The Bees Arrive - Part 1

So after months of reading, going to beekeepers' meetings, gathering & building equipment and thumbing through catalogs, my bees have arrived. First of all, the hives:



I have a Langstroth hive and a Top Bar hive. The Langstroth is just that, so I won't dwell on it here. But the TBH is my own adaptaion, based on other designs I have seen on the 'net. It is not a true Kenyan or Tanzanian TBH: I wanted straight sides tall enough to hold a Lang deep frame but I like sloped sides that end in an open, screened bottom. So I combined the two.



Above is a view of the inside of the TBH, looking at a temporary platform I put in to hold a bag of sugar solution. And below is another view looking up through the bottom screen into the hive from beneath.



The undersides of the top bars and their lines of wax are visible here. The wax lines are saw kerfs that I filled with molten bees wax (this is better explained elsewhere - I'll post a link when I find it again). But here's how mine look.