Robo’s World

I just finished building 20 double 5 frame nucs that can be disassembled for storage and/or transporting. I used polystyrene deeps as they can be knocked down and reassembled in about 1 minute. I built a simple bottom board out of 1/2″ plywood with 3 inch entrances on opposite sides.
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December’s Wildlife Pro Network Beekeeping podcast will be a discussion on Making Products from the Hive with our special guest Monica Warner.

Monica Warner is the co-owner of The Carolina Bee Company. She and her husband, Todd have been keeping bees since May of 2004. They are a small beekeeping operation located in Franklin County, North Carolina (about 20 miles north of Raleigh).

This little enterprise was started with just two hives of honey bees. Over these handful of years, the Warner’s slowly expanded the number of hives as well as their experience.
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Special Thanks to Jim Hensel for sharing this idea, photos, and directions.

Background: I am making my own hive boxes. I have researched handles and the choices are as follows:

1. Cleat
2. Dado slot
3. Canoe shaped routed pocket

But I wanted something more. I noticed that many “store bought” boxes have a routed pocket, but the bottom side is sloped.

I live where it rains a lot and this sloped bottom handle seemed to avoid water pooling at the bottom of the slot… I WANTED THIS STYLE HANDLE.

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I have recently teamed up with Robb Russell from the Wildlife Pro Network to coordinate and co-host the WpN monthly beekeeping podcast. The podcast is on the 2nd Thursday of the month at 8PM EST. You can check out the upcoming podcasts and listen to the recorded podcasts here.

I’m always open for suggested topics for future podcasts and if you know someone that would be a great guest, please let me know.

It’s springtime and a lot of folks are eager to expand their apiary by doing splits. Splits are very popular since they are “almost free”. Problem is, a good portion of those doing splits use the “walk away” method because it’s easy and cheap without thinking it through.

Bees will rear queens in three different circumstances. Swarm queens, supersedure queens, and emergency queens. Swarm queens are reared when a colony is booming, resources are plentiful, and the colony is ready to initiate a natural split. Swarm queens are reared out of desire and not out of need, and are also reared vertically in queen cups. Since swarm queens are initiated by bee when conditions are optimal, the results are quality queens.
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