it's cheap homesteading here and I thought I'm gonna take a few minutes and
we're gonna go over the equipment I use when I started beekeeping
I really really researched what equipment I'm gonna use I thought well
am I gonna go top bar hive am I going to go weary hive am I gonna use lang straw
and it just became obvious to me that there's a lot of equipment around for
Lang straw hives and it's easy to purchase stuff if you have to purchase
it and I thought okay this is the way to go but we have to do a little more of a
holistic approach to beekeeping but just use a blank drop box there's no reason
why you can't because the Lang's drop box is a box a hole it's like a tree
there's no reason why you can't use the lang strop system and do it more in a
natural way just how you manage your hives and what you do to your hives and
how you treat your hives or not treat your hives so that is why I chose what
the equipment I chose just because it is used pret all there's a lot of it used
and sometimes we just don't have to like reinvent the wheel every time we have a
problem we just got to look at what we can do to
change it enough that it works better for us so that's basically what I use so
basically a standard Lang straw 5 consists of a lid and an inner cover so
this is where it starts to change because if I use a piece of three spy
wood with a notch for my inner cover they do work a little bit but I normally
use a fairly good-sized rock on top of the lid so the lids don't blow up so
I've never had a real issue with it and here's the whole insight so this is how
they come in and out so when you have the notch and that cover on top you have
a 3/8 hole for them to come in and out and they
just seem to that that's just awesome for the minutes good venting for
moisture so the next thing I do is run foundationless frames
some people use strips of wax for the beast to build their comb on I think
it's so much more economical and less time-consuming over the long run if you
just use a strip of wood I just think that if you have a problem or comb you
have to cut out you cut it out it's ready to go back in the high if you
don't have to glue another strip in or anything like that so I just find it's
less time over the long run and here's and here's what it looks like when they
start building comb they build it thick this one here they built it a little off
to the side which I don't really worry about too much because when they fill
this out at the very top somehow they they'll build this side up after so
where you worry is when they start trying to go in between the frames
that's bad this is actually pretty good they're gonna build this down on the
rest of the way and then they will fill in the edges and they will actually fill
in this side because they want to use as much space in the hive as they can so
that is almost perfect for a start anyways how I build my boxes are a
little different than a lot of people I didn't think of it though it's the
Alaskan extension office I believe and it has a beekeeping how to start
beekeeping thing and they show how they build these boxes like at least a
picture of it I can't remember and I thought this was the best design because
making those box joints are like crazy like it takes a bit of time and a little
bit of work but just but joining it and screwing it is bad too because this
doesn't have as much strength especially like warping wood and everything so I
found this was like a little of a happy medium and it worked good for
me okay so the way I make the corners is there's one big tab for one side one big
tab for the other and this gives a pretty strong corner it's not like a
full box joint it's probably not as strong as a full box joint but it's much
stronger than just a butt joint and nailed and loot and I just found it
worked really well so I got away from cutting notches in the high bodies I
noticed I always have strips of wood around and I can glue them and staple
them and you have a much bigger surface to hold on to so I just find it works
better okay so now I'm going to lift the box uh-huh so this is my bottom board
it's a screen bottom board I make them myself and they work pretty good so I
don't know if I'll continue having all my hive screen bottom boards because I
haven't noticed a big difference in the amount of mites in the hive if I have a
scream about a mourner or not so I might start doing a little bit of a test some
solid sunscreen and just see if it makes any difference so that is within our use
and I hope you guys have a good one