A thatched spaceship ... that'll be no problem during re-entry!
Good thinking.
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A thatched spaceship ... that'll be no problem during re-entry!
Good thinking.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk 2
That is in fact a heat shield made from a top secret patented alloy which may look a bit like thatch to the unsophisticated.
Incredibly, there is stuff all over the internet claiming the mission was faked.
Shot in a Holywood studio, that's Holywood Co. Down just outside Belfast where Belfast BKA meets on the second Monday of the month.
Last edited by Jon; 31-07-2013 at 07:31 PM.
Moved the second and third hives into the bee house tonight. We had a bee moving party - move bees, paella afterwards plus some plonk of course. All seemed to go well - will see in the morning. Now have three hives and one nuc in there. All going well but need to get some lighting sorted as the nights get longer. Solar or wind powered?
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Well as promised here is the Drumguish Bee House. Its been occupied for about three weeks now and of course there are some modifications to be made especially with the positioning of the hives - to get them flush up to the entrances we put some blocks on each side but of course this means its difficult to replace brood boxes or supers without crushing bees. However it is really important to get the hives flush to the entrance or you find a puddle of bees on the floor inside. One query Kitta had was regarding working a big colony within the house. Well we have been surprised how quickly the bees disperse out of the windows - 10 mins and the whole place is pretty clear.
photo-6.jpgphoto-10.jpgphoto-9.jpgphoto-8.jpgbeeh7.jpg
1. Windows opening up and out -as per Kitta's suggestion as bees always climb up - thanks Kitta a great suggestion.
2. Interior with hives along one side and work bench and storage on the other
3. Front - three hives, one apidea and one nuc
4. The colour coding was to help the bees find the right entrance after they had been moved
5. Interior - Kitta you can see the blocks holding the hives in place in this pic.
Still to be added - some lighting for winter possibly solar and a sedum roof next spring.
Last edited by Bridget; 30-08-2013 at 10:52 AM. Reason: pictures not loading properly
Wonderful! Got to go, but I'll have another look tomorrow.
Kitta
That is a really lovely and well-made bee house, Bridget. Some of your photos did not display - can you reload them as I would love to see more.
I don't quite understand the problem with the blocks, but might this diagram from Ted Hooper's original flower book, 'The Beekeeper's Garden', 1988, be of help? I could not attach it to this post, so follow this link.
Kitta
I have a serious case of shed envy.
Is there a cure?
It's good to see more photos of the shed, Bridget. I can now see the problem with the blocks. I think the Ted Hooper plan might help: move the boxes away from the wall and create connecting tunnels from the hive entrances to the hut entrances. That will give you more space to move roofs and supers, and the bees, when they leave the hive, can only go one way and that's out. They won't get lost.
Kitta
The 'connecting tunnels' is easy to implement ... I did this with mini-nucs overwintering in a greenhouse last year. I used 40mm diameter drainpipe but smaller would work just as well. It should be opaque to avoid confusion. It should also be flush to the outside wall ... I nailed a small separate landing board underneath each entrance and had entrances about 30 cm apart and there seemed to be little confusion or obvious signs of drifting. Make sure they slope downwards from the hive entrance to the outside to avoid driving rain causing a flood!
An additional advantage of an entrance tunnel is that, with a little ingenuity, it should be possible to block the exterior and interior 'ends' of the tunnel and so minimise bees escaping when moving hives. I lacked this ingenuity but intend to give it a bit more thought.
I used a glue gun to stick the drainpipe in place, semi-permanently attached to the building wall, allowing the hive to be moved as needed. The beauty of a full hive is that it's heavy enough to not move if accidentally knocked ... this doesn't apply to mini-nucs as I learned to my cost
Great pics Bridget ... like Bumble I'm suffering from shed envy.
We've had a weekend of work on the bee house. Changing the entrances to the hives and how the hives butted up against the entrances
mainly as the driving rain had caused the wood to warp and small holes were appearing in the wrong places. We,ve also been given some fancy corrugated roofing by a neighbour who had some over after he had put up his new shed kit roof. Despite wanting a sedum roof I think this will be better in the long run. Thats next weekends work. Nice weather, lots of bees flying and bringing in pollen so fingers crossed looking good to go.
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