Glue, hammer and nails ready

A lovely clear sunny day, perfect for a bit of hive building. First on my list was the landing board or hive stand to sit underneath my hive and give my girls a nice ramp to take off and come home too. Most of the flat pack equipment that arrived in my birthday box had little or no instructions, but there are so many videos on YouTube that will guide you through the process of putting things together. The ones I used were by Simon the Beekeeper and Thorne.

Next came the Super box, a square box that your slightly smaller frames sit on, ready for your bees to fill with yummy honey. Again, YouTube guided me through putting this one together even if it did take several watches. At the end of it I was pretty impressed stood back and admired my super box and landing ramp.

Next came the frames. Now despite being shown how to put these pesky frames together during the day in the apiary on the bee course, I find them particularly tricky. The tiny nails they give you to secure your foundation in the wooden frame have to go in at such a bizarre angle to make sure they hold the foundation in place but don’t come out of the wood on the other side. And the nails themselves are bigger than the piece of wood they are going into, surely slightly smaller nails must exist? I made 10 frames and I’d say probably only two would have met the standard of the beekeeping group. I figured my bees might be a little bit more forgiving. We will see.