the ultimate skiddable bee hut

Here about a month an a half ago, Tony Auippa and Emily Aaston took it upon themselves to start building a skiddable bee hut. With thier background experience in park services, they built the main frame a lot like the bridges they have built in the past. An slowly but surely in thier spare time they got the whole building up an roofed.

The two of them did a beautiful job on the joints an over all building of it

one last pic of the upper side of the hut while tony was puttng it together

Here are a couple finish product pics of the skiddable portion once they got the roof done. After they finished with it, they attended a bee class that was put on by Jacob Wustner. Where they recived a few bee boxes, frames, an a few other things necessary to trying to lure in a new swarm of bees.

Then Emily asked me for some help on putting up a electirc fence around the main area of the skiddable, where the bee hives would sit. So we put up what i call screw ons, that i use to help secure my cow pastures, on the main upright beams of the hut. An strung three sides with hot wire, doing top an bottom hot, an every other enter one as a ground. Then we strung the front side with the same idea, but so we could get in an out of the front side as needed.

Here are a few pics of Emily an I attaching the screw ons to hold the electric fence

Here are the screw ons that we used

Here it is with the hot wire all up an ready for the bees

This last sunday Jacob Wustner was nice enough to bring out our own swarm of honey bee. He had his girlfriend Shannon helping him smoke them to keep them calm.

Jake an his girlfriend Shannon getting outfitted to start getting ready to move the bee's to thier new home

starting the moving process

Then after getting the bee's moved, Jake then put on a little how to bee class for us!

A little more of the bee class

So a huge thanks goes out to Tony an Emily for all thier hard work on building the skiddable!

Three questions:
1: Why does it need to be skiddable?
2: Can we see it being ....not sure what the proper word is... skud? skidded?
3: It could be an illusion but it looks like a wind could whip up and catch under the roof and flip it. Is it not really that way or will it be tied/anchored down?

An a huge thanks to Jacob Wustner for bringing out a swarm of bees an putting on an impromptu class for us!

An a thank you for the electric fence knowledge to me! Kristie wheaton...

Cj Verde wrote:Three questions:
1: Why does it need to be skiddable?
2: Can we see it being ....not sure what the proper word is... skud? skidded?
3: It could be an illusion but it looks like a wind could whip up and catch under the roof and flip it. Is it not really that way or will it be tied/anchored down?

Ok 1- It needs to be skiddable to be put in a safe place in the winter months.... an to replace it in the early spring to new food sources

2-Not going to see it being skid right now cause it is not in need of being skid anywhere, but be sure as soon as we do i will get footage!

3- No it must be an illusion because it is very sturdy an very stoutly built!

We need more people like tony and Emily doing such awesome things like this. Thank you guys!

That's terrific! Enjoy the bees.

Hi Kristie - what did you use to wire the hut? I can't tell for sure, but it looks like poly rope or similar, and I am wondering how well it works for bears. We have them here (bees and bears) and I have a 5-strand fence around my apiary now. I am thinking of upgrading to a fence with cattle panels, similar to what is in the picture I uploaded. Thank you for any input!

Aaron

I am wondering what effect the electric fencing will have on the bees.

Philly Duncan wrote:I am wondering what effect the electric fencing will have on the bees.

I'm quite sure you're not alone. I built several hives without any fasteners for biodynamic beekeepers who wanted to avoid any metal in their hives. it's quite possible that bees are able to detect magnetic fields and use them for navigation and/or other purposes. if metal in the hives is, indeed, enough to disrupt that sense, then what might an electric fence do? hard to say for sure, but I doubt it does them any favors.

on the other hand, getting knocked over by a bear or being eaten one-by-one by a badger isn't likely to end well, either.

The bees seem to be doing just fine with the electric fence we put around them. It is just regular poly rope fence that you buy for cows. We put it up with no ground rod. Instead having every other strand be ground so if a critter crawls on it they will get shocked even worse. There are six inch gaps so the bees aren't affected flying in an out.

Cj Verde wrote:Three questions:
3: It could be an illusion but it looks like a wind could whip up and catch under the roof and flip it. Is it not really that way or will it be tied/anchored down?

Even though it looks like it could be a little top heavy, if you know how heavy logs that size are, you will realize that that thing isn't going anywhere unless a tornado picks it up! The roof will come off first!

I would think that monster would be hard to move even with the skids!

I too was going to ask what value you see in making it skidable, as opposed to a static structure. The old adage in beekeeping is you either move the hive 3ft or 3 miles. Anything in between and the bees can get lost, the fly off foraging and return to the old site rather than the new.

I would think you could get the same benefits (animal protection, security in winter, multiple sites for bee fodder) by moving the hives themselves through a series of structures - moving that huge structure, even on skids looks like a mammoth task, especially if there is any slope involved! That said, I'd love to be proved wrong when you do come to move it. Make sure you get good videos!

I do see the logic in the heavy duty critter protection where you are - I'm quite glad we don't have to contend with bears over here in the UK.

Michael Cox wrote:I too was going to ask what value you see in making it skidable, as opposed to a static structure. The old adage in beekeeping is you either move the hive 3ft or 3 miles. Anything in between and the bees can get lost, the fly off foraging and return to the old site rather than the new.

I would think you could get the same benefits (animal protection, security in winter, multiple sites for bee fodder) by moving the hives themselves through a series of structures - moving that huge structure, even on skids looks like a mammoth task, especially if there is any slope involved! That said, I'd love to be proved wrong when you do come to move it. Make sure you get good videos!

I do see the logic in the heavy duty critter protection where you are - I'm quite glad we don't have to contend with bears over here in the UK.

There are ways to get around the 3 ft or 3 miles rule (or 2 ft 2 miles). You move at night when they are all inside the hive. During the night, once all the bees are inside the hive, you put some kind of obstruction (usually a leafy branch) in front of their entrance so that when they leave the hive, they re-orient themselves and can come back with little to no issues.

Moving beehives more than 2 feet and less than 2 miles

This is a subject apparently full of controversy. There is an old saying that you move a hive 2 feet or two miles. I often need to move them 100 yards more or less. I've never seen that it was a problem. I move hives as seldom as I need to because anytime you move a hive even two feet, it disrupts the hive for a day. But if I need to, I move them. I didn't invent all of the concepts here, but some of them I refined for my uses. Here is my technique.

It occurs to me that a lot of detail that is intuitively obvious to me may not be to a newbie. So here is a detailed description of how I usually move hives single handedly. This is assuming the hive is too heavy to move in one piece or I lack the help to do so. But it works so well, I don't even think about using other methods. But if you have help and can lift it, you can block the entrance and move it all at once at night and put a branch in front. I know every time I tell any version of this method, someone quotes the "2 feet or 2 miles" rule and says you can't do it and you can only move them two feet or you'll lose all your bees. I've done this many times with no noticeable loss of workforce and no bees clustering at the old location by the next night.

Practical Beekeeper - Michael Bush

I love compact impact drivers!!! They make quick work of driving screws. I haven't tried the Li-ion by DeWalt so I would love to here your thoughts on them vs the regular battery from DeWalt


I didn't see anything on the skids that you would hook up to it to pull it. I assume there are eye hooks or something to connect a tow rope or cable to pull the shed.


Looks very sturdy and heavy!!


Thanks for the pics.

Chris Gray wrote:

Cj Verde wrote:Three questions:
3: It could be an illusion but it looks like a wind could whip up and catch under the roof and flip it. Is it not really that way or will it be tied/anchored down?

Even though it looks like it could be a little top heavy, if you know how heavy logs that size are, you will realize that that thing isn't going anywhere unless a tornado picks it up! The roof will come off first!

I would think that monster would be hard to move even with the skids!

We anchored our shelter logic structure with logs that size (longer, actually) and the wind still picked it up so the logs wound up inside the shelter instead of outside. Plus, as time goes by those logs will get lighter. Probably it'll be fine.

Philly Duncan wrote:I am wondering what effect the electric fencing will have on the bees.

I've had an electric fence around my bees for about eight years. I haven't noticed any difference in bee behavior except that they are generally more calm fenced then when critters are allowed to scratch at their door or topple a hive...

I've lost one hive due to bear since putting up the fence. Our "soil" is dry and rocky so grounding an electric fence is difficult. I started with four ground rods (one at each corner of the enclosure). Since then I have added a grounded chicken wire mat around the perimeter - that really ensures a proper shock in poor soil conditions. I also bait the fence with folded up pieces of aluminum foil with peanut butter inside and tied to the hot wire. That way the bear will get a zap to the nose or mouth when they investigate. A hungry bear will barrel through an electric fence if they smell something good inside. The fence bait helps prevent that.

Based on the amount of bear traffic near the bees - I am convinced that I would not have any hives if it weren't for the fence. The bear here are stressed and hungry!

3 miles: some of the bees will return home no matter what you do - orientation, branch. How you solve this is to put a lot of young bees and brood in the new hive since the nursing bees will not leave while they have brood to take care of.

I keep wondering how many beehives you could had made with all that wood 5-7 ? It is also a nice pine that bees love.

If you want to do it this way you will need to close it to protect them from the wind. A lot of bees are shown to die in the days when wind is strong.
That is happening a lot during the cold windy spring days.

One point about the design of the "bee hut". I feel that it is not too much "user friendly" since you need to climb in order to have good frame manipulation. Making it 30cm shorter might had proven easier for you to work with them. That way you could work with them from the ground.

My question: how do you get to the actual hives once you have put the electrical wire around it? I don't see any opening type thing. Am I missing something? Ha

Martin Miljkovic wrote:One point about the design of the "bee hut". I feel that it is not too much "user friendly" since you need to climb in order to have good frame manipulation. Making it 30cm shorter might had proven easier for you to work with them. That way you could work with them from the ground.

I know the floor should be at least 30" (76 cm) off the ground for the bees which does make it a little too tall to hop up there. I've solved this by using a 2x4 as a ramp for me to walk up.

Cassie- we have the front separate from the sides an back ...so you can shut off the hot wire an undo the front an do whatever needs to be done.

Gotcha! And is it pretty easy to undo them when you want to get in?

Yes Cassie it is simple to get into

Cj Verde wrote:Three questions:
1: Why does it need to be skiddable?

Does 'skiddable' mean that based on the way it is built it can be moved by a forklift?

Just wanted to clarify for myself.

Making structures like this skiddable is a way of saying "My future self might be wiser than my present self".

Why is furniture in a house not built into the house? What's with the couch design such that a couch can be moved? Or a table? Or chairs?

As is, it is good that this structure is skiddable because it needs to be rotated slightly - to point to the southeast.

And, it is possible that it could be decided a couple of years down the road, to place this in a better spot.

A.J. Gentry wrote:
Does 'skiddable' mean that based on the way it is built it can be moved by a forklift?

Not a forklift. A tractor or truck. In other words, you hook it to the tractor which skids it along the ground.