Fancy Garden Hive

[Sparky]

VERY SWEEEET !! They are all great so far and I like the looks of your logo in the ribbon for the deeps. Keep up the good work. The machine wouldn't be the Plasma Cam with a router mounted, would it ? I always wanted to buy one for my shop.

[kbfarms]

No, its a Shark Pro with a mounted router.  Sounds like the Plasma Cam is a similar type of machine.

[kbfarms]

Here is our final bee box design, a bee medallion. The farm name in this one is engraved instead of raised. We like the engraving, but we are going to look at a couple of different fonts, we are not certain we like this one as a final font. This box will be the least costly as it is around 3 hours of machine time. This one can also go on mediums and supers with very little modification, so all the boxes can match. I think this design would also go well with the other designs if you wanted this for honey supers and use another of the designs for deeps.

[AllenF]

That is gorgeous.  Wonderful job.

[kbfarms]

thanks ;)

[kbfarms]

Just wanted to update folks on how our carved bee boxes are going.  We have completed all our designs.  We will have all the designs I've posted to date also in a medallion format similar to the large bee. Before too long, I hope to get those designs up on the website.

Our only hitch to date has been finding clear pine at a reasonable cost, and we need clear (select grade) pine for these boxes.  It does not seem that we can get that lumber in KY for a reasonable cost.  We did find a supplier for cypress and made a lumber run today to try our carvings on that wood. 

For us, the cypress is cheaper than clear pine (go figure).  Every cypress board we bought is perfectly clear.  So if the carving turn out well on this lumber, this is probably what we are going to use at least initally.

We have our website up at www.kbfarms.com and we are also on facebook.  If you would like to contact us, please either PM me here or send an email through the website or facebook. 

Thanks again for all your interests in the bee boxes.

[Acebird]

We are currently carving with a 1/16" bit, we are going to try a 1/8" bit and see if the quality is still good.

Hog it out with a 1/8 bit or larger and finish with the 1/16.  Your router needs to have the power to drive the larger bits though.

[hivemind88]

That is a fancy hive. That is some fine engraving work. I think it would look great in Cypress or Oak.  Have you considered making boxes in a wide variety of woods? You could really fill a niche in the market for specialty boxes in all sorts of types of wood.

[kbfarms]

For now we settled on cypress.  We have a good source of that wood and its select quality.  For immediate sales at bee schools, we'll have cypress on hand.  I personally like the pine with some knots, but given the price of the boxes, I don't feel that we should use anything less that select wood.  Some folks have suggested cherry for signs, but I don't know how fast the bits would dull.  I really like the looks of red cedar for signs, but don't know if that would be popular with other folks.  I have some old supers made of oak, they are  very heavy supers without any honey!!!

That being said, we will custom make boxes in any type of wood folks would request as long as we can get it.  You are correct in that we are looking for a nich market.  There are plenty of folks who make the regular equipment.  We cannot compete with that as far as through put and bulk buys, nor do we want to.  However, right now we are the only folks doing custom boxes so my thought is that we need to build our market before the next folks come in with the same idea and ability ; ).

[kbfarms]

We are currently carving with a 1/16" bit, we are going to try a 1/8" bit and see if the quality is still good.

Hog it out with a 1/8 bit or larger and finish with the 1/16.  Your router needs to have the power to drive the larger bits though.

You are right on the money, actually we are hogging out with a 1/4" and finishing with an 1/8" now.  The quality is still good.  The 1/16" took twice as long and we just could not get the time down to where we could price out a reasonable box.

[Acebird]

I don't know how sophisticated your software is but if you could identify the detailed areas you don’t need to cover the whole routed area with the 1/16 bit just the parts where it requires sharp corners and quick changes in patterns.  There is always somebody that wants the best of the best so you could take it a step further if you need to with that customer.