Just a few thoughts and sharing of ideas and efforts of today.
Currently, I have been focusing on expanding my hive numbers – very furiously!!
14 days ago - I took a queen away from a hive with a frame or two of capped brood into a spare NUC and took it to second property to settle in to new location. The original hive would be queenless with hopefully a heap of fresh eggs to make into queens.
Yesterday in a few minutes before i went fishing inspected the original now queenless hive - found they had made ten queen cells on two frames. Took one frame with 3 queen cells and two more brood frames in another NUC to shift to alternate location. Leaving original hive to finish off the other queen cells it has, and first queen to hatch out to Regicide its fellow princesses before they hatch.
I have been making my own brood boxes out of free timber from a city work site that protected new window glass for a high rise - most are 2mx 330mmx 36mm. Am up to 30 brood boxes made - with enough timber for another 50 before I run out of the free timber – while not the best timber – being free and still manageable, I do feel very lucky to have it. Gives me something to do on weekends anyway.
The focus has been Langstroth boxes and frames (also 1200 frames made by hand from scratch with same timber last year - now all in use), before now starting to buy the unassembled frames and put in those waxed plastic foundation to go in the brood boxes.
My supers are shallow “ideals” in size because the timber walls of boxes is 36mm thick due to the timber I got I for free being that size. So the 'honey super' size is also better for lifting when full of honey
Not that I am harvesting honey – as food resources get shared amongst the splits and such (much to wife's chargin who loves honey in the comb). And my focus is making as many brood focused hives I can, then making more brood hives - honey can come later. the goal is 250 hives - to be my own boss!making my own grafted queens, NUCs and hives
Having said all this I started my bee keeping with Top Bar Hives.
However, steered away from them due to the difficulty of shifting them and the potential damage to comb by the shifting.
I also wanted to swap frames between the Top Bar and Langstroth hives.
The story is getting long……….
For now my full time income job that pays the bills and buys me more bee equipment - is as a Design teacher focusing on CAD and 3D printing. And with thirty or so top bar hives sitting idle (built with student help at my last school)– I used my knowledge and tech skills and equipment to work out a solution to making the Top Bar Hives more movable.
Most of my Top bar hives are 15 frames deep (16 of them), but I had 10 more that are 32 frames deep. Made never intending to move them – bees at the time were an enjoyable hobby, I now want to be a my main income sourceas i move towards retirement.
I cut the 32 frame deep top bar hives in half and added new ends – this to make easier to lift and move - two hives from one.
Then using CAD software I designed connectors to to add side bars and a bottom bar to the Top Bar timber the bees build their comb down from. to create a full frame to support the comb they build.
the images attached are the result.
basically i designed, then 3D printed a connector rather than the weakness of a wood on wood joint of thin timber peices that would be weak also given the angles needed for a sloping sided top bar hive - not 100% strong. The connector also adds spacing advantage with width of connector.
This could have be done many ways, better ways even - but this one uses the skills I have, the gear I had, and I had fun working out the problems etc along the way
We shall see how it all works out.
