apiary [noun]: a place
where bees are kept

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

In addition to expanding our garden experiments and other projects this year, we decided to start an apiary.

Our desire to keep bees is manifold: they’re excellent pollinators for the garden; they’re an integral part in the working farm we aspire to become; and honey is delicious. Plus, who doesn’t love bees? From fat bumblebees to busy-busy honeybees, they’re all adorable.

We decided to do things a little differently, after reading Keeping Bees with a Smile. Learning about horizontal hives and more natural-feeling (to the bees) methods of beekeeping, we decided to take that route ourselves. Plans were downloaded, lumber purchased, and my father-in-law gave us lessons in how to safely use his power saws. Two horizontal hive boxes later, we learned much and are already discussing modifications for the next set of hives. {I have grand plans to paint them like little houses, complete with barn quilt squares painted on the sides, so we end up with a cute bee village}.

One key difference with horizontal hives as opposed to the more-typical “stacked” hives, is that the frames are deeper. Much. Deeper. Depending on your exact hive plan, the frames can be anywhere from 14 to 18 inches deep. Ours are approximately 15 inches, with a 2-3 inch gap between the bottom of the frame and the floor of the hive. The hive plan we selected is 18-inches wide, the same as the stacking hives, so we’re able to retrofit existing frame parts for our new deeper experiment. We’re learning and tweaking as we go, but our solution so far is adding a slim strip of wood to extend the sides and then inserting 30mm bamboo dowels {or, you know, s’mores roasting sticks} as both the bottom of the frame and middle support.

Of course, you can have all the adorable hives you want, but if you have no bees, you’re probably going to end up with a spider colony {and that’s the best case scenario. I know for a fact that black snakes love empty hive boxes, because mouses love empty hive boxes. We don’t talk about how I learned that, ha}. Following the theme of natural beekeeping, we decided to try and trap native swarms – the idea being they’re stronger/hardier than purchased bees may be. How do you catch bees? With a swarm trap! {Aka: another trip for lumber, and more construction time in the barn}.

The basic premise is you take a swarm trap (basically a very small beehive), place empty frames inside, spray a little lemongrass-based bee bait, and tie the whole contraption to a tree. And then you wait. With any luck, there will be wild bees looking for bigger accommodations before they start the year’s new production, or a colony got too big and has split-and-swarmed. By presenting them our nice swarm traps, we hope to coax them to join our little family.

The local bees are very active already this year; one even climbed into our tape measure’s slot to see if it’d make a nice new home {it was deemed too small}. While we were painting our freshly-altered frames with melted beeswax (as opposed to using foundation sheets), we got several curious bee scouts checking out our progress and even ducking in and out of the swarm traps. Fingers crossed this means our efforts passed muster and we’ll find a colony moving in soon!

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