I’ve always wanted to keep bees. When I was planning my homestead, beekeeping was at the top of my want to do list. Keeping bees fit some idealistic fantasy I had about homesteading, I pictured a peaceful hive busily buzzing around my yard, somewhat near my garden and clothesline. I am still working on the picturesque part, but I truly love the bees!
From a practical standpoint, there are multiple reasons to keep bees; bees pollinate your garden and flowers, they make you honey, potentially provide you with candle wax, and they’re truly fascinating to watch. If your interested holistic medicines honey has antibacterial and antiseptic properties and has been known to help with.Raw honey contains bee pollen, which is known to ward off infections, and may provide relief from allergies and boost overall immunity. Honey’s ability to prevent allergies is based on a concept called immunotherapy. Essentially it works because the bees in your neighborhood go from flower to flower collecting pollen that causes you to suffer, but when you consume local raw honey, you also consume that same offending local pollen after a time you build a resistance the offending pollen and your allergy symptoms are reduced. Neat right?!?! Bees are amazing!
Tips and Tricks
Like always, you have a good plan and then after the fact, maybe your plan needed some tweaking. So some improvements to our original plan.
1. Number your top bars (see photo below).
As the bees create their own comb, their combs won’t always bee 100% straight, so it’s best to put the bars back in order in the way the bees built them, so the combs fit together well. And I’m telling you now, there is always a bit of a panic when bees are buzzing around your head, you won’t remember which bar went where, so number them.
2. Straight Combs Require a Guide
We discovered that the bees comb were not straight when they bees built with the just the saw kerf in the top boards. The combs were very wavy and wasted space in the top bar so the second year we tried something different. We obtained some beeswax from our local farmer’s market and some wide/large craft or popsicle sticks. We carefully melted the wax (since it’s flammable) and poured it into the saw kerf using a slightly squished tin cup from an antique store. We also dipped the lower half (width wise) of the popsicle sticks and jammed them in the saw kerf. Make sure and leave about 1″ on both ends of the top bar (see below) so the bees don’t build their comb to the ends of the top bar attaching it to the walls and making the top bar and comb very difficult to remove when you need to check your hive. This method worked like a charm and the comb was nice and straight.
3. Cold Springs
Here in Fairbanks, our springs can be very late. This year, in the last week of April, it is still freezing at night and below 50F during the day. Because of these potential late springs, I like to help my bees out a little bit and give them some insulation. So we made a foamboard boot to go over our top-bar hive. And because we’re a classy kind of folk, we’re looking to make this hive cheap, and Fairbanks people really like their duct tape; I made the boot out of leftover pieces of foam board I had sitting around my house from other projects, and duct tape. I put a layer of foam board above the top bars and under the roof, and duct taped the boot over the body of the top bar hive. I also permanently glued foamboard to my follow boards.
Roofing and other works in progress
Like all of our projects on our homestead, our beehive is a work in progress. We’re constantly fiddling with things and trying to make it better. In our original beehive design, the bottom board had a hinge on it so we could swing it open and see what was going on from underneath. I never could see anything even with a flashlight so I gave up on that idea. We also never did find a great design for a roof. The first year we had a large chunk of rigid plastic we placed over the top bars and weighted down with chunks of wood and rocks. Of course, the wind blew it off one night. We currently have a monstrosity of a roof. It’s peaked, shingled, and literally weighs at least 40lbs and requires two people to put it on. Not ideal but it never blows off. We also had our entrance holes originally in the middle and then decided it was easier to manage the hive with the entrance holes on the end. With the entrance holes on the end, you have to remove fewer top bars to check on the nest and it was easier to fill up the feeder in early spring.
Overall I was happy with this design, it was cheap, easy to build, the bees liked it, and it’s been sturdy now through five winters. Let me know if you ever come up with a great roof design, I’d love to try something new for mine.
