Friday, November 26, 2010

Building on a budget

So with the economy the way it is, many people are looking for ways to cut cost and save a penny here and there.  I have decided to build my own hives or find used ones for free.  Free is good but most times it takes more time to clean and repair the used ones than it is to make your own.  I have done both and to tell ya the truth building one is more fun than cleaning an old one.

Now before building one I had to find some plans for a hive and decide on what style of hive I want.  There are 3 main hive styles.  There is a 10 frame hive, a 8 frame hive and a top bar hive.  The most common used is the 10 frame hive, so that's what I went with.
I found my plans on www.beesource.com.   They have everything you can imagine for building your own hives.

The advantages for having a 10 frame to the 8 frame is that it holds 2 more frames of course.  But I like the thought that most people use the 10 frame more than the 8 frame.  That means there will be more product for these hives available if i need them.  The only disadvantages it has compared to the the 8 frame is when having to move the hive or removing honey from the hive, its going to be heavier. 

So all I did was went to Lowes and bought some lumber which was 3-1x8x8 and a box of galvanized screws.  Total cost ran me about 20 bucks all together.  
Now if you buy one like I built with a hive stand, bottom board, 2 supers(hive bodies), an inner cover and top cover.  It would cost you around 130 bucks.   So that was a savings of 110 bucks!  Now this is not counting the frames and foundation.  I will purchase that closer to time for my bee to come in.
After assembling it I painted my hive.  Color selection was really hard.  I first asked around about what colors would be best.  After asking around I found out that it doesn't matter what color but my most common responds was, the cheaper the better.  
So I headed to my trusty Lowes and went to see if they had an mistints and sure enough they did and they had two one gallon cans of exterior latex paint.  One was Bright Yellow and one was a white.  Both cost me 10 bucks!  Thank you Lowes!

So here is the finished product.  I'm sorry for the poor quality of these pics.  My cam on my phone sucks.


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