Home Improvement

As indicated in previous posts, there's a chance I will end up with more than one beehive. If this is the case, I want to do something more than just sit them on cinder blocks - that's OK for one hive, but it's a little bit too white trash for my liking.

So I decided to do something more. I built a bee bench - a framework to hold the hive(s). Here it is:


It's made out of pressure-treated 2x4's, and is five feet wide and 17" deep. I chose those dimensions to be able to fit a couple of hives and 1 nuc on it, if need be. It sits up about 14 inches from the ground.

So here's the before shot:


and here's the after shot:


Much nicer!

I felt sorry for the bees a little. I spent 45 minutes poking around in their hive for the inspection. Then a couple of hours later, I mess with them more to move them on their new bench. In order to do that, I had to take apart the hive (layer by layer) and move it out into the yard. Then I placed the bench (I didn't have to do much to find a flat spot, good thing). Then I reassembled the hive layer by layer. Some of the bees were starting to get agitated, so I'll leave them be for a while!

As a side note, I wanted to clear out a mound of grass clippings that I had piled up to the right of the hives (this was before I had bees). So earlier this morning I put on my bee suit and started digging up the mess of weeds and grass clippings. I had the suit on just in case, but the bees had no desire to bother me (I wasn't too close to their hive, and I didn't have anything noisy and objectionable).