Beekeeping: Salvaging hives

This past Christmas I received perhaps the most personalized gift I have ever been given.  My sister-in-law paid to send me to a one-day beekeeping school so that I could get started keeping bees.  I don't think everyone would be as buzzing with excitement as I was to get such a gift.  

The class was great and I learned a great deal that I am excited to try out.  Above all, I learned that there are as many ways to keep bees as there are beekeepers. 

I came back excited to begin and met with two friends, Andy and Ben, who were also interested.  Then we looked at the startup cost.  Buy the hive and all of the equipment would cost us about $700 and then we needed to buy the bees.  Disappointed, I mentally started to put off beekeeping until I could afford it.  I've already taken on too many hobbies this year.

However, just when I was giving up hope, luck struck.  

As many things happen here in PA, a friend of a friend knows a guy who...used to keep bees but stopped and had several old hives that he was willing to give us to get started.  The only issue was that they had been sitting under tarps outside for several years and needed some care. 

So we headed out and picked out enough boxes for at least 4 hives.  One interesting thing about this beekeeper was that he only used deep hive bodies for his hives.  Most keepers use these boxes for the brood part of the hive.  That is, the bottom two boxes that contain the eggs of the hive.  Then, they use honey "supers" on top for the honey.  Supers are not as deep and fill with honey faster.  We may invest in them or see if this method of deep supers works.

All in all, the hives were in good shape once we cleaned them up, sanded them, and then put a fresh coat of paint on them.  I found a website that recommended this method of putting the boxes on boards across two horses so that you can rotate them and paint all four sides.  

Probably the most pain staking process was removing the comb from the old frames.  Many of the frames were beyond salvage unfortunately, but we were able to get enough for at least two hives.  

The previous beekeeper had used wax foundations wired into the frames.  This, it seems, is ideal because the bees smell the wax and feel at home.  However, it takes more work to install the individual frames with wire.  

We decided on wax coated, plastic foundation for this first hive.  Hopefully, we can eventually try out both and compare.  

You can see in the picture above that we saved the comb.  I tried melting it in an old crockpot to see if we could use the wax.  All I got for the trouble was a kinda nice smelling black mass of disgusting goo.  We dumped it and Andy made a joke about an shame-faced bear getting caught eating it..."Don't judge me..."

The next step will be installing the bees.  We ordered a nuc (5 frames of eggs with bees and a queen to get the hive started) from Green Mountain Apiary and it should be ready mid-May.