DIY Beekeeping Part 2: Make Your Own Feed, Feeder, Smoker Fuel, and More

While we covered the basics of building your own hive components, such as homemade inner and outer covers, rough lumber boxes, and more, in the first installment of the Do-it-Yourself series, this article will dig into a wider variety of do-it-yourself beekeeping equipment and gear.

Making your own bee feed, feeding shim, and feeders

This past fall and winter, many beekeepers found their hives needed some feed to stay alive. Winter patties are the favorite carbohydrate for beekeepers: easy to add, thin, and attractive to bees. There is a more labor-intensive, but less expensive, way to feed solid carbohydrates during the winter: sugar bricks. Sugar prices vary but are currently about 69 cents a pound. That’s quite inexpensive if you don’t count your labor of making them as a cost (that’s usually the way beekeepers do bee math). We make sugar bricks to supplement feeding of our hundreds of hives here at Betterbee. Anne and the Bee Team shot this video to show how you can make your own winter feed:

To feed solid feed when you don't have a deep rim inner cover, you'll need to use a shim. You can easily make your own shim from short pieces of scrap lumber, or by cutting down old brood boxes into multiple shims. The height that you make it is ultimately up to you. Here are the dimensions of the shims that our sister company Humble Abodes makes for Betterbee hive bodies:

• For 10 frame hives: 19-7/8" long x 16-1/4" wide x 1-1/2" high
• For 8 frame hives: 19-7/8" long x 13-3/4" wide x 1-1/2" high
• For BeeMax hives: 21-1/4" long x 17-3/4" wide x 1-1/2" high

When it comes to feeding syrup, the options for what to use as a homemade feeder are endless! Similar to our feeder pails, you can make your own version using a plastic paint can. Canning jars of any size can also be used, but we don’t recommend using the kind with the ring plus disc type of lid. You could use a plastic mason jar lid or a metal lid from a spaghetti sauce jar of the same diameter. With a metal lid, you can easily hammer tiny holes into the lid. If you are using a plastic lid, melt holes into it with a hot nail.

What to wear to protect yourself while beekeeping without buying protective gear

Sometimes you just don't want to fork out the cash to buy a beekeeping jacket and veil or a full suit. Rather than a full-length beekeeping suit, you could try a combination of loose-fitting cotton pants plus a windbreaker jacket or long sleeve shirt. The key idea is that the clothing is loose and cool. A bee’s stinger is quite short, so the loose fabric keeps most stings from reaching your skin. Betterbee’s Head Beekeeper, Anne Frey, likes to wear a shirt with some length so she can tuck it in. While protective clothing is up to you, we always recommend wearing at least a basic veil to protect your head and face. Add a basic helmet and veil to your loose clothes and a whole beekeeping outfit can be as inexpensive as $45.

When it comes to gloves, you have options! Rather than wearing leather gloves, we suggest using either rubber dish gloves or disposable medical gloves. These give you much more dexterity than the leather kind, and you’ll find that you crush fewer bees and avoid riling the rest up when you use thin rubber gloves. Bees have a tough time gripping the gloves to sting, too, so you might expect a lot of stings, but that is not the case. Each disposable pair costs about 70 cents and can be used for a few inspections. 

Make your own smoker fuel

Lighting your smoker and keeping it lit can be a challenge in and of itself, but finding smoker fuel can be as easy as scrounging in the woods behind your apiary. You can use natural materials like dried and packed pine needles, small twigs, cotton, and straw to light and keep your bee smoker lit. While you have many options for “free fuel,” the Betterbee cotton smoker fuel is inexpensive and has received “complaints” that it burns too long (now that’s a good problem to have!). If you have leftover pellets from your pellet stove through the colder months, you can also use compressed wood pellets to provide a long-lasting, consistent bee smoker burn.

Make your own hive lifter to help transport hives with a helper

A hive lifter is a device used by two people to lift up a hive made of a few deeps, or just to lift off a heavy super from a hive. It’s very handy if you have a helper.

The hive lifter that Betterbee Head Beekeeper, Anne Frey, made (seen here) was based on one made by Lloyd Spear of Albany, NY. Inside the long, maple bars are two handle-shaped cleats of strong metal, which poke into the inset handles of a hive box. The crossbar prevents the hinged handles from opening out as the hive or super is carried. 

As with many DIY projects, the materials and exact details may not be as crucial as the key concepts. For example, Lloyd’s lifter had wood cleats, not metal. And his had nicer-shaped handholds, more like wheelbarrow handles. The 3 things to remember for a DIY hive lifter are:

1. The connections must be strong
2. The measurement across the hive between the long handles/bars, and size of the cleat must be correct for your hive
3. The crossbar must be dependable

It's not the strength of a person squeezing inward that keeps the hive on the lifter: it’s the cleats pressing into the inset handholds, and the crossbar holding the two long bars together. Also, remember that the hive needs to be very securely strapped together. Sometimes the position of the hive lifter will interfere with tightening straps, and the straps have to be shifted to avoid that. Keep the straps; just move them and tighten them up again. 

Ironically, if you made your own husky hive handles, they will probably interfere with the easy fit of a DIY hive lifter. 

Do you have some simple DIY beekeeping items that you’d like to share? Write to us and send a few pictures! Or do you have a slight improvement on a DIY we’ve shown? You will think of little helpful touches. Send us your ideas!