The Farmer's Market a go and BeeHive to Show!

Wew I am running out of catchy titles. We have been working our tails off with some good results and some not so good. But on the whole, we are progressing. A friend of mine showed me this site beesource.org and said that he thought I could probably build my own hive. Well So far he's right, I went there and got the plans to build the hive and its coming along. I have been reading book called Backyard Beekeeper that has a lot of good information in it. I have made a few modifications to the beesource.org's design by looking at the Backyard Beekeeper Book. So if you would care to see a few pictures I will show the progress. I am not finished yet but I am well underway.

So mark the boards to cut to length. Cut the boards to length. I am using a hand saw because the Skill saw of mine is not accurate.

After all are cut to length, no rip them to the proper width. I dont have a lot of tools (more than most but not a carpenters shop) so I rigged up this bracing to hold to pieces at the same time.
Ah Oh, Look out I have a power tool! Its a plainer that turned out to be much easier than cutting the boards to width. I just plain them off to width -It was much easier and faster then hand sawing.
I later decided to get goggles on because the wind was blowing sawdust into my eyes.
Sand the edges flat.
Mark the box joint lines
Now I normally use a scroll saw for this but on this box I broke the blade right as I was starting so since its like 30 minutes to town I thought that I could save time and just get out the coping saw. It worked but I wouldn't recommend it for them all. The joints were not as nice as the scroll saw joints also.
Finished board.
Glued and pre-drilled holes for nails in each joint.
Example up close of joints.

Here is the modification I made to the original plans. They called for a piece of plywood to be placed in the bottom of the landing pad. I had researched this and decided to put screening on the bottom of the hive so that I could monitor for Verroa Mites.
This picture is kinda blurry but you can still see the groove that the white piece of something (wood or plastic) will slide in underneath the screen.
Well here is where I am now. I am working on the roof and I decided to change that too from the original drawings. The original drawing had this as a flat roof. I dont think roofs should be flat because it invites water to leak. Sure I could set the hive on an angle but this is better. Also makes more room to vent heat so that it is not so hot in the hive.
So now all I have to do is make an inner cover, paint the whole thing, and buy the frames and the foundation and I am ready to go. The fenced in area is set up to keep the bears out (yeah right!) and its a great spot.

Okay, to switch gears on you, we went to the Greater Springfield Farmers' Market meeting last night and we were accepted to sell there. That is good because they have a capped membership at 96 vendors and we happened to get there when they decided to up the capping to 100. What number were we? Yes you guessed it 100!

Thanks to an individual who noticed my lights were up too high, I have taken his advice and lowered the lights. When its nice outside I take the seedlings out to get good light.

Started another plot. This one is for sweet corn. It will be the biggest plot when I finish. Right now its 20x26 and I plan on planting a set in there and then tilling more and planting more in a successive timing so that I have corn at various times of the year and not all at once.
Produce isn't the only thing we grow here at our place. Those Darn Rocks!
Well I hope you enjoyed the viewing. We have lots more to do so stay tuned!

Drop a comment if you can thanks.