Beekeeping

[FlasherZ]

My boxes will be delivered tomorrow - coming from Beethink in Portland. They must have partnered with them for the US manufacturing. They make high quality stuff, so my expectations are high at the moment.

I bought some Beethink cedar hives and would rate them average. The fit on the finger joints wasn't perfect, and assembling and nailing 50 frames isn't my idea of a good time, even with my pneumatic nailer. My local guy is cheaper, overall, and uses better joints on the boxes.

I haven't gotten an alert, hopefully I see it soon.

 

[bonnie]

I bought some Beethink cedar hives and would rate them average. The fit on the finger joints wasn't perfect, and assembling and nailing 50 frames isn't my idea of a good time, even with my pneumatic nailer. My local guy is cheaper, overall, and uses better joints on the boxes.

I haven't gotten an alert, hopefully I see it soon.

Maybe an off day for them? The ones I got fit together so perfectly that it seemed almost unnecessary to put nails in. And the wood was better quality than some I've gotten from other places.

Or maybe I just hit them on a good day.

 

[bonnie]

Flow boxes arrived today - very well packaged.

 

[FlasherZ]

Flow boxes arrived today - very well packaged.

Perhaps that's why I didn't get anything, I only ordered frames.

 

[bonnie]

Took about 20 minutes to assemble - I'll stain them this weekend. Really nice quality.

 

[ecarfan]

Bonnie, I have a beekeeper friend and I'm really interested to see how those hives work out for you.

 

[bonnie]

Bonnie, I have a beekeeper friend and I'm really interested to see how those hives work out for you.

It may be a long wait - not much nectar this year because of the drought. I'm not sure if they're going to do more than just look pretty in my garage this season...

 

[GasDoc]

Flow boxes arrived today - very well packaged.

Did your frames arrive? UPS rescheduled my delivery until Monday.

 

[bonnie]

Did your frames arrive? UPS rescheduled my delivery until Monday.

No frames yet.

 

[bonnie]

Pic shows the two boxes with tung oil - really like this stuff. Easy to apply, no worry about brush strokes, will be interesting to see how it weathers. (It's a hard finish when it dries.) I really like how the oil brought out the different colors of the American Western red cedar.

You can see the box on the right has shiny wood screws, the one on the left does not. That's because I decided to swap out the supplied wood screws for some nice brass flat heads that I had here at the house. I've now updated both boxes to brass - just looks better. You might want to do the same ...

Also, I did a little light sanding this morning on the front access door so it wouldn't be such a tight fit. The last thing I want is to jar the hive trying to get the door off or back on. Not much, but enough that I can ease it off or back in place.

No frames yet. Anyone? I think those may be shipping from a greater distance.

 

[FlasherZ]

None yet.

 

[FlasherZ]

And here they are!

 

[bonnie]

Congrats! No frames for me ... I have boxes, ready ... watching people in the beekeeping group on fb reporting receiving frames (no one else reporting receiving a box, though).

They look so pretty.

 

[bonnie]

It's been a little hot here ... hives are out of direct sun, have screened bottoms and now top covers, too. Lots of air flow, but it's just hot. So everyone hangs out on the front porch mid-afternoon till dusk, talking about whoknowswhat.

 

[bonnie]

Pardon the quality, had blown this one photo way up & saw something I hadn't seen before. Red liquid. A drone's lifeblood? (Kind of looks like a drone down to the right of the liquid.) What do you think it is? ... little carnivores.

 

[FlasherZ]

Pardon the quality, had blown this one photo way up & saw something I hadn't seen before. Red liquid. A drone's lifeblood? (Kind of looks like a drone down to the right of the liquid.) What do you think it is? ... little carnivores.

That's an awful lot of liquid to be anything but blood. If it were smaller I'd say it was resin (I've seen them deposit small red balls of resin before).

I contacted BeeThinking to see if I could get some of the modified boxes for my flow frames, but they say I need to go through Flow to do it. I originally thought I would just modify some of my own boxes, but with the swarm captures I got this year, I have no more deep boxes left to modify! So I have a note into Flow to see if they can expedite 2 hive bodies from BeeThinking. If not, I'll get a standard body from my local guy and begin hacking at it...

Brushy Mountain cypress hive?

 

[bonnie]

Yep, a Brushy Mountain cypress hive. I used a waterproof deck stain on it. But I'm a convert to tung oil and really liking how much lighter the American Western Red cedar stuff is from Bee Thinking (and beautiful with the tung oil).

Hope Flow can do something for you, but they have the really nice problem of so many orders that anything ordered now is several months out (sound familiar?). Bee Thinking ships really quickly & their stuff is good quality, if you need deeps.

 

[FlasherZ]

Hope Flow can do something for you, but they have the really nice problem of so many orders that anything ordered now is several months out (sound familiar?). Bee Thinking ships really quickly & their stuff is good quality, if you need deeps.

That's why I was hoping BeeThinking could sell me the deep and just apply the Flow tooling to it so that I'll have boxes that work with the Flow frames. If not, I'll just do the mods myself - but if someone else has it figured out already, why do the extra work?

 

[bonnie]

That's why I was hoping BeeThinking could sell me the deep and just apply the Flow tooling to it so that I'll have boxes that work with the Flow frames. If not, I'll just do the mods myself - but if someone else has it figured out already, why do the extra work?

Makes sense, but they probably have a contract in place that doesn't allow them to sell the boxes under BeeThinking's name.

 

[bonnie]

Did your frames arrive? UPS rescheduled my delivery until Monday.

Did you receive your frames yet? I have Flow boxes, but no frames yet. Pretty sure I'm not going to put them out at this point because nectar is no longer flowing, so not stressing about it - any honey produced will be staying out there until next spring, I think.

It's really too hot here right now for bees. Yesterday hit 113. The queen actually left the hive for awhile just to cool off (I watched, she went back in at dusk). I've never seen that before. Hives are in the shade, both screened top covers and bottom boards, covers are cracked open and some of the supers are offset. Anything to get airflow in there for them. While they have multiple water sources, I still turned a mister on for them yesterday and the air was full of bees. It was a beautiful sight. I think I'll do the same today.

I planted a lot more flowers this year in the garden & cut back on the vegetables (four raised beds plus misc. barrels is enough). It's great seeing them all over those flowers.