Will you be ready for a spring flow?

It is now only 12 weeks until some of us start working the bees in earnest again. Checking the hives for stores and replacing rotten woodwork and generally cleaning hives and apiary sites. One should be busy making up new gear and preserving it with copper napthanate (1%) which takes form three to six weeks to dry before applying paint. Mix copper napthanate with either turps or diesel, about 1 to 5 ratio. It is best to soak the supers first for an hour or two, then make them up while they are slightly damp and before they have time to warp. For best results, put the dipped woodenware in large plastic bags for a week before assembling. This slows down the evaporation and allows the preservative to penetrate deeper. I also like to dip the end of the top bars as these tend to rot out first if the hive is damp.

The preservative should go all the way into the timber. If it doesn’t, this means the timber is not totally dry and therefore won’t last as long as good dry wood. I have learnt to stack any woodenware I don’t intend to use straight away between small wood fillets in the shed so drying continues. Remember, the drier the timber, the better penetration of preservative and consequently the longer it lasts. Paint the material well using a good quality primer, undercoat, and two coats of gloss (I personally prefer oil based paints). 65mm cement or galvanised nails are ideal for supers. If you use dovetailed gear, it may pay to pre-drill holes to prevent splitting. Always choose wood that is free of knots as these tend to fall out just at the most inopportune moment.

A method commercial beekeepers use to preserve woodwork is to hot dip them using paraffin wax. Although much cheaper, it requires specialised gear and can be very dangerous. Heat up the wax (outside) in a vat to a temperature of between 90 and 130oC. Put the fully assembled supers in for two minutes, take out and immediately apply two coats of water based paint. The paint and the wax soak in as it cools leaving the wood sealed and painted.

Most use white paint, but I prefer to use darker colours. Oddments or rejected pots of paint can be purchased cheaply from the paint stores and mixed together. The darker colours blend the hives into the background which helps to prevent vandalism, and absorb more of the suns rays which heats the hive and assists the workers to ventilate it.