Category Archives: Uncategorized

Preparing Nucleus Hive Boxes

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We are selling beekeeping supplies and equipment

Gerrit makes and assembles all kinds of hardware which are currently for sale: deep hive bodies, telescoping covers, solid wood bottom boards, inner covers, frames, and 5-frame nucs. Equipment such as smokers are for sale as well. All are new. … Continue reading

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Hot Wax Dipping Equipment

Today was a long hard working day, about 10 hours worth. Gerrit and I dipped our woodenware in a vat of boiling parafin wax mixed with Brazilian gum rosin. We have a tank setup in the back yard with a … Continue reading

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Busy Making Equipment

I’ve been busy this week making reversible bottom boards for beehives. We sell these for $20 apiece. Of course we use them on our own beehives. If we do not sell any, that is no problem because we can always … Continue reading

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On a warm night

Last night I decided to go out and take some flash photos of some of our small beehives. Believe it or not, there is plenty of room inside the hive for expansion. I think the bees on the outside are … Continue reading

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Making Beeswax Foundation

Gerrit and I made beeswax foundation today. Our foundation mill was made by Myron Kropf, an Amish fellow who lives in Arkansas. He specializes in producing and selling nucleus colonies of small cell honey bees. To make foundation, we melt … Continue reading

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Grafting to Make Queen Bees

Earlier today we went out to our bee yard in Wellborn and made up our “Starter Colony” to start another batch of queen cells. We shook bees off from about 6 or so frames into the starter hive and then … Continue reading

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Another Busy Day

I thought that today would be an ordinary day like any other as I began to paint bee equipment. Then I got a phone call from Gerrit. He had gone to our out apiary to check on the bee hives … Continue reading

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Odds and Ends

I painted the telescoping covers today that Gerrit made. The virgin queens in our homemade incubator emerged today, so that means all the queens in the mating nucs should have also emerged by now, probably yesterday. In another week or … Continue reading

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Mating Nucs

On Friday Gerrit and I made up two-frame mating nucleus hives. We went through our hives, especially the meanest ones, and removed frames of brood and frames of food (where we had them) and were able to make up 16 … Continue reading

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