Gee's Bees, LLC

We put together some deeps this fine Spring-like day in mid-February. Managed to cob the table saw together enough by bypassing the switch in order to get some grooves cut inside some deep boxes in order to promote the bees to make propolis envelop in their brood box. We've been following some work by Dr. Marla Spivak that there may be some benefit to propolis and viral protection. We'll see, wasn't much of an investment in time so not much to lose. So now that the boxes are grooved, glued, and stapled, we then set out to get them dipped  Eco Wood Treatment . We also got a chance to get the bottoms dipped,  🔨 Bottom Boards , and the lids,  🔨 Lids . All but one lid that was placed on Hive 21 after being toppled by the tree falling incident,  🐝 Storm Damage , we will have to remember to get that dipped when we get a chance to get into some hives. Speaking of which, hopefully, the weather might cooperate enough this weekend. Forecasted to be 58° on Saturday may ...

You cant have Bottoms with no Tops. I suppose you can but that would be a different  website .  These are pretty straight forward and we had some rails leftover from the Bottom Board Build , so making the cleats was super simple by just opening up the dado a bit to fit the ends of the AdvanTech. We had enough of this leftover to make (4) Lids, and I think we'll buy the other two ( Migratory Top Feeder - Beez Needz ) the AdvanTech is running $85 a sheet now which is still crazy expensive.  We are making progress getting the girls some new Diggs in time for Spring and making the preemptive swarm splits,  The nucleus method - The Apiarist .

Starting the New Year off right, catching up on some half-finished projects namely assembling up (6) 8-Frame, Bottom Boards. The rails have been cut out for about 6-months now, sitting in a pile in the corner of the Bee-Shed collecting dust, so it was high time to get these assembled and ready for the season.  Our design is pretty much shamelessly copied from  Roger's Shop , he had a great video putting these together using cedar fence pickets for the floor and we used furring strips for the rails to help combat the crazy lumber prices of late. We opted for the simple version (without the front face),  Custom Beehive Bottom Boards & Hive Stand - YouTube .  We'll get these dipped after we make some lids and perhaps some Snelgrove Boards . We can also buy some replacement deeps and make it a dipping party as long as we have the  Eco Wood Treatment  mixed up. It felt like it could be the start of the season already. Pushing 75° we actually worked up a bit ...

I'm usually not one to shy away from work. Who am I kidding, the older and fatter I get the more a beer and my recliner look enticing. I've also noticed my internet time has also been sharply curved from porn and sports to bee research and two-finger typing on this silly site. Some would argue that this is a good thing, but I'm still not sure. Regardless, it keeps me out of the bars during the day at least. The nucs have a fresh coat of primer on them and soon will be painted a cheery yellow and a light blue that looks like white no matter how much QB says I have to look at it in the right light. To further my way down the slope of checking my man card at the door, I described yellow as cheery. Demasculation aside, I hate painting (he said in a whiny voice) and those little freeloaders better appreciate their new houses and reward us with a boatload of honey!

After a couple of hours cutting up some old 1/2" plywood we had kicking around the shed Beth put one together. Gotta say it came out good enough for the bugs we hang out with... at least functional. We followed the cut-list from beesource.com  - https://goo.gl/EC2CTH . A few modifications, like having the entrance run the entire width of the box to accept a modified reducer, and I want to run the Hive Cleats all the way around the top to have more land if we want to use a top feeder in the future. Calling this a success, they just need a couple coats of paint and these should work for a few years at least. We do want to put some thought into a hive top feeder to fit. Getting closer to being ready for the Summer Solstice (it's cooler to say that than the beginning of July) to practice some OTS Starts after the flow.