Over the winter I had accumulated beekeeping equipment and parts in my garage, since three of the 5 hives died. I needed to do some cleaning, arranging, organizing, fixing, etc. to make things fit better.
Two of the supers were destined for the Sutton hive (which I put on today; see last post). But I still had another hive's worth of parts (and more) to deal with. I also had some repairs to make to various pieces of equipment.
I took all of the equipment out of the garage and stacked it along my front walkway while I checked out what needed cleaning, fixing, etc. Here's part of the stash:
Over a year ago, while I was inspecting one of the backyard hives, a piece of one of the frames split off. It was the piece which assures proper spacing between each of the frames. Without that extra piece jutting out, the frame would get too close to the adjacent one and squish bees (when working in the hive, you often use your frame tool to pry the groups of frames and squeeze them together). I was able to move the frame to the outside of the group of frames, but needed to wait until the bees emptied the frame before I could fix it.
Well this spring I noticed that the bees had eaten all of the honey out of the frame, so I removed it to fix it. Below is my gluing a replacement piece of wood to the frame:
You may ask, why bother? Well, that was a beautiful frame of drawn comb, which is like gold! So I wanted to salvage the frame if possible.
I also had some unpainted bodies I made late last year, and took advantage of the good weather to paint them:
So now everything sits nicely stacked in the corner of my garage (after I gave away a broken push lawnmower that was previously taking up that space).
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