Pics from Maine beeyard

[reinbeau]

We went up to Tony's Bees in Buckfield, Maine last weekend to pick up the three hives for our Maine beeyard.  There were lots of people picking up bees that evening, here is a shot of a few of the boxes waiting for pickup.  Our mediums are the two green ones you can see in the lower left:



In the truck and ready to go:



At home, behind the garage, Greg had prepared the area where we were going to put the bees.   My mother had this thick landscape cloth for us to use (professional grade, not the stuff from Home Desperate - it'll never rip, nor will anything grow through it):



We covered it with a thick layer of stone dust.  Doesn't matter if it spreads out a bit, we've got plenty more!



Here is the full installation:



Here's Greg (aka woodchopper on this forum) filling the last feeder:



And here's the happy beek with his finished product (notice the new electric fence which plugs right into the garage - ideas for this fence came from this forum:

[doak]

Nice pics.
I'm thinking of going medium all the way.
doak

[Mici]

now..the signature doesn't fit the pictures :-P

nicely done, although? why the gravel, you don't want to have mud when rainy? or what? plus, you left very little room for expanding :-P

[reinbeau]

Mici, we don't want to have mud, plus we don't want to have to mow the grass, plus it keeps the grass away from the bottom of the electric fence.  We don't live there fulltime, so sometimes the grass can get quite long.  There's room to put about four more hives in there if we ever do wish to expand.

[woodchopper]

now..the signature doesn't fit the pictures :-P

nicely done, although? why the gravel, you don't want to have mud when rainy? or what? plus, you left very little room for expanding :-P

That stone dust will do a great job holding down the landscaping fabric and as Ann said we have alot of it on hand so we used it. I think it makes the whole set-up look kind of clean. Because we aren't up there full time we really didn't want more than seven hives but will start out with these three for now. If we ever decide to expand down the road it won't cost that much to modify for more hives. We're going up tomorrow and are hoping the raccoons didn't find the hives this past week. The electric fence has been turned off because we thought it was hooked up wrong. Its a great location and as far as we know nobody else is keeping bees nearby.

[buzzbee]

I like your setup,gives me some Ideas!Truly like the neighborhood from what I see. :)

[skullring]

Great setup guys.  My wife and I love Maine we go every chance we get.  Have fun

[Robo]

Nice pictures, thanks for sharing.

If you have bear in your area, I would make a couple of suggestions to you.   One is to bait the wire.  A bear will walk right thru the fence and not get shocked because of it's fur.  You need to "train" them by shocking them on the nose or tongue.  I take pieces of hardware cloth (scraps from building bee equipment :-D) and fold them in a 'V' shape, smear peanut butter on them and hang them over the wire.   I had 4 bear in my yard at one time last year, and they never touched a hive,  almost ripped the door off my chicken coop until I put electric fence around it too.   Secondly, I would move the hive back away from the electric fence a bit.  As it is now,  a bear could swipe from the outside with its arm and knock them over.   Though less damage than them eating the brood,  a tumbled hive is no fun either, especially since the bees get very aggressive/defensive.

Good luck.