Short Lug Hive Tool

The beekeeper's Hive Tool has remained unchanged for about 100 years, might even be older. It looks very basic made from a flat piece of steel sharped at both ends with a 90 degree bend at one end and a small hole in it. Despite it's simple construction it's actually something of a Swiss army knife. The long flat part is used pry apart hive boxes the bees have propolised together, the angled part to pry frames apart, both ends have uses removing burr comb and propolis and the hole is for pulling out loose nails.

Hive Tool, it's seen a bit of use.

There's been a few innovations on the hive tool but the only enduring alternative seems be the J-Hook which is flat and has a J shaped arm used to lever frames upwards. Some beekeepers prefer one, some prefer the other. I occasionally use a J-Hook on some of my Nucs where there isn't much space to prise frames apart but other than that I use the regular hive tool. There's also hybrids which are standard hive tool with a J hook sticking out of one side.

J-Hook Hive Tool

To separate frames with a regular Hive Tool the flat right angled part is inserted between frame top bars and the tool twisted to push them apart breaking the propolis seal. It works well, the longer the tool the more leverage you have, if you use one in each hand you can work very quickly. However the tool works better for users of long lugged frames like the National as it can go between the lugs where there are no bees walking around. With short lugged frames like those in my Commercial brood boxes (or Langstroth, Dadant or Smith hives) the tool is inserted between the bars where the bees are. This means there's a risk of squashing a few bees. Whilst it's only a small risk chances are you're doing it on both sides of each frame that's 22 small risks per brood box. I take a little extra care to avoid squashing bees which slows down hive inspections a little, not a problem if you're dealing with one or two hives but ideally inspections should be fairly quick to reduce the impact of opening the hive and if there's a few to go through and the bees are bit edgy the time stacks up. Over the past few years I've given this a lot of thought whilst going through my brood boxes and I've finally got round to modifying a Hive Tool to better suit short lugged frames. I had a few different ideas including cutting out a part of the 90 degree blade or replacing that end entirely with two pieces of bent rebar but as I use that part of the tool a lot I soon ruled them out.

Modified Hive Tool for short lug frames

My modification is the simple addition of two round metal pegs on the back of the tool with rounded ends. I think it's fair to say when it comes to welding I'm a little bit rough. The sum of my welding knowledge comes when I went to pick up a SIP Weldmate 100 stick welder I bought on eBay from a chap in Skirlaugh and he gave me quick two minute tutorial to show me it was working.

Securing one peg with the grabby bit to weld on

I know welding clamps exist, but I don't have one so I used the grabby bit of the welder to hold the pegs in place as I worked. This went okay although one is noticeably a few degrees off of vertical but still works. I use a really cheap pair of welding goggles but had to change the lenses for darker ones as the arc was still too bright, unfortunately that meant until the arc was blazing away I couldn't actually see what I was doing so I reached a compromise using two different shade lenses, one for each eye and switch to the darker one once the arc is struck. It's not ideal and means I have no depth perception but I'm unlikely to do enough welding justify electric autodarkening goggles.

And the second peg

I just used General Purpose 3.2mm E6013 welding rods. Not sure what the voltage was set to but seems to have done the trick.

Two modified hive tools and my SIP Wedmate 100

It's not the most complicated modification. Basically I took a 5mm diameter metal rod, some sort of steel, cut off two 2.5cm pegs, welded them to the hive tool and used a Dremel to round off the cut end and tidy up the welding a little. I decided to go with 2.5cm pegs so that in use there's a space for bees between the flat of the tool and the frame top bars when it's being used.

Pair of modified tools, cleaned up a bit with a Dremel

I've been using these modified tools for a couple of months now and have been quite pleased with how well they work. My welds have held up so far too. The modification still leaves both blade parts of the tool intact which is fairly important as I use them regularly, but it does render the nail puller unusable. I'm not sure how useful the nail puller really is anyway as I've always preferred to use a claw hammer or purpose built nail puller with a claw anyway.

Here's the tool in action. I think it bothers less bees than pushing the regular tool edge between the bars and as the part making contact is rounded rather than a right angle edge it's probably a little easier on the woodwork.

The Short Lug Hive Tool in use.

It's a very easy modification for anyone with rudimentary welding ability and a very old stick welder but it'd be nice if someone starts selling hive tools like this. I think it probably has a potential market out there especially as a few outfits are currently pushing Langstroth hives in the UK. I wanted to call it the rather catchy Frame Seperator X2000 Mark 1 Two Peg Modified Super Lucky Hive Tool Deluxe but beekeeping tools tend to be named after what they do or who invented them so I'll go with the less imaginative but quicker to type the Short Lug Hive Tool which tells you what it is and what it's for.

Two Short Lug Hive Tools

Swarm Traps

After last Winter's surprisingly high losses my bee stocks are a bit low and demand seems to be pushing up the cost of new colonies. Normally I'd be looking at splitting existing colonies to make new ones but at present colonies aren't strong enough for that to be an option so I've decided to make some swarm traps to hopefully catch myself some passing swarms. Through a chance meeting I happen to know where there's  a chap who keeps bees and very unwisely does no swarm control at all so assuming he got some bees through the winter there's a likelihood of swarms from there at some point.

A swarm trap isn't really what it sounds like. It's not so much a trap as a rather nice house with the door left open. It's left out in the hope a passing swarm will spot it and move in. They can be as simple as a bucket or a cardboard container stuck up a tree, an unoccupied hive stuck on a shed roof, a purpose built wooden box and I've just seen a new one that looks like an empty kick bag too. I decided to build a couple of wooden boxes myself to place in trees.

I started roughing out some designs and measurements and designs. They're not the most complex things to build. You just need a box with a hole in it that you can open to remove the bees from. I decided to make mine to hold a few frames which should make bees easier to remove rather than having to deal with wild comb, it also means I can store frames in themm when they're not in use. Depending what you read bees will be seeking a 20-70 litre cavity. Some people use 5 frame National Nucs with success but that's probably on the small side. After some drawing and capacity calculations I decided to save a little time and money by making mine out of cut down brood boxes.

A couple of spare Brood Boxes about to be repurposed

First thing to do was use the trusty table saw to cut the boxes to size. To save time I used two of the existing corner joints already on each box. I cut two sides so that the finished boxes would be 30cm wide. Actually I cut one wrongly so had to do an extra cut and reattach a piece of wood to get one side the right length. Oops. The sides that would become the box fronts I removed some of the screws from the joints and cut them flush to the inside edge. The finger joints that got cut off I just glued them back in place. As swarm boxed they're not going to be weight bearing.

Precision wood butchery

I wanted to be able to put deep frames in and originally planned to use the existing rebate in the box sides to support them, however I decided the boxes would be stronger with an eke at the top to hold them together and increase the space inside for the bees.

Taking shape. The shape is an oblong.

A 1/2"  thick floor was screwed and glued underneath each cut down box and I made a little eke with rebates for the frames. The ekes were attached with nails in guide holes and more wood glue. They were then left for the glue to cure overnight.

Hook for hanging

The plan is to hang the traps from trees so borrowing an idea I saw on YouTube I added a vertical piece of wood with a large hole drilled near the top. My plan is to knock a big nail into a tree and use the hole in the plank as a hook. The vertical piece is going to be stuck between the box and a tree so I used tanalised wood to protect it from damp. It's on the outside of the box so the bees probably won't be making much contact with it. I gave the side that'll be against the box a coat of Shed & Fence paint before attaching it with more screws and glue - don't want the boxes dropping off afterall.

Usually bee hives are fee standing and the roof is able to sit on top, with sides reaching down around the box below, however as these are going to be hung in trees I couldn't do that. I opted to use a hinged roof attaching the hinge to the vertical support. The roof is just cut from some thick plywood.

Toby the Cat handling Quality Control
-yes, he's pretty clueless

I attached a batton to each of the short sides so I had some way to carry the boxes. I do the same thing with brood boxes. The whole lot got an uneven coat of  badly mixed bklack and brown Shed & Fence paint then I cut entrances with a wide drill bit. I actually drilled straight through a screw making one of the entrances which ended the working life of the drill bit which was a bit unfortunate but did give a natural non uniform looking hole.

One door opens..

Once occupied I'll need to move these boxes to get the bees into a hive so the entrances needed some sort of closing mechanism. I opted for a simple rotating door. As a hinge I took a regular wood screw and filed down part of the thread near the top. This went through a hole in the door with a washer between the rotating door and the screw top.

Entrance, Door and Doorstop.

I also added a door stop to reduce the chance of accidentally knocking the door open whilst moving the traps with bees in them. To keep the lids closed I attached a couple of brass plated hooks attached to screw eyes and drilled holes in the battens for the hooks to go into which will secure the roof closed.

Bitumen Paint and closures

I'd already given the roofs a lick of Shed & Fence paint where they don't make contact with the bees but decided to finish the roofs with some flash tape so I could form some sort of drip edge to guide rain away from the boxes. It's a lot more expensive than roof felt but easier to apply and more robust.The tape comes with some water based bitumen paint to prime the surface before applying the tape. I painted both roofs black and went inside to do something more interesting than watch paint dry. A few hours later I went outside and found it'd rained so reapplied the bitumen.

Pretty sure this will be the weakest point.

I think the hinge is the area most likely to suffer rain damage so I painted over the moving part and the side on the roof I also painted with bitumen then flash taped over. The vertical part is going into treated wood so should be okay but when I take them down at the end of the season I might give them a squirt of polyurethane varnish or something for extra protection. I applied the flash tape so it always overlapped and made drip edges by simply folding the tape back onto itself and then back to the underside of the roof. The roofs are larger than the boxes themselves with an obverhang on three sides.

Labelled so mice and birds don't mistake them for birdboxes

A few seconds scrawling on the front with a huge sharpie had the boxes labelled, just in case anyone gets curious and finds them occupied before I do. Each box holds 7 Deep Commercial Frames with a little more space at the bottom than a regular broodbox on a hive floor due to the eke on top. I think they've got a capacity of about 25 litres each. Believe it or not when looking for a new home scout bees measure the capacity of the cavities they find.

I loaded each box with a couple of old frames of dark comb, bees seem to like moldy old comb. Strange. I also gave each a couple of frames of undrawn fresh comb to give any swarms moving in something to do and filled the rest with empty frames. I also added some swarm bait and a little slumgum.

Big nail, that'll do it.

The swarm traps completed the next thing was to put them up trees. I found a couple trees in the area I was thinking of and put a nail in each high enough to keep the boxes just above head height. One tree I was able to climb a few feet, the other I just had to reach up and try not to hammer my thumb. As the holes in the traps wooden supports were fairly large it was easy enough to get them on the nails without being able to see what I was doing.

Once hanging from the nails the traps needed securing so they didn't rock or get blown off. One I stabilised by wrapping with a bungee chord, the other wasn't level so I wedged a piece of wood behind it and wrapped a ratchet strap around the whole thing to hold it still.

Half a brood box stuck up a tree.
Bees won't find that suspicious at all.

I've not tried this approach before and my placement of the traps is based more on them being out of the way of people and for myself to be able to remove them easily rather than the best position to attract bees but I'm going to see how it goes. I've also filled an empty hive with frames and a swarm lure at the apiary too so now I'll just cross my fingers and wait.

The second trap, also up a tree.