The Hives Have Arrived

No bees yet. Just the woodenware. The bees will be ready for pickup on April 25th. Today I drove to Thornton to pickup the hives from Plan Bee. Kathy (proprietor) was very friendly and generous. She offered lots of advice and enthusiasm for beginners.

We got them home so we could get a coat of paint on to protect them. The kids insisted on helping so I emphasized how we needed the original coat to be thorough and neat.

Here's Ashlyn working hard coating the screened bottom for one of the hives.

Kyson is working on an outer lid. The frames are piled up waiting for the foundations to get installed.

I had a light green/grey color leftover from some other project. There was no extra cost in paint. Plan Bee had painted hives available that would have cost more. Hailey helped with these boxes and lid.

These are the medium frames with white foundation cards. The black foundation cards in the shadow go to the deep frames. Installing the foundation was tricky. The frames are light weight and the medium foundation was difficult to flex into place. The deep frames were considerably easier. As fragile as they were, I managed to get them assembled without issue.

This is the assembled beginner hive. I carefully touched up any bare spots as I put both of them together. I put them inside the barn so other creatures don't make a home there until we get the bees installed. Hopefully we can get them decorated with some kids' graffiti before the bees make it a home.

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