Part Two: Plan and Prepare for Your Bees

By Quinn Korzeniecki

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about beekeeping, it’s that there are a million and one ways to keep your bees, and everyone has their opinion on “the right way.” I’ll never say that my way is the right way, but all the differing opinions sure do muddy the water when it’s time to make a decision of your own.

My bee co-parent, Tim, and I have struggled with this in regard to our hives. Ultimately, it wasn’t too hard of a set of decisions for us to make.

Wood vs. polystyrene hives

Although we toyed with the idea of polystyrene because of the added insulation to keep our bees cooler in summer and warmer in the winter, we chose wood. Call us traditionalists, but we picture ourselves working on a wooden hive, like beekeepers have since Langstroth hives were first introduced in the mid-1800s.

Deep vs. medium hive bodies

After some back and forth, we thought it would be best for the upper-body-strength-challenged (AKA me) if we went with all 10-frame medium woodenware. Thus, we plan to have three medium boxes as hive bodies and an additional two on deck and ready to use as honey supers.

The “industry norm” here would be to have two deep boxes as hive bodies for the brood and two medium supers for honey production. Many of the beginner kits out there start with this standard setup, but the weight of each deep box can exceed 80-85lbs when full of brood and/or honey! The mediums only weigh about 50-55lbs each when full.

Going the all-medium route, we’ll also have all the same-sized boxes, making them easily interchangeable. The drawback of going with all mediums, however, is that we’ll have a lot more frames to inspect in order to check on the wellbeing of our bees.

*Assembly and finishing: We put together our unassembled medium budget boxes (which are well worth it – the knots were few and very far between), glued the edges with Titebond III interior/exterior wood glue, and assembled the boxes using 7d (2 ¼”) hive nails. We used smaller 1 ¼” nails on the smaller, top corners of the hive bodies to prevent splitting. Click here to check out a fun time lapse of us assembling our boxes (with feline assistance). As for paint, we applied a coat of oil-based primer, followed by a coat of water-based exterior primer, then two light coats of exterior paint. We used Nancy’s instructions on how to paint bee boxes to get them ready to rock!

Frames and foundation

If you’ve done the math, you’ll know that we will have five medium boxes, so that’s coming in at a grand total of 50 frames.

After taking our beginner beekeeping course at Betterbee (highly recommended – we learned a ton from an experienced beekeeper that we couldn’t from just reading a book), we decided to go with medium wooden frames with black plastic and heavy wax for the hive bodies (so we can better see the light-colored brood) and medium frames with white plastic and heavy wax for the honey supers (easier to see the honey in each cell).

*Assembly: We used a frame assembly jig, Titebond III interior/exterior wood glue, and a pneumatic staple gun, with 1 ½” staples, to assemble our 50 medium frames. We then popped our separately purchased heavy-waxed foundation into the frames. I highly recommend gloves for this task – it really did a number on my thumbs!

Other hive parts to consider

In addition to choosing boxes and frames, we also decided on: a standard inner cover, galvanized telescoping outer cover, screened bottom board (to help us test for Varroa destructor – the infamous disease-spreading mite), cedar hive stand, standard and hitchhiker hive tools, and jackets, veils, and disposable nitrile gloves (to better feel what we’re grabbing and help prevent us from squishing bees) for protective gear.

Nervous and excited to get our bees

I’m likening this experience to preparing for a first child – or, more accurately, 10,000+ children. As our pick-up day approaches, Tim and I are getting more and more anxious. There’s so much to learn and we want to get it right. We’ve been reading, planning, and preparing for months, but the true test will take place once we are home with our bees.

Update: We brought our package home and installed our bees into their new home! Because it’s a bit chilly here in Upstate New York this week (rainy and in the 40s and 50s during the day, dropping down to nearly freezing at night), we were sure to feed the bees sugar syrup via our BeeMax Hivetop Feeder. We went with a 1:1 syrup, dissolving 4lbs of sugar into 8 cups of water. It was fun to watch the newly freed bees quickly crawl down between the frames to also free their queen. We are happy to have them on site (literally – we checked them out from the house with our binoculars about 10 times before it got too dark to see them!) and look forward to the adventure we have in store for us!

Next month’s article will dig in to our first hands-on hive inspection!

Your Betterbee-ginner Beekeeper,
Quinn

A Year in the Life of a Beginner Beekeeper Series

Part One: Tackle Your Fear by Experiencing the Wonder of the Honey Bee
Part Three: First Hive Inspection
Part Four: Ask Experienced Beekeepers Questions, Get Helpful Answers 
Part Five: The Beekeeping Journey has Many Twists and Turns, Surprises and Regrets
Part Six: Newspaper Combining, Drone Culling, and Honey Harvesting, Oh My!
Part Seven: Preparing for Winter 
Part Eight: Lessons in Mites and Moisture
Part Nine: The End of a Decade, The Beginning of Something New
Part Ten: Winter Feeding & a Heart-Wrenching Loss
Part Eleven: Eagerly Awaiting Spring
Part Twelve: Exiting Winter Isolation & Kicking Off Mite Management