dial and
we're gonna go right in like I always do and start off with the eyes they're
gonna be the darkest part we can talk to I suppose a little bit about the role of
the Queen honeybee and if you don't already know there is generally one
queen per colony in a hive sometimes there are sister Queens that are
attending to the same hive and laying eggs in the same colony but it's rare
generally there's just one and every worker bee in that colony comes from
that queen so I think it's appropriate to put her here on the box and I made it
nice and big so that it'll be kind of dramatic and we want lots of contrast
again that's going to be outside this one I'm not going to color I'm just
gonna clearcoat this with a few layers before we go outside and I've spent a
good part of the early part of 2018 here gluing up and finishing boxes that are
gonna go out in the apiary so this year we're gonna have a lot of wood burning
and images on the sides of the boxes that are kind of fun to look at better
than just painting the boxes which is what I used to do now we're putting
pyrography images on them and then we're going to just clear coat them and see
how they're weather so again when we get to that we're working on the four limbs
here generally do an outline and then I work in from the edges and leave just
the highlight areas so you might want to again be kind of dramatic you don't have
to be realistic you can just make it high contrast like what we're doing here
and any areas that you don't touch with the burner of course they're left as the
highlights and we know that some of these limbs are actually pretty flat and
they're really not tube shaped but - I like to exaggerate the contours a
little bit because it makes it kind of stand out on the box and the box were
working on here is pine and it's the middle grade of pine that mann lake
provides again they're not sponsoring me they did not give me a discount I just
bought them like everyone else and here on the antenna I'm just kind of pushing
in stable dots which from a distance it will look like those are the segments of
the antenna here you can on the right fore limb we're just gonna leave some
highlights there and darken the rest and we bring it up of course that's attached
to the thorax of the Queen which is nice and round generally and the Queen thorax
is often pretty void of hairs sometimes they're just really shiny and dark and
then we go to these little segments here on the very delicate ends of the
forearms and they almost look like little hearts at the end and then there
of course the hook so the Queen uses to hang onto things now we'll just start to
build up for the neck area and darken it just little circular patterns and we'll
start to work up the shape of the head now I know that the bees have five eyes
the two large prominent compound eyes on either side and then there are generally
three in between I know there's only two here Illustrated but again we're not
trying to overdo the accuracy just trying to indicate that there is
something else there and the asila I believe they're called
is what they use to really pick out contrast and light and dark and you'll
see them tipping their head side to side as they they see and discriminate better
the physical position of things that they're flying towards and a little
light spot there right between the head and the thorax there sometimes you see
this neck tissue as they tip their head forward even that worker bees have that
and so I decided I would just leave that in there there's also when you look at
the wing muscles that are on either side there's always this u-shape that follows
underneath we're the wing muscles aren't where the
wings are attached and so that's gonna be a prominent it's kind of a dark area
again we're just gonna really gradually work up starting from dark to light
until we indicate the physical form of this part of the queen bee and again
when I go over some of that raised wood grain there you'll notice that the
sap rises up and sizzles a little bit there so again you just keep going and
look at the smoke rolling off being drawn away by that fan the last time I
did one of these smoke went right up into my eyes and I really had to get
something to remove the smoke from the project so that it wouldn't blow up in
my face and I also kind of got tired of sniffing the fumes from cedar and pine
the next project I'll be doing after this one of course is going to be on the
new flow hive and the flow hive 2 and I'll be decorating that box before I put
a seal around it and put that out in the apiary so if you're interested in that
also I'll be working more with Queens this year and we'll be demonstrating how
to make new Queens in your apiary and how to set up new colonies of bees
people have asked me to show more of the basic practices in the backyard apiary
so we're gonna do that and of course this is the right fore limb now we're looking
at the abdomen of the Queen remember that the abdomen is really large on a
queen and that's because she's carrying all of her eggs in there and you really
want to see a nice large heavy looking queen she'll be laying a lot of eggs
after she's done her maiden flight and mates with around eleven different
drones she'll come back to the colony with fertile eggs and enough to last her
a lifetime which is generally several years now we're gonna switch to this
knife blade design and we're gonna use this to establish or indicate hairs on
the legs and abdomen and thorax and of course the head of this bee
so again this is a part where it's gonna take a lot of time I'm just gonna
demonstrate the technique really quickly here and of course not make you sit and
watch me do every hair on this P but Queens workers and drones of course are
covered head-to-toe in these fine hairs and it's just up to you how much time
you're gonna spend developing that remember in this case anyway it's just
gonna be outside on the weather I'm sure this box is gonna turn gray I'm
sure this Bee is gonna fade but because it is burned wood it should last quite a
long time much better than just paint and look at you can see the grain of the
wood here and how it went through the legs here and kind of left a striping
effect and that's because the heat burns the wood easily and the light-colored
areas but where the growth rings are it does not burn it so readily so it leaves
those areas lighter I think that's an interesting pattern not a pattern you'd
actually find on a bee but I think it's interesting so I'm going to leave it and
now I'm going to a shading spoon this is a flat one I have others that are dished
out and there's somewhat convex I prefer the flat one and this is where we're
really going to build up the contrast even more and just work the shading
right over all the air lines that we've put on the beam you can see I've done
most of that work now and we've got nice hairy legs for the Queen and we're just
gonna darken things up here and don't forget that when you're looking through
the wings that it's somewhat translucent so you leave those areas lighter and
then now once you're satisfied with how how much darkness and how much shade
you've put into it don't forget to leave it alone you can very easily overwork
and burn too much on one of these projects so you kind of need to get the
forms down to the shadowing in there and then learn to put your tools down and
just let it go again remember you know you're just you're just burning wood
that's on a bee box it's going to be out in the bee yard and it will be
interesting for people that look at your bee hives
because these will be unique and it does indent into the wood quite a bit so I
think it's interesting you know as I said in the past I just painted the
boxes now I'm doing pyrography and putting little custom details on them
and it's gonna be interesting to see how it goes outside so if you're doing this
it'd be cool to see and hear about what you're doing if you've got a
pyrography project and you want others to look at it feel free to put a link
down in the comment section I'll put a links in the description to the things
that are used here and of course when you finish your work they don't forget
to sign it and I do highly recommend that you have a fan when you're doing
this I can't believe I worked without one for these past three or four
projects and then just put the date on it and that will help you know when you
set these boxes out in your bee yard too so it's practical and I appreciate you
watching this project