Scot's Hive and Bee Photos

[Scot Mc Pherson]

You can see them and me here. There are 25 photos in all. http://linuxfromscratch.org/~scot/pics/bees/



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Scot Mc Pherson
"Linux is a Journey, not a Guided Tour" ~ Me
"Do or not do, there is no try" ~ Master Yoda
BeeSourceFAQ: http://linuxfromscratch.org/~scot/beewiki/

[topbarguy]

Hi Scot,

Great pictures! The best one is 'Me and My Bees'.

I know you're having fun even if you have to displace some of those banannas. :> )

Regards
Dennis

[Scot Mc Pherson]

I did replace them to where they are now. Behind and in front, to act as some visual cover for when the hives get strong.

[BerkeyDavid]

Hey Scott, great pics! how many of your top bars / hives did you have wandering / cross comb?

[Scot Mc Pherson]

Just the one, but hey its really not that big of a deal. I am training them straight now. They've been in their for 3 weeks. A lot of it has to do with not enough experience on my part to guess what they are going to do.

I have some new insights that I will experiment upon next package installations. Won't really have these issues with TBH NUC installations since they already have combs to start with.

[Michael Bush]

Well, I haven't pulled all of mine out yet, but from what I've seen the combs seem straight. I used a much steeper angle on mine. The saw was set to 45 degrees to make a 90 degree corner pointing down.

[Scot Mc Pherson]

Yes I will be increasing the sharpness of the angle next set. But I think I will go with 120 degress the next time, these are 150-160 degrees. The sharpness of the angle effects the volume of the hive by taking up a few extra cells worth of comb space. I am going to try cutting the angle with a router and leaving the ends of the bars alone. So that the point will be recessed into the top bar. Will help maintain volume while building sharper points.

[BerkeyDavid]

Scot did you put beeswax on your bars? i was surprised how round they were.

Also thanks for the posts, i have one hive i have not been able to find the queen or egg sign but i am being patient, will do another check today. my comb is really pretty straight except for the one hive where the queen cage interfered. Even that hive, what happened is they "jumped" the comb from one bar to the next, but the comb stayed straight on the bar. so i just had to "break" it and squeeze it back.

so far no comb on the walls of the hive, except for some stray comb not connected to any top bar, just a few cells, i scraped it off. probably too early to really tell though.

i coated my top bar splines pretty heavy with melted wax. brushed it on with a glue brush.

I am thinking along the lines of michael to go with just a triangular top, be easier to cut. you could rip a long piece first then chop it to length later.

[Michael Bush]

I cut it sepearte and then nailed and glued it to the bar. Two pieces of wood glued and nailed together seem to warp less and be stronger than one piece.

[BerkeyDavid]

Yeah, would be stronger and would not warp if made of 2 pieces, and that way you wouldn't have to cut off the angle at the end to make it flat to fit inside the hive. Just cut the triangular piece to the inside width. You could still rip them in long lengths then just chop them to size and staple and glue. sounds like a plan...