Yesterday I dropped off my wife at work, procured some coffee from the local coffee house and proceeded home, determined to make headway on the remaining hive projects. After 5.5 hours of measuring, ripping and screwing boards, here are the results:
It took over 70 feet of cedar, 180 screws, produced a lot of sawdust (which I bagged to use for the quilts), but finally got me over the hump in this 20 hive production project. At this point I'm left with creating some top bar roofs, windows, mounting screens, creating Warre quilts, Warre stands, and a few hundred more top bars. I think everything is on track for the hives to be placed in the first week of April.
Here are some more images of what it's like creating 10 Warre roofs at a time:
On Saturday evening, in preparation for our house warming, I worked diligently to create the first cedar top bar hive of 20 that will be placed throughout the city in April. I wanted to have one (mostly) completed for family and friends to see, as some of them will have them in their yards in a few months! The new wood worked splendidly - just wet enough to be manipulated easily. In addition, the political signs I received from the City of Gresham worked relatively well for the roof. I am quite pleased with the result, and look forward to finishing the rest.
I am trying to build all 20 as efficiently as possible. Therefore I'm building them in mini-assembly line fashion: 10 legs at a time, 8 follower boards, then 6 sets of end boards. This way I can quickly put them together from the store of parts I've already finished. In addition, I'm standardizing the sizing of every piece so that parts are interchangeable. Should I end up with more than 20 hives, I think this added work will pay off tremendously.
Over the past couple weeks I've been mapping out my preliminary hive locations and tallying up the miles if I visit them each weekend from April-September. Due to this evaluation, I am rethinking a couple of my sites and attempting to find more that are close by, or close to other sites. This way I can spend more time beekeeping and less time driving through the season.
For the remote locations that I do not want to give up, such as the wineries in Dundee, I am seriously considering the use of Warré hives for their reduced maintenance needs. This way I will still be using foundationless hives with top bars, but won't have the need to drive 80 miles to Dundee each weekend, thus giving me more time to build, prepare, etc. In the next couple weeks I intend to begin creating a Warré, with the possibility of creating 8 before the end of April.
I expect to have the top bar hives finished by the end of February, this giving me ample time for the rest of the preparations. Stay tuned!
