Making Top Bar Hives from Pallet wood

I promised someone recently that I would show them how I took apart pallets and use the wood to make hives. I was hoping that I could just point them to the NBN forum pictorial posts I had made years ago. Unfortunately it seems NBN forum had some kind of glitch and lost nearly all the almost 3000 posts bar a few. So this post is to hopefully try and put together how I went about it using some old photos I can find.

Tools needed to take apart a pallet.

As well as strong gloves and eye protection you will need a lump hammer, bolster chisel, claw hammer, crowbar and pincers. It is also handy to have some kind of bench to de-nail on although if your knees can stand it this can be done on the ground.

Method

Start by propping the pallet up against a wall with the side bars vertical, placing one foot against the base to keep it steady, using lump hammer and bolster chisel, place chisel in the joint of one of the end bars and the adjacent beam, hammer in until you open up a gap until the chisel meets the nails. At this point switch to the crowbar and prise further. Once the gap is opened enough, move down to the central joint between the bar and middle beam. Use the same technique to open up the middle joint. When both, top and central joints are free from the nails, just pull the side bar down and off the bottom joint by hand.

Move onto next bar and rinse and repeat until you have  stacks of bars and beams.

Take each bar and beam, remove nails and staples using claw hammer and pincers. Any that break off and cant be removed, hammer flush mark with a highlight colour of some kind to protect saws etc..

This will leave you with a considerable amount of wood which can be trimmed,  cut and joined to make perfectly serviceable hives. Even any broken parts can be used as strengthening battens etc.

I no longer have the context of how I made the following hives but I hope these photos convey what can be made. Both this Kenyan TBH and the Warre were made with pallet wood.

The beams from the pallets make excellent top bars.

 This photo shows one having the wax groove added.

Apologies for an incomplete post but I am having to work with years old photo's and a rapidly ageing brain! :)

No Swarm yet!

A May Swarm in Sweden?

One Bee

It has been a while since I last wrote on this blog and that is because there is not very much for me to write about. The six bait hives I set out in different locations were not successful in catching any swarms this last season and there seems to be a distinct lack of honeybees hereabouts. I don't attribute this to anything sinister, just the previous long hard winter which had snow from October 2009 until April 2010 with temperatures going down to minus 35 degrees celsius. I despaired at not seeing any honeybees at all until I saw activity of bees coming and going at one of my bait hives at a neighbors farm. Turns out they were robbing out some old crystalysed honey in the comb of the bait hive. Well at least they cleaned the comb up for me. What made it really bad was that I had not seen one honeybee all year in my garden, not one! Then one sunny day, I was admiring the peacock butterflies on my aster flowers when I spotted a ragged wing old worker foraging on the asters. That sight lifted my spirits and gives me hope for next season. My six bait hives will be waiting to go out again and I am confident of success next year.

Feral Honeybees

I seem to be in a minority of one when it comes to my position on ferals. I am still at odds with all of the posters on the NBN forum at this thread.
Personally, I think if you take the view that all bees are 'wild' and beekeeping itself is not natural for them, and if you keep bees that have been produced by mans' design rather than what mother nature has allowed to evolve in their local climate and flora, then it becomes clear to me which is better to propagate from. Taking a feral colony with it's queen and hence it's genetics is for me a desireable tactic to breed from and allow to repopulate other feral niches. Most ferals are runaway swarms from beekeepers anyway, managed bees originating from who knows where. These bees may have been previoulsy treated with acaricides, anti-biotics etc. In other words bees propped up by pharmacauticals and genetically weak! Are these the bees we should be using or true feral stock that have been known to exist for a number of years untreated and obviously suited to the local environment. If we increase from these true ferals and allow them to swarm and take up these feral niches, we are not commiting a 'wildlife crime' as one poster put it but rather a service to honeybees in the long run. I honestly think that some people can not see past the issue of 'disturbing nature'. Nature has already been greatly disturbed by the fact that we are keeping the bees partly for our own ends. If we accept the fact that this is the reality of the situation then my proposed using of feral genetics to bolster the feral genetics as well as my own stocks is not only desirable but indeed worthy. Rant over!

Bait Hive Success

For the first time this year, I have seen honeybees here in Sweden, and the really great news is they were going in and out of one of my bait hives!

For the second year runnning I have baited a swarm in a tiny old Svea 8 frame hive. It's about the same volume as a single warre box so not within the so called optimum volume for bait hives. I have had success for a few years with smaller volume bait hives so I think the theory is somewhat suspect. I will leave them where they are on my neighbors farm for the next 3 weeks without messing with them, if it's a cast, the virgin can get mated without me disturbing her.

Bait Hives & Leaving the NBN

Today I put out my first bait hive at a neighbors farm a few miles away. I also prepared another which will be set out tomorrow at another neighbors farm. They were both single Svea hive boxes with eight frames, quite small as bait hives go, by volume that is, but one of these caught a swarm last year. The only lure I will be using is the bits of old comb that is still in the frames. My next batch of bait hives will be double warre boxes.
Some of you readers may have noticed that I am no longer the admin on the NBN forum. I have had three separate serious disagreements with three different beekeepers on there so I have come to the realization that the only common factor was me! I guess it is me that is out of harmony with the prevailing thinking. I cannot accept the dogma that is being espoused, dis-allowing certain items for discussion etc. It is my strong belief that you cannot tell someone how they must keep their bees. My way is that I want to show how I keep my bees and the reasons why I do it that way. Anyway, I wish them well and hope they get on better now without my input.

Two Swedish Deadouts

Neither of my two hives in Sweden made it through the winter. The kenyan hive in the barn had a wood shelf collapse onto it knocking off the roof and the insulation. The follower board was away from the top bars and inside all the comb had been consumed by hungry rodents.The warre hive in the beehouse looks like it was submerged in the deep snow for too long. I have been told the snow was at least a metre deep in most places which would have covered the entrance. If this was for a short amount of time I don't think it would have been a problem.But the snow was around for months and the ventilation of the hive was reduced to virtually nothing. Lots of mouldy combs(pollen) and lots of honey that I was able to salvage.These bees had plenty of stores (honey not sugar) so they did not starve. It got down to minus 30 degrees but I think it was the damp condensation with no ventilation that killed this hive. Some lessons learned about winter in Sweden and time to start from scratch here so probably not many more posts to this blog for awhile.

Bee Eaters return & Thermo Bees

Exactly one year ago today on this blog I reported the return of the bee eaters from their winter in South Africa. This evening, I heard them again. I always hear them first, their chiruping sounds are very distinctive. Sure enough they are back, circling over our log cabin and taking bees in flight. How incredible that they return on exactly the same day!

My friend on Facebook and the NBN forum, Gary Fuqua from Illenois in the USA recently had a thermography assessment done on his house. Whilst the guy was there taking thermal images, he got him to take a thermal image of one of his kenyan top bar hives. Gary has kindly allowed me to reproduce the image here. It was 20 degrees F outside the hive when this was taken. You can see the large red area of the winter cluster and the 3 red entrance holes. My conclusion was that it shows the entrance holes ventilating hot(warm & moist) air out. The thermal cycle created by the cluster drives the ventilation of the hive. My theory is that if the cluster of bees dwindled to a less than 'critical mass', the thermal cycle would slow down or stop and hence the ventilation would also stop. Maybe this is this the reason that some beekeepers are seeing mould in their hives?

My Bees have company

Photo taken from my porch.

click to enlarge

The other day a lorry turned up in the field opposite my house about 200m away. They unloaded 4 lines of Layens beehives, at a guess just over 100 hives. Seems my bees will have some company. Luckily there is a good deal of forage just now, lots of spring flowers. An enquiry found that they would be moved on in June. The Vipers Bugloss has begun, lavender and rosemary keep on flowering and lots of other flowers that I have no idea what they are called. I noticed their bees coming to my bee watering pots as that is in short supply around here. There is an open spring about a mile away so they will never go without water but my water is nearer. I console myself by thinking that any virgin queens I may get with caste's may be outcrossed and gain some hybrid vigour.

Modifications to my Perone Hive

Further modifications to my Perone hive include fitting six British National top bars as 'spales' perpendicular to the combs. I nailed 3 to the top and 3 to the bottom of the intermediate brood box. This is to prevent any comb collapse during hot weather.



Here the spales are shown at 90 degrees to the comb above.



Hive complete but still no signs of swarms.

Making a Perone Box from Pallet Wood

Someone on the forum mentioned that my 88 litre version of the Perone hive is too small and that it should be 100 litres plus. I have no more British National Boxes so I decided to make one to British National sizes. This ended up with internal dimensions of 42cm x 42cm x 19cm high, therefore a further 33+ litres. My Perone box will now be a staggering 123 litres, and that is without the supers!

I took all the slats off just one side of this old cement pallet.



Denailed the slats



Cut 4 lengths of 50cm, 4 of 42 and 4 of 19cm



Screwed the bottom parts together like so.



then added the top section. I had to true the last two sides up on the table saw so they were flush with the rest.



I have given a coat of Linseed mixture and hopefully tomorrow it will sit nicely under the bottom National Brood box of my Perone bait hive.

Bees Drinking

These bees were in a container of soil I had dug out of a post hole. The rain had partially filled the container.
+

The Oscar Perone Hive

There has been much discussion here about a vertical top bar hive that is quite different both physically and the management methods employed than the warre hive. I have decided to try one here in Spain as it is also a 'leave alone' type system suited to my needs. I have some concerns about it though, namely is it OK for my race of bee and also comb collapse may be a problem. The manual of instructions provided by Oscar are here and there is a translate facility at the top of the right panel.

My version of the Perone bait hive is a floor stapled to an empty British National Brood box with a further brood box above that have been fitted with BN top bars, some with old comb, some with starter strips and separated by plastic narrow end spacers. Above that is a BN Super with Manley frames with foundation. This configuration is smaller than the recommended Perone bait hive but my version is 89 litres volume which I feel is the top end of the spectrum for bait hives.

Here is my Perone Hive set out with some Lemongrass oil dripped inside and lemongrass gell smeared on the outside. I also painted white around the entrance as with my other bait hives.



If I manage to bait a swarm, I will add another brood box to bring it to about the size Oscar recommends. I am a little uncertain where to add this brood box. If I follow Oscar, it would go in empty under the current bottom box. My concern about comb collapse makes me think I may add top bars and starter strips and put it between the top brood and the super. More thought needed. First catch the swarm!

Mini Bait Hives

The two home made mating hives I mentioned earlier are being put to use as mini bait hives to possibly bait a cast. I know that some people say that the size of a swarm doesn't influence their preference for a certain hive volume but I have had a cast in one of these before. Furthermore I have heard of casts setting up house in upturned flower pots before so I think, as I have them hanging around, I may as well utilize them. Both hives were prepared in the same way.

I put one wider top bar in with an old piece of brood comb waxed onto it. The other six bars have section starter strips and I have set screws on each side of the top bars to give a comb spacing of 32mm. The screws are also utilized with a wrap around wire to act as a hinge between two adjacent bars. I have opened a pair out on this first photo to show that when two adjacent bars are wired together, in order that if they bait a cast, the bars can be lifted out, opened out and easily wired together on the non hinge side. The two top bars opened out are exactly the length of one warre top bar. Therefore the cast can be transferred directly into warre box as 3 full size top bars and allowed to expand naturally without much disturbance.


Click on the photo to enlarge


This shot shows the top bars in position. You can see the wire hinges if you click the photo.



I have stapled a flap of mosquito netting to cover the top bars and make the top bee tight.



A piece of wool carpet as insulation.



Roof on. Notice white paint around entrance and landing board.



A concrete roof tile is put over roof and overhangs all sides. One end is wedged up to shed rain.

No More Papercrete

The papercrete bait hive I mentioned on a previous post has been destroyed by the storm. I have now found two major negative factors with papercrete as hive material. They are not rodent proof nor storm proof! The photo below shows the remnants of the papercrete hive right next to my drawer bait hive. I will now utilize the drawer bait hive in the out apiary where I was going to site the papercrete one. The drawer hive, made from an old cupboard drawer, has a kenyan insert and has baited two swarms in the last 3 years. I am reluctant to put good hives in out stations lest they be stolen. This drawer hive looks like a heap of rubbish and if someone steals it, then god bless them, they must really be hard up! My mini kenyan bait hive was also thrown around by the storm but you can see it is robust enough to take such punishment. No more papercrete for me!

Please excuse my messy workshop!

Mini Hurricane

Last night for over 12 hours we experienced what can only be described as a mini hurricane. The Spanish neighbors said they had never seen the like! Trees broken and torn out by the roots. Concrete roof tiles flying threatening anyone stupid enough to venture outside. I was lucky in that I only lost a few roof tiles, but I just knew that my hives would be decimated. First light when it had settled down. I ventured down to the apiary to find my hives all scattered. After having had a few blow overs last year, I had repositioned some hives close to trees for shelter and leaned planks against the hives but this was just too much! The winds were about 85 miles per hour, it said on the news. The bees were in foul mood at being not only knocked apart but also buffeted by these winds for 12 or so hours. I put back together what I could, even though they resented me for it. I am sure I will loose a few but hope that at least some will pull through. At least the temps were warm and there was no rain.
A sad day for bees but I heard that 15 people had died in France from the same storm. That sobering thought puts it into perspective.

More Bait Hives

The time has arrived for me to start deploying my bait hives ready for the imminent swarming season. Tomorrow I will be setting out 4 x double warre within Layens boxes and 2 single warre + ekes, as mentioned in my previous posts. These will go nearby my home apiary. I have a couple of other locations in which I will put just a single bait hive, hoping to catch a feral swarm. One will be a small Kenyan (about half size)



And another my papercrete box. Both will take standard Kenyan top bars.

This photo shows the papercrete box upside down having repairs done to the entrance hole. Whilst in storage, some rodent had enlarged the hole, gained access and munched on the combs. You can see the remains in this photo. I have already repaired the hole with sawdust mixed with wood glue.



A couple of years ago, I made these two queen mating boxes. I never got a chance to use them, so I stored them away. I found a cast had entered one of them. They drew one comb in which you can see the remains of some brood. They obviously decided to find somewhere else more spacious. I consider this my donation to the feral population. Anyway, it shows that even with a tiny bait box, it is possible to catch bees!

The Beauty of the Almonds