in a world brimming with complexity few creatures embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless precision she dances from bloom to bloom each motion guided by millennia upon millennia of instinct each act in service to the whole and then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards
of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist, part poet, they move along their hives with the efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to the bees' needs as best they can comprehend, and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their journey. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by our great friends and partners in
beekeeping, Man Lake. By the way, if you haven't yet, please subscribe to and follow this podcast. Tell your friends about it and click on over to BeLoveBeekeeping .com to sign up for our free newsletter. Today's guest is a beekeeper in British Columbia, Canada, and we're going to be discussing his custom designed home -built long -laying hive. It was even made with wood from a tree on his own property. First, how about a couple of feel -good stories from the world of beekeeping.
Here's a headline that happened just a few miles from where I live. Quote, firefighters save 25 million honey bees stuck on an overheated tractor trailer on a Utah highway. So what happened is a semi -truck carrying approximately 480 hives broke down climbing Parley's Canyon. That's a high mountain pass near Park City. It was an unusually hot spring day and the fear was that the bees were going to die from the heat as the truck was parked on the side of the highway for
a few hours. But then to the rescue came a fire truck which pulled up behind the bees and the firefighters began misting the hives with water to keep them cool. And it worked. The bees survived and not a single firefighter was stung. Next up, have you heard about the fancy new beehive in the White House's garden? Google it if you haven't seen it. It looks just like a miniature
version of the White House. Anyway, it's gotten a lot of press recently with the First Lady showing it off to King Charles and others, but then last week something happened. The bees in that hive decided to swarm. According to a White House reporter, a huge swarm of bees took over the North Lawn driveway. She called it a Bee Tornado. A dense cloud of bees descended on broadcast
tents before relocating to a tree. No injuries or stings were reported, but social media was abuzz with videos and jokes about the event. I'd like to welcome to the show today. Wow, this is gonna be different today. This is gonna be
fun. I've got Curtis Nielsen here. aka fill in the blank jack lumber jack lumber jack lumber yeah so if anybody wants to find him on uh facebook i don't know are you on other social media too no that's it just facebook okay look up jack lumber because we're going to be looking at and talking about his hive design today And this is especially unusual that someone who doesn't have beekeeping experience and wants to jump in would jump in in such a big way to not only
build their own hive but build a big one, make modifications. Let's start with this. Jack, what got you interested in beekeeping in the first place? To be honest, I'd have to say it would be the health. side of things with the family and just the negative effects of sugar and the
positive effects of honey. I wanted to supplement out the sugar and in with the honey and you know when you're a small family on a tight budget sometimes you can only afford one of those kilos of honey per month and you know that's not quite enough so I was hoping to be able to build a hive that would provide me with enough honey to support the needs of my family. I've actually been known to tell some beekeepers if you're only in it for the honey it might be cheaper
to go buy it someplace. I'm learning that, I'm learning that. Because as a hobby this can get a little bit expensive but you also put your talents to use building equipment and stuff so that that helps a ton. As you were looking at getting into beekeeping, there are a lot of choices as to what kind of beehive you're going to use, right? There's regular Langstroth, there's Top
Bar, there's... Well, I don't even want to start trying to name all of them, but what got you interested in doing this kind of a design of a long Langstroth? So when I first started doing my research, I ended up talking to a bee supplier, a slightly local bee supplier. And like he said with the budget, you know, he was telling me that I should be budgeting around $1 ,200 to kind of jump in this season. And I was like, well, that's great. I got about $700 in the budget
for us. So that's that's where I started thinking that, hey, I might not be able to afford to hop in with both feet. So I wonder if I could possibly build my own hives. Then started researching that and just looking at this the standard Langstroth and I don't want to ruffle any feathers But that's just not a very beautiful system and most standards aren't you know the standards are they're meant
for? Traveling and and all sorts of things where obviously this one doesn't this thing's not gonna move I don't think I can move it if I wanted to so then I really started thinking like you know this I hate to say it, but this is a really ugly beehive to me, you know what I mean? And it's like, I'm back in crown land. These bees that I'm trying to catch are coming out of, you know, like 200 year old furs. So for me to take them from there and then put them into here,
it just didn't seem right. So I started thinking like, hey, there's got to be a different, there's got to be a different hive than the standard Lange trough. And that's when I found these long Lange troughs and people were, they're all different. Every single one was different. And my first thought was like, this is something that I can make beautiful, you know what I mean? Not just
for myself, but for the bees. I got a little farm here and I do the same type of thing with, you know, I got a nice barn and it's just for the sheep. They might not appreciate it, but you got a nice barn, nice home for the sheep, you get nice milk, you got a nice chicken coop, you get nice, nice tasting eggs. I figure, you know, if I give them a nice big bulky house to live in, that's, I'll get good honey. I like
it. By the way, where do you live? I'm in British Columbia, Canada in central west on Chilcot and Plateau. I'm glad you're outside. We can see that gigantic tree behind you. I can't really tell what kind it is, though. I can't see it quite well enough. Is that a ponderosa? It might just be... It's one of the pines. I'm not sure which one of the pines. I don't think it's a
dark pine, but one of the pine trees, yeah. For this hive design and and let me just say this up front because it's slightly Complicated the way we do this podcast the majority of our audience is listening on one of the podcast apps We also put out the video of our conversation on YouTube on that video I'll insert a couple of pictures of your hive so people can see it But let's assume that the majority of people can't so when we start talking about What it looks like we're
gonna have to use a lot of descriptive words My first question for you is do you mill your own lumber? Yes I do and so when I see the live edge on the roof That makes sense because you were able to mill that yourself because that kind of wood is not that easy to find You're not gonna get it at home. Do you know absolutely
not? This this whole hive almost the whole hive came from one eight foot log about 24 inches in diameter and it was kind of planned out before it was milled so I could you know I kind of every slice was going to a certain aspect of this hive like even like I have a the trays are made out of a half inch slice of it that's 15 and a half inches wide you know I mean solid wood not a single piece of plywood in the whole hive That
is really cool. Before we jump into yours, why don't we just talk about long layings in general. Jack, I don't know how much you know about them. I know you do quite a bit. You did a lot of research, but for those that aren't familiar, basically a long laying strath is instead of stacking boxes up like in a normal laying system, it's as if
you're stacking them side by side. So you would have what looks like a brood box but it might be it's going to be three or four feet long instead of just the width of one box and the idea is you can then just take frames in a row and just have instead of ten frames in a box or eight in a box you can have 30 or whatever number it is that you choose to do You can put a follower board. You can do different things. There still
are ways to put queen excluders in. So you have some of the box that's for honey and some for not, but it's all horizontal. And for people that maybe have a hard time lifting really heavy boxes, it can be a wonderful system because you shouldn't have to lift anything heavier than one frame at a time unless your lids heavy. So that's the general idea. Do you have anything to add to that? You kind of hit it on the mark there. It's especially good, and that's what
I found. A lot of the people in this ecosystem are in it due to the ease of inspecting frame by frame, lifting frame by frame, rather than the whole honey super. And that's where it kind of brings me also to the inline configuration. Half of this is the inline configuration, which also goes even beyond just the horizontal ergonomics and puts those frames directly in front of you. so that there's no twist motion when you're pulling
them out. Yeah good point. Course you're young enough that shouldn't be a problem yet, but maybe one of these. Yeah, correct All right. Let's talk about your hive design because it's not a normal long laying either You've made some modifications Give us an idea how big it is how long how wide how tall is it on a stand? Explain
the thing. Okay. So like you said, it was made out of all live dug for live edge dug for all two inch planks The box is 80 inches long which allows for me to do two entire inline systems if I chose to. I chose to keep it as half long -laying, half inline, just because I've never really dealt with either ecosystem. So now I'll be able to work one immediately, work the other, and really get a handle on my preference of which one I prefer. Okay, before you move on, I want
us to make sure we understand that. Long -laying
and you said inline? Yeah. you have some frames going one direction and then there's a great big divider in the middle as if you have two hives and then you have some going the other direction correct so that i got about a divider a two inch divider in the middle so when i was researching this hive a lot of the things i was doing is going through a lot of the the posts and topics and just trying to find people's problems and solve the problems within my hive before
building the hive So that's what brought me to the center divider to completely divide the hive in half, which because people were having a problem with cupping their wood cupping because obviously the inner part of the hive is moist and the outer part is sitting in the sun. So I really wanted to firm that up with that center divider because another big aspect, I guess we can get into two theories of why I built it this way afterwards. So go ahead. You were explaining why you're going
to have some frames going. I can't really call them vertical and horizontal. because everything is horizontal but you have some where the skinny end is towards you and somewhere the wide end is towards you in other words. So the inline would be the perpendicular ones to the body and those are two chambers so like with the inline
model you're set with your two chambers. Mine are 13 because I made them square so that I could if I wanted to switch it back to inline it's just a matter of taking out that mounted queen excluder and it's back to inline. Versatility was a big plan with this hive. So the inline system is set up for a 13 frame brood box and a 13 frame honey box separated by a permanent
queen excluder. Whereas like you were saying with the long line you have a follower board and the long line side can be a 6 frame, 8 frame, 10 frame all the way up to the main box is 26 frames on each side. Well you know your stuff considering you're new at this. I can tell you've done a lot of research. Let me make sure I also understand one thing. You're going to use a queen excluder and you are going to have honey supers on top of these brood frames or horizontally
next to? Both. So my plan with the main chamber and I like running on theory I don't know if it's possible going through a few posts you know people were saying that in this system about a 13 frame brood is kind of sufficient you don't really need to go beyond that otherwise you're going to start getting honey in your brood my original intention with the 26 frames was you know if i could push brood to 18 19 frames which is what i read that standard long straight tross
do they do about two deep boxes of brood run in about 80 % so run in 16 to 18 frames of brood and then they go up into their honey supers so I was thinking that I could possibly do the same thing so then that would leave me with about eight deep frames of honey which I would then use that for winter storage and then anything that goes up into the supers is kind of for me to to harvest because that was another one of the the magic ratio numbers was for going into
winter with these sealed chambers that I'd want four open cell frames with about nine honey frames. Quick break to discuss what just might be on
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and I mean everything you'll need. But if you aren't there quite yet and the honey flow is right around the corner, make sure you have extra supers on hand. You never can have too many or be too prepared. And right now Man Lake is offering podcast listeners $10 off your next order. Just enter code MLBLove10 at checkout. That's manlakeltd
.com, discount code MLBLove10. So that's kind of my goal is to hit those amount of deep frames and then anything else goes into the medium frames for me to harvest and How thick did you say the walls of this thing are how the original walls and the floor are two inches thick but then in order to Make the the whole hive bigger to allow the lid and allow the supers I added an extra inch and a quarter on both upper sides the top Nine inches of the hive is three and a quarter
inches thick That's a lot of insulation. That's a lot of our value and you know that the little be Insulated and that's where it kind of comes to the whole the whole hive is kind of based off the condensing hive method Why don't you explain that a little bit for those that aren't
familiar? Okay So the condensing hive method is basically the research that I found it was based off of Fellows research up in the Yukon guy by the name of Tardif He was beekeeping up there and really wanted to find out what was going on with his hives, fill them full of sensors. And what he found was that the sealed chamber, the only vent being your entrance, was beneficial
to the bees in many ways. So everybody's worried and like I've seen this in all the beekeeping groups, you know, when you're building stuff, it's like everybody's venting, venting, venting, venting, venting. And according to this guy's research, there should be zero venting in a climate like mine, in a northern climate. Absolutely none. And people worry about, you know, the CO2 buildup and the moisture buildup, and these are actually, what he is showing, beneficial to the
bees. So the CO2 buildup actually puts them into a state, I can't remember what it's called, epoxy or something like that, but basically a hibernation
state. So this hibernation state allows them to slow down their entire body, to actually you know kind of go to sleep whereas I find the normal vented systems that maybe the bees and like these are the ones that are going through tons of honey they're not getting to go into that hibernation state so they're working all winter long when I seen this research I was like it just clicked with me I'm like this makes sense like I live in the forest I've never seen a vented tree in
my life they're not out there so why are we venting these hives the way that we are and another apparent benefit to this condensing method is that this CO2 chamber will kill off the mites. So not only has you know they get their hibernation state but you know nature's kind of solved this mite problem with itself is hey they go hibernate in this super condensed CO2 chamber and it's going to kill off the mites that are present.
All right, I need you to send me a link to that research I have to admit I'm not familiar with it and I would love to read it because some of this stuff sounds counter to what a lot of us have learned but I'm open -minded I would love to read it and I tell you what you will find something over the next few years on this beekeeping journey of yours is that Some things that work
for one person may not work for you. You have to be willing to adjust and change or you've got it all figured out already and we'll see where are the entrances and how big are they so i have two hive gate entrances at each end and these entrances are also kind of in line with this condensing hive method they're really good for airflow so they're very very small little entrances and i have two of them for higher flow and then winter time you break it down to just
one then what these entrances do is allow basically and this is kind of how they market it is they allow the bees to open and close the front door basically and regulate that that one little bit of air that's coming in they they have a good chance of being able to block it or open it or do whatever they need to do with that air to to regulate the hive. Are the entrances round or horizontal? They're horizontal and they're about four inches and they seem to be about the
three eights. Height the bee space at heart. I also noticed on your Facebook page in one of the pictures You had a great big drawer on the bottom that you pulled out Explain what that's
for. So yeah, that was one thing that I was really unsure about installing in the hive Because that came in with a screen bottom and when I put in the screen bottom, you know that to me was like, okay now I'm making a space in this hive that the bees cannot get to so if I have a problem with this space That problem is on me to fix because the bees aren't able to get there to clean it or do the business that they need to
do. After talking to more people, I was kind of put in line that this is more of a treatment tray than a hive checking tray. So these trays
I will fill with Demataceous Earth. So basically any any bug or mite or anything that falls down out of the hive or off the bee or anything is going to fall down into the tray of demataceous earth and then I will then find it and kind of know that hey there's there's some stuff going on in here that I need to I need to take care of I can't wait to hear how your first year goes and I'll tell you what let's make a date right now five years from now you're going to be back
on the show and you're going to be saying Every single thing worked or here are the modifications that I realized I made to make to it. Absolutely It's gonna be fun to see what kind of stand you have this on This stand is actually on 18 inch for rounds. I was planning on building a like a little crib frame out of logs and I had built this thing on pallets about four feet from where it's sitting right now and I just could not figure
out how I was gonna move it onto the stand. So I brought these rounds that were actually, my fireplace takes 16s. I accidentally cut these at 18. I was like, perfect, they're beautiful. They still got lichen on them. So I brought those out, placed those on the pad and then very sketchily pulled the whole hive kind of off the pallets and the pallets tipped over and it just kind of landed in place and that's where it's gonna live. And it just worked. I think it looks great
on the logs. Thank you. Tell me about the roof. Is that also that two inch or two and a half inch thick? Yeah, the roof is two inch thick on the walls. The live edge planks are an inch and a half. And then there's going to be with the condensed hive method. The goal is to reach an R 40 in the roof. So I'm going to be heavily insulating the roof. And, you know, with these with these hives, people use like over top of
the inner. inner box, they use blankets or wool insulation or whatever they need to give them that R40 and prevent that heat escape coming up from the chamber. And if you're worried about condensation, you may want to use something that would absorb a little bit of that also when you're talking about blankets or something. Do you have your bees yet? I do not have my bees yet. I'm
actually I'm setting swarm traps. There's no apiaries closest apiary and I don't even know if it's an active apiary is 40 miles from here but this property that I'm on now I've been here for five years and it has like the best bee population I've ever seen and the honeybee showed up about a week ago. And the numbers of them are growing every day. Like I just got these little bushes that are the first to bloom. We've had dandelions for about a week. And so that the honeybee numbers
are really growing. So I'm hoping that I can hopefully catch a swarm. I think you will. What are you using for bait? What kind of sand? I'm using lemongrass oil and a couple brood frames that I bought off an old beekeeper. And that's why I had one box that was one of my four mediums was an old deep that I bought that I cut down. You've got it figured out. How many traps did
you say you're putting up? I'm putting up three and I baited the hive as well because I do believe that it's like right back here in this in this crown land. They're flying right by the hive. I know it's obviously not the right height but sometimes you get lucky. I've had it happen before. It's rare but it can certainly happen. Okay this thing is 80 inches long. It's made of thick wood. Take a guess on what it weighs. I'd say 500 pounds. I'd say the lid on it has got to be a hundred
pounds. Before I got the hinges on it, I was trying to lift it up with the two hands and it was tough. Yeah, the hinges, I think that could also be a game changer in this ecosystem because I've seen a lot of complaints about the heavy lids on these things and I installed five recycled hinges from deep freezers, the spring loaded hinges and they take all the weight of that lid. You've thought of everything. So how much money
do you have into this? Um you know most of the money went to the frames to be honest the frames and the honey excluders the actual hive itself maybe 150 bucks into the hive itself and then the rest of the money into quite a bit of frames to fill it and the honey excluders and stuff so maybe another four or five hundred bucks on all all the fun stuff probably not even that much that is so awesome i wish you all the best of luck swarm traps Oh man, I wish we could count
on them. They work great. They just don't always work every single time. We've had people on this podcast that live down in the south of the U .S. and they're just catching swarms right and left, it seems like. Up where I am, if I put out a half a dozen, I'll catch one or two a year
and that's it. and I've had like one year where I caught zero so I think you're doing everything right and I think you deserve to catch a swarm or two and no commercial beekeepers are going to beat down your door to buy a hive like this because it doesn't make sense for them but it makes so much sense for you and I love how thick it is and what kind of art value that's going to give it that is just so important and it's going to be in many ways like them being in a
tree. or at least a horizontal tree. Yeah that down rotten log. So in those swarm traps that lemongrass oil works great as you know there's also other things that you can buy like swarm commander that a lot of people swear by. I've had good luck with lemongrass oil. There is a sort of a sweet spot between not using enough and using too much and we don't have a scientific
way to measure that that I know of. but I know if when you walk by it really smells strong of lemongrass oil you've probably got too much.
I usually just take a q -tip and put two or three drops of oil on it stick it in that's all it needs and then I'll refresh that once a week or something like that and I'm sure there's people out there going that's not how I do it that won't work and Everybody does it different and everything works different for different people and that's one thing that you're gonna find about beekeepers and Beekeeping but hopefully you can also find somebody up in your neck of the woods that can
be kind of a mentor to you that you can reach out to When you have questions and stuff if not, give me a buzz Yeah, definitely will and honestly that group that I joined on Facebook the long Langstroth hive group a bunch of amazing guys I really want to help you get on your feet and that's kind of what helped me get online beekeepers are that way They're very helpful and ask nothing in return and you fit in so much because of your do -it -yourself attitude and being able to build
this yourself and even change you know design around from a traditional longling yourself and that's fantastic. So just enjoy the journey. Thank you. Jack Lomber is where people can find you on Facebook and we're going to circle back in a while and everybody's going to hear how well this works. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Thanks again for joining us on Be Love, Be Keeping presented by Manlike. Another big thank you goes to V2B Health for their support.
Vita's Varroa Control Ranger products includes Epistan, Epigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acids Trips. Hey thanks a lot guys. And if you haven't yet, please subscribe to and follow the show, tell your friends about it, and click on over to BeLoveBekeeping .com to sign up for our free newsletter. If you have a guest suggestion or topic you'd like discussed on the show, shoot me an email eric at BeLoveBekeeping .com and remember if you're not just in it for the honey
or the money, you're in it for the love. See you next week.