Nuc Box, Beehives and Life

If you read blogs long enough, you invariable encounter ones where, after so often, it seems like the author must have been conscripted, dead or reading A Song of Ice and Fire, then crying in the corner whilst waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish writing the last two books.

As it happens only one of those things was happening to me and now, through a variety of forces I'm making things and losing some of the acquired apathy I've been feeling for the last couple of months. It's a good feeling.

First thing on the agenda, tomatoes, because what's the 7th week before last frost without tomato planting? Depressing, that's what.

Labeling cups and arranging them by cultivar, we're starting 13 different types, I'm most excited for the Azoychka, Amana Orange and Amish paste. 

We planted about 400 different types, this group is the Amana Orange, and they about a 92% germination rate! We intend to sell about half of the seedlings around 7 weeks, so people can get local heirloom plants instead of whatever Burbee sells to the hardware stores and BORG.

Next stop pollination. Which means either Q-Tip swabbing or bees. I'm lazy and I like honey so guess what I'm doing... 

One of my friends, an avid beekeeper, climber and general badass named Sarah, was asking about a couple of different pieces of woodenware related to catching swarms, and rearing queens. One of the pieces we spoke about was a nucleus hive, which is a small hive or box that can hold about half the frames of a standard Langstroth hive. I built one, like this.

Then Sarah started talking more about bees, and I started getting excited hence this whole sort of revival going on. I got to work scoping out my roof, and building on campus (because they have roofs too) and I started designing my top-bar hive, and continuing the build for the Warre hive I started a while ago.

TBH, I still have a lot of CAD to finish, I'm going to add some sort of quilt/insulating layer like the Warre hive in an effort to maintain temperature when it gets opened up. Which is Warre's nadiring idea to keep heat in the brood nest.  

The Warre hive box. I have a minimum of two more of these, bottom board and quilt/roof to finish. Then maybe build a whole 'nother set.

So, see? Still woodworking, hardly fine furniture though (I think I'm screwing together the next set of boxes, the finger joints are nice, but they use a lot of wood and take a lot of time.) But now I don't feel bad about writing about not-furniture, and it feels great.