A BEE thread....for those interested in beekeeping.

[mak1]

Don't pressure treat it. Paint the outside and when it s dry dip it in linseed oil Tongue oil or hot parafine with little bee wax. I wouldn't say its bad to pressure treat it won't affect bees but we don't do it anymore.

 

[Serenashome]

Can you use pressure treated wood, or do the chemicals hurt the bees or honey?

We didn't.

We have a hive painted white, and three that are stained and sealed with a fiberglass clear coat (which didn't work as well as we had hoped) we will be painting the other three this year. I would be really hesitant to use pressure treated due to the chemicals. Bees have enough going against them right now chemical-wise.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

We didn't.

We have a hive painted white, and three that are stained and sealed with a fiberglass clear coat (which didn't work as well as we had hoped) we will be painting the other three this year. I would be really hesitant to use pressure treated due to the chemicals. Bees have enough going against them right now chemical-wise.

X2
Definitely, pressure treated would be a bad idea. Just plain pine untreated, unpainted would last several years. Painted, or linseed oiled it would last 20 years or more.
The bees don't even like plastic or metal, if they accepted pressure treated wood it would probably kill them.
After all, aren't the chemicals used to treat wood intended to kill insects? Bees=insects.

 

[waddles99]

I got my tbh a couple days ago in the mail!!! Bees are coming over the weekend. So excited!!

 

[IvanTsary]

Pictures!

 

[mak1]

If its that green copper stuff it won't affect bees unless you spray it on them, but Linseed will last for years and its only like $20/gal and then just take a sponge and go through the inside a couple times. I also had pine boxes no painted or treated lasted 5-6 years.

 

[OEF5]

So we had a very busy day Saturday in the garden. The wife and I were working along, clearing and tilling beds, take a break around 4pm and the wife asks "what's in the top of the mulberry tree?" I couldn't see anything, so she gets up, walks over, stops and says "hey, are those bees?"

I get up, yep it's a swarm from my TBH about 20' up the tree, so I call my mentor who catches swarms and is on the Indiana swarm call list, he comes over and as we are trying to catch them and see if he knocked the queen into his contraption we go through the TBH. So this queen not only filled the hive of about 15 bars full of brood, they had at least 10 queen cells capped in it and LOADS of bees still in the hive.

So I had to split it again, even after it swarmed. It's the only TBH that I have so I couldn't just take brood and stores out and put them in a different hive, we had to do a frankenstein job on it. I pulled a out a bar full of brood and bees, cut it to fit into a langstroth frame, affixed it with rubber bands and did that for one of the bars that had 3 queen cells on it. Shook in some more bees and closed it up.

The bees from the swarm that he knocked into a bucket left the hive we put them in, went back to the tree, he missed the queen. He had to leave for work so I had to do the catching alone, the wife is allergic to bees. I put this bucket on an 8' pole, raise it over my head and balance it, put another 8' pole on it and knock the cluster into it. I did this once and hit is a bunch of times, got a large amount of bees and dumped them in a Langstroth hive. Waited a few seconds, put the rest of the frames in and put the inner cover on, dumped more bees on the inner cover and within 5 minutes they all walked into the hive!!! I put three more bucket loads on that inner cover and just checked them yesterday and found the queen!

So I started the year with a weak TBH, bought a package of bees, caught a swarm, and split the TBH, I know have 4 hives!

@Serenashome has pics of the day on her phone, she can upload them.

 

[waddles99]

It is all assembled, i stained the stand, roof, and body separately though, that is why it is apart. All the assembly is done. The fact that all the pieces are precut and drilled make it so much easier.

 

[Serenashome]

It is all assembled, i stained the stand, roof, and body separately though, that is why it is apart. All the assembly is done. The fact that all the pieces are precut and drilled make it so much easier.

Nice work! Our top bar has a sheet of insulation board in the lid. I don't know if yours came with one but I think that sheet has really helped them through both the summer and winter.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Nice work! Our top bar has a sheet of insulation board in the lid. I don't know if yours came with one but I think that sheet has really helped them through both the summer and winter.

@Serenashome
What kind of insulation board did you use? I was considering putting in a "quilt" rather than insulation unless I can find something more natural in the insulation department (I am a "TF" type bee person.)