Honey House plans?

[T W H]

My son and I are in our third year of beekeeping and our honey production has outgrown my kitchen. We started with three hives the first year, then expanded to 16 hives the next, and now have approximately 65 hives.
We plan to stop at 100 hives.

Does anybody out there have a good building plan and equipment layout design for a honey house with room to stage about 100 small supers for processing? I need to have water, electricity, etc.
If there is a publication giving details complete with door and window placement, I sure would like to get one.
Any suggestions are welcome. I would like to build it this fall.

Thank you all.

[paintingpreacher]

I built a small honey house last summer for 20-30 hives. I built it conventional with plywood walls and floors. I would reccomend you build it with concrete floors for cleaning purposes. I looked for a plan but could not find much help.
Where is Saucier? I am just west of Tupelo. Sad to say I have not needed my honey house this year as I have had no honey due to drought. Getting some rain now, maybe things will get better.
Wish you luck with the Honey House..

[Keith Jarrett]

>If there is a publication giving details complete with door and window placement, I sure would like to get one.
Any suggestions are welcome. I would like to build it this fall.

Well, how about a picture. It worth a thousands words.
http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s35/CNHoney/?action=view&current=100_1754.jpg

We put a dain down the center of our shop (80ft) with 1.5% slope floor. Also, what we like is all the utilities come from the ceiling so that your not triping over cords, hoses ect...

Good luck Keith

[T W H]

Thanks Painting Preacher & Keith for your suggestions. (Saucier is about 15 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, directly north of Gulfport.)
I probably will build a one room wood structured insulated house with a cement floor with several windows and a couple of doors. I'm thinking something like 14' x 20' ought to do for our small operation, but I thought I should get some input from more experienced beekeepers before I built something too small.
The photos on Keith's link were impressive, but that setup is way over my budget.Maybe someone else will have plans for a complete setup.

[ozzy]

We have a 10'x10' room we move the supers into so they can be warmed before moving them into the extracting room.
The doors are 3' and are required to be self closing. The windows are high on the wall which I prefer. One wall is glass block which is easy to wash down and provides good lighting. Floor is cement which makes it easier for cleanup and mounting the extractors. Walls are cement block which makes cleaup easier and unlike drywall isn't affected by water. Main room is 24'x 14 and that is about right for the equipment needed to extract from 120 supers. Make sure you had a double sink, plenty of power and wide enough doors for the equipment you may consider buying. We get the room inspected and they require self closing doors, enclosed lighting, screens on windows, nonpermeable wall and floor material ie painted cement. They require all wood to be painted and a drain. I am not sure but I think they required a double sink and hot water.

[Barry Digman]

"Well, how about a picture. It worth a thousands words."

Keith, you should get a lawyer. The guy who sold you that bee truck that's parked next to those newly painted boxes ripped you off. It's not really a bee hauling truck.

[Keith Jarrett]

coyote,

But, you dont have to stop at weigh station :)

[Lew Best]

Ozzy wrote:

"Walls are cement block which makes cleaup easier and unlike drywall isn't affected by water."

Is there any coating that can be put on drywall to protect it? Concrete block not practical for walls in my new setup. I recall years ago there was a Masonite type material commonly referred to as "bathroom board"; had a coting (plastic like iirc?) that shed water. I used it for the walls in a dairy barn milkroom & the inspector loved it. Haven't checked on it since then & wondering if it's still available with all the fiberglass showers, etc. in use these days.

I'm planning on putting a new honey house in a building I'm having built right now; slope to a floor drain in a 20 x 20 room & i'm sure it'll hafta be walled off inside (steel building).

Lew near Waco, TX

[T W H]

There is an epoxy paint that is acceptable to paint the concrete blocks with. You can get it at Home Depot, Lowe's and most better paint stores such as Sherwin Williams, Gleem, etc.
I may have to go with the concrete blocks on my building, also, but am looking for a cheaper alternative. Blocks are $1.38 each down here and labor is near $2 each to have them laid. We are all suffering from "Katrina Inflation" (aka: price gouging) down here on the Gulf Coast.

[Barry Digman]

I like metal buildings for shops and such. Ours tend to be bolted to the stem wall, which is 4"-6" above floor level. The walls are insulated like the one in Keith's photos, and then covered with plywood to a height of 4' or 8'. The mounting on the stem wall provides a "pan" style for the floor area and facilitates cleaning. The plywood can be painted, sealed, etc. We're dry enough that we don't have problems associated with wood rot, insects, or rust. I can see where a metal/wood construction would'nt work in wet climates. Virtually every new building here that has a commercial use is metal.

[beegee]

The 1992 edition of The Hive & The Honey Bee has some floor plans and processing pathway diagrams of honey houses.pg 680-684. I bought a 12 x 16 shed, but it's going to be too small for an extracting house. I want to build a 24 x 24 with a loft for storage, concrete floor, FRP walls and ceilings. You can make a small space work if you design the flow. My plans now are to take one of my new concrete-floored 14 x 24 barn shelters and make a flow-through honey house, where I put full supers in one end and pass empty supers out the other. I'm still trying to figure out where to store spare equipment.

[jjgbee]

What type extractor? Have you seen Cowan line of parallel radial extractors. My line was 10ft long and only stuck out from wall 4 ft.They now make a 27 frame machine that is self contained from uncapper to spinner. My honey house was in a 40 ft container that was elevated to truck deck height. 30in. Honey was loaded into hot room. BIG DOORS ON END. Extractor started 12 ft back on north side of container. South side of container I stacked extracted supers 10 high X 9 stacks. That left 4ft down center. My operation pumped the honey outside onto a truck hight dock into open top barrels with a special lid with inlet and alarm to notify me when full. This operation was great for 30 to 80 barrels a year. The shipping container was aluminun. Cost $3,000. The Cowan 27 will run 3 boxes every ten minutes.