New bees and more things!

As I mentioned before, my wife and I keep bees. This last winter was particularly harsh, and we lost all three hives. As a result, we are starting over this spring with two new hives. Here are our new girls.

They are in their new homes, and happily breeding. We'll be feeding them til the nectar runs. More pics next week!

On a related note, we think our hives did poorly because of too much moisture. There's an old tip to increase ventilation in hives - you glue popsicle sticks inside the outer cover to raise it up about an eighth of an inch, allowing the hot moist air to vent out. Problem is, it's hard to get the sticks off when you don't want them.

So, I came up with an alternative: removable bee vents!

I created these doodads out of PLA on Colossus (my M2 3D printer). You snap four of them into place on top of a brood or super hive compartment, and then add the inner and outer cover. The space allows moist air to vent out, but the space is too small for bees to get in or out of. This avoids robbing behavior (bees from other hives swiping honey). Like my outdoor light spike, I posted this on Thingiverse.