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Usually I put them on bricks.

well i baited up some of the empty equipment to try and catch some swarms while the hives are sitting idle waiting on the apiary to be cleared. while i was out working this weekend, despite the cold, there was some interest! should be going out today to work, so hopefully ill have some good news...

we are planning a large part of our farm as bee forage. there will be many, many flowering perennials worked into our design that in theory will provide nearly continuous nectar flow all season long. in addition, i want to incorporate multi-species cover crop mixes as a soil building measure...

each hive will have 2 movable divider boards to control the internal size of the hive and 2 entrances on opposite ends of the hive. this gives me the option of running 2 smaller colonies in one big box or i can close off one entrance and just have one colony in the box. the smaller hives have...

these hives will rarely move. the reason i left the legs off is so i could carry 6 hives instead of 2 the 25 miles out to the farm. when we first started with bees, our tiny tractor had died and we had to borrow one to mow the thick brambles down just to have somewhere to place them. for that...

Moving some deadout equipment..... I'm changing the way we have our bees organized, so Im gathering all unoccupied equipment together for a new apiary. More pics to come...,.

Final assembly pics..... All hives have entrances drilled on both sides and 2 dividers so we can use the either as full 4' ers or 2 2' hives

ok now for more pics....... take a milled top bar blank...... add some glue and a cleat...... staple away...... add completed topbars to the hive body, throw the legs, spreaders, and divider boards inside, and staple the bar stops on. this is how im transporting the hives out to...

well, for one, i dont want to build any more of those things than i have to....... they look deceptively easy to make, but ill tell you they are quite tricky to manufacture. 2nd, im nearly positive the bees would build all willy wonka around those things in an attempt to bury them in the comb.

thats a tall order and IMHO negates some of the benefits of the TBH. Bees should be building new comb every year. only small amounts of honey should be harvested. if extracted honey and reusing comb is your goal, maybe a horizontal lang would be a better option.

should just be a couple dozen small holes in the wax..... dont think itll be a problem. unless, that is, the comb over the holder before i can get it out

Don't know yet. We used to zip tie those clamshell hair clips to the bars to hold the comb, but it never worked as well as advertised. I'll just have to wait and see if this works

They will just be the n there temporarily until the comb gets attached. It's still experimental so I don't know all the answers yet, but I'm leaving the bar width as is

well, the comb hangers are for 2 purposes. one is if i have any comb that breaks away from its attachment to the bar, i can use the hanger to "re hang" it and hold it in position until the bees reattach it. the other is the bee removal guy i know wants to hang portions of the removed comb from...

the bradford pears are bloomin down here and temps are in the mid seventies....... you guy should visit!

thats not the half of it...... had to replace the add a leafs on the back of my truck that i broke hauling too much treated lumber for the hive legs, had to replace the front brakes, adjust the parking brake, and change the oil. all that on top of clearing new spots on the farm for all these...

also made up some 50-ish comb hangers from rabbit wire..... made these up at the request of my friend that does bee removal services. im bartering 2 of my completed hives for 6 colonies installed in my nucleus hives. he will be using these comb hangers to save the existing combs that he...

some topbar machining pics..... cutting up some scrap into topbar blanks.... more sawing.... machining angles on ends and cutting to length..... bunches of bars awaiting machining to correct width

ok, im nearing the end of the build. heres a brief update...... got just shy of 600 top bars milled, but still have to mill and attach the guides. picked up the roof metal for this build and another 24 hives from a metal roofing manufacturer. got all 24 roofs built. all the legs are machined...

my apiary was new last year, and was started from a mix of survivor swarms and small cell packages. all the colonies had to build lots of comb to get started. that is the major reason for the high losses. unlike an established hive that has most of its comb already built and can go to work...