The Bee Guide to Cosy Housing

Home is a place where we often spend more than half of our lives. All the most important stages of life revolve around home: as little barefoot babies, we run around the rooms and explore every nook and cranny; as we grow older, we come home to rest and relax; then we chase our own miniature replicas around the house; and finally, at home, knitting warm socks for our grandchildren or preparing the table for the big family to sit down at...Home is much more than just a place. It is the beginning of everything. Bees turn this wonderful circle in a month or two, so they know how to make a home a true oasis of cosiness like no other. With a little help from us, of course, which is what we're going to talk about today.

Natural = cosy

Even though we live much longer than bees, we should learn a lot from them when it comes to furnishing our homes. First of all, don't "stick" synthetic products to bees. Their homes are made entirely of natural wood, and they furnish their rooms themselves using classic styles beeswax architecture. So, before you build an apartment building for bees, popularly known as a multi-storey hive, first prepare good soft wood. Softwoods (spruce, pine) are best for this purpose. The sawn boards must be well dried, i.e. dried in a special drying oven or kept at home for at least a year. Otherwise, the apartment block will leak, the walls will crack or warp and the bees will not thank you for it. Before starting to build the house, we glue together boards about 1 inch (~2.5 cm) thick and sand and sand them well. Bees are naturally very gentle, furry creatures, so they like soft houses too.

Good foundations - half the work

It is probably not unusual for us to say that it is essential to start with a good foundation. If we pour our foundations deep into the ground, making them as solid as possible, it is the other way around for bees. The foundation of a bee colony is the bottom of the hive - a hole. This is necessary because there will be no air conditioning in the house and no cleaner working around the clock. So first we make a sturdy frame, mould it well so that the corners are tightly fit together, and then we attach the breathing grids to it. The meshes should be about 3 mm wide to keep the bees safe, cool and easy to remove any unnecessary material. The bottom frame of the hive should be ~ 45 x 50 cm.

Once the foundations are in place, we can start building the walls. What makes a multi-storey hive special is that the number of storeys is based on the strength of the colony. And although all the floors are made in the same way, the most important one is the first one, twice as high as all the other floors, which is never changed, where the bees raise their children, care for the queen, store their bread, and spend their winters - the nesting floor. It is made from the same soft boards, the width is adjusted to the sides of the bottom and the height is about 31 cm.

            Before bolting the hive walls together, we make sure to apply a special wood glue to each joint. We then screw everything together tightly and protect the exterior from the external environment by applying an environmentally friendly water-based paint. We do not recommend painting the inside of the hive, as bees are happy to coat it with their own natural wood embalming agents, and seal any gaps with a strong antimicrobial charge. bee pitch. Considering how to paint the outside of your hive? Bees are not fashion-conscious and like the classics, so don't paint your hive in this season's most popular colours, don't add circles, and save your artistic skills for someone who will appreciate it. As the bee only sees yellow, green, blue, white and brown, you can make it easier for it to find a home and not be left behind by painting the hive floor in one of these colours. In addition, to prevent bees from hitting the neighbours' door, as sometimes happens to the average Lithuanian after a fun evening out, hives in the same area should be painted differently, with different colours for the ground floor and the storeys, and avoid a nice neat and uniform look to our eyes, but real chaos in the bees' world.

Once the small square house is made, the most important work is to mill the handles and the inner edges of the hive into which the walls - the frames for the honeycomb - will fit. The handles are milled deep enough to be easy to pick up, because during the actual work, the whole floor of the hive with the honey can weigh more than 20 kilograms. There should be as many frames as there are frames on each floor - 10. The more solidly we build the inner walls of the hive, the more easily it will withstand earthquakes when we are up and down again and again during the summer tending bees and digging for honey.

Wall finishes - the work of bees

Although the bees will make the walls themselves, to help them, we need to line up the hive frames neatly with the wall blocks securely attached. beeswax plaques - in the areas milled for them. The frames are made of four pads between which the wire is stretched. This will reinforce the entire honeycomb with the honey bees' honeydew. This is important not only during the honey swirling process, but also when the frames are constantly being monitored and moved from one place to another, and when the hives are being moved. It's not fun when the walls you built in your own home start to fall down. The frame is rectangular, but the pad on one side sticks out to the side so that it is easy to insert into the already milled hive wall brackets. Once the frames have been made, we always check their stability and fit in an empty hive body.

Fitting out a multi-apartment building

Once all the parts of the hive have been made, all that remains is to assemble it properly. Ten frames are placed on the ground floor, with special queen bars on top, which only worker bees can pass through. These bars will separate the base nesting floor from all the honey floors above it. Without these bars, the queen would reign supreme and lay eggs in the eyes of the whole hive, and the drones would happily drink honey from wherever they could find it. The nurse bees would have to run around the hive with their heads to take care of the offspring, and it would be impossible to untwist Honey - unless you like to eat it with small deli worms. After these grids have been placed, place the honey floors with 10 frames. Place one first. If we see that it is almost full of honey, we put another one, and slowly over the summer we build a real skyscraper, sometimes even taller than ourselves.

No matter how many floors we build, the top floor is always crowned with the one thing no house is without: a roof. Bees like tin roofs insulated with foam and special heat-reflective foil. The tin will protect the hive from the rain, but will quickly heat up on a sunny day. Foam, which is an excellent thermal insulation material, will help to keep the hive from overheating. Finally, to keep the bees cosy, the foil will reflect most of the heat from the hive from the roof and will not evaporate easily. It is important to remember that even though bees are small creatures, they do not get cold. Only we are cold. Therefore, we do not recommend additional insulation for their hives.

Founding

That's the kind of hive that's definitely not a chore to put a beautiful bee colony in. Especially if the hive is lovingly made. Wherever you choose to place your colony, it is important to build the hive as straight as possible. Brother beekeepers build their hives in groups of 5-6 . They are stronger in groups and less distracted by wind and other harsh conditions. The hives are placed on special metal legs that raise the hive off the ground and allow the bees to enjoy natural ventilation. Once the bees are established, it is very important to provide the hive with supports. These are also the ascent and descent paths for the little workers. In the workplace itself, the bees can bring nectar from several kilometres away. Once they have drunk it, they are not only significantly weighed down but also exhausted by the long journey. The hive is a place for the bees to land, rest and slowly make their way to the hive. In the absence of a landing stage, not all bees have the strength to fly into the hive, some fall near it and unfortunately die.

Home is home, without home we are not well... Not well for us, for the bees, for the animals and for the birds. Every living creature, even the smallest one, is looking for that one place where they feel safe, welcome and strong. If the hedgehog is strong in its spines and the bear in its claws and jaws, the bees are strong in their unity. And that unity, like nothing else, makes the little square house the safest, best, warmest and sweetest place in the world for them to come back to... After all, after a day's work, it is only in our own home that we finally find peace, where even the most sensitive of hearts can find tranquillity.

Hive builder's kit:

• Hive frame size 45 x 50 cm;
• Dimensions of the ground floor sinels: 2 walls 45 x 31 cm and 2 walls 50 x 31 cm;
• Dimensions of the walls of the other floors: 2 walls 45 x 15,5 cm and 2 walls 50 x 15,5 cm;
• Dimensions of ground floor frames: long top stick 47cm; 2 short sticks 29cm; bottom stick 41.5cm.
• Honey dimensions of tall frames: long top stick 47cm ; 2 short sticks 13,5cm ; bottom stick 41.5cm