2011 Hive Building Day

Friday's prep' work.

Our hero, Pete, in the foreground

Yet another great day's weather greeted this, our third annual hive building day, with glorious sunshine most of the day plus a reasonable breeze to clear the sawdust and help dry the glue.

The biggest event so far in our history we had 18 hives ordered with many more people building on the day

Shall I drill this arm?

Because of a problem with the order caused by a mix of a protracted recovery from my operation and a delay with the sawmill the timber (seasoned, untreated British Douglas Fir) only arrived the day before - luckily just after the Royal couple had tied the knot and got back to the Palace. The delay also meant that they were unable to pre-cut the timber into my specified lengths. I learned about this problem only a day or two in advance and consequently was going to cancel but was persuaded to go ahead by Ray who, along withPete came all the way up from Plymouth a the day before with all Pete's gear to get things ready for Saturday.

Mass production
in full swing

True to form Ray & Pete arrived on Friday just after the timber delivery and under Pete's direction (or should I say control - he was a hard task-master!) the 3 of us set about turning the 57 planks delivered into 300+ prefabricated Warré components. We worked from their lunchtime arrival into the evening and this paid off big time when everyone arrived on Saturday able to start construction right away.

Without Pete's tireless efforts both on the Friday and again all day on Saturday we would not have made the fantastic progress we did - basically completing 15 x 3 box Warrés complete with full Warré roofs, quilt boxes and sump floors - what an achievement. All thanks to Pete's tireless (and very patient) cutting to demand - in it's literal sense as some were most demanding!

Work spills onto the pavement

Thanks
Thanks must go to everyone - to those who brought biscuits, cake and drink to share, those who weren't building but came along to lend a hand, those who made tea and generally cheered us all on when things got a little tetchy. Too many to mention generally but I am sure that everyone would agree that we should specially single out Pete for his endless and tireless cutting to order without whom the day would not have happened and Jon who not only went out for more timber when needed but had done a load of work with his father the week before when we had expected to receive cut pieces which needed routing.

Injured man takes flack!
(Click any photo to enlarge)

I got the impression that everyone enjoyed themselves despite all the hard work and effort but feel free to post a comment if you disagree.

And Finally...

To all those who went away with hives don't forget to finish them off quickly - they may as well be out there in case a passing swarm is looking for a home!

To complete your hive you still need to:

• get that floured hessian cover over the top bee box
• hessian floor and fill the quilt box
• add top bars to the second and third boxes - if you can wait Kevin has kindly offered to make these which can be distributed at the next meeting
• add lifting handles

For how to do this  see this Finishing Touches to a Warré page.

All finished:
And now the pictures of the completed hives start to roll in. Send me yours and I'll add it here:

Kevin's hive - 2/5/11

Emma & Dave's entry.....

Fiona's - set up as a bait hive

Fiona's in situ

© Robin Morris - YABeeP