Lets Roll

Today I drove down to Chatam, Virginia to pick up my bee equipment for the upcoming season.  I was originally going to take my wife’s Diesel truck down to Chatam but the rain/snow that was on the radar dictated I used a more covered approach.  It was a 2 and a half hour drive but it probably saved me about 150.00 in shipping.  On the way down I drove  straight through the heart of Christian Fundamentalism as I passed Jerry Falwell’s, Liberty University.  The Darwin Fish on my car exploded into metal shards.

I purchased all of my gear from Dadant and Sons.  What I purchased:

1. Three expansion apiary hives.  Basically all of the components for a complete hive.  Two hive bodies and one medium super tall.
2. A new smoker.  I gave my uncle my other one.
3. New gloves. I gave my uncle my old ones.
4. New hive tool. Same story.
5. A frame lifter.  I have buyers remorse after buying it because it looks like a light weight piece of crap. My other one was also given to my uncle and was as sturdy as Percheron.  That is the pic of the lifter on the left.  This new one, right photo,  is like those mangy ponies you see at Assateague Island National Seashore.
6. Some sugar patties.
7. Six hive frame sugar feeders.  I used to always use the plastic buckets but I thought I would give this a try since I am low on spare hive bodies to house the pails.
8. Three bottom screens.
9. And two children’s books. The Bee Man and a book on honey bees by Eric Carle.  Leia has destroyed the other Bee Man book.

Old faithful.

A picture of crap.

Next item on the agenda is a bee suit.  Dadant has a nice one called the Cricket but they will not let their distributors sell them.  I have to order it straight from Dadan’ts head quarter’s office.  I used to always buy my gear from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm however the shipping would have been atrocious and they did not have the nice little apiary package I was looking for.  Because I am a only a weekend beekeeper I went the route of least resistance.  I could have bought each item individually and hand assembled it like I used to but in our new house we do not have a any good spaces to work carpentry.  I am also feeling lazy at the moment.

On another note I had some one email me about a more primitive form of beekeeping called Top Bar beekeeping.  It is basically a method of beekeeping that uses one long horizontal hive. Top bars are placed at the top and the bees draw the comb down themselves.  The upside is that you get a lot of nice wax for making candles and supposedly the honey tastes better.  Also if you are on a tight budget you could basically make a hive out of your old dining room furniture or scrap lumber.  The downside is you have to destroy your comb in a press to extract the honey and honey yields are typically much smaller.  However, I think it would be fun to try it as a learning experience for new beekeepers or for the famed Guerrilla beekeeper written about in a past article.

The next order of business is to construct two hive stands.  I used these at my uncle’s house with great effect.  It helped keep the hives off of the wet ground and saved my back from snapping in two from lifting 80 pound supers.

It’s almost time.  I am looking forward to this year’s season.

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