If you love honey and other bee-connected products or if you have a large garden and you already know the importance of bees in the natural environment, you may seek to keep bees of your own. Make your own bee hive to place in the backyard and choose the bees you like yourself. Modern bee hives are designed to encourage the health of the bee society as well as make it easy for the beekeeper to remove the honey from the hive with the least disruption possible. Let’s have a look at some DIY options.
To make this bee hive all you will need both 3/4″ and 3/8″ wooden slats from old skids. Make sure there are no nails in the slats. Also check the skids for stains and chemical smells. Bees don’t ingest wood and they do ventilate their hives but better safe then sorry.
DIY bee hive from old wooden skids (via www.instructables.com)
A 55 gallon barrel can become a nice base for a bee hive. In this tutorial you’ll find out how to place it on a wooden frame and how to make all the rest, read up!
DIY 55 gallon top bar barrel bee hive (via www.instructables.com)
This bee hive is smaller than a regular ten frame hive so it consumes less energy and resources than a regular hive. The cost per beehive for all new materials is around $50-$75 US depending on what type of wood is used. It takes around 2-3 hours to build a complete bee hive.
small and economical DIY bee hive (via https:)
The honey bee can suffer quite badly with the cold in winter and expends a lot of energy and stores trying to keep the nest temperature up to an acceptable level. If the hive is insulated and protected against the weather the bee has to do less work to keep warm and has an overall better chance of survival. In this design, the national hive is placed within the ‘Bee Cosy’, which is then stuffed with friendly fiber insulation.
DIY bee hive with external protection and insulation (via www.instructables.com)
The design is based on the principle of wrapping with fibrous insulation but rather than wrapping directly on the hive, there is an intermediary frame which allows the whole structure to be removed with great ease and speed.
DIY bee hive wrap cocoon (via www.instructables.com)
This bee hive is designed to mimic nature as much as possible. Unlike commercial hives, it does not have frames, foundation or excluders. Instead, it just has top bars, allowing the bees to do what they would in a fallen log: build beautiful, natural combs. Because it is less intrusive to the bees, it’s easier to make and manage, which makes it a perfect beginners backyard hive.
DIY honey top bar bee hive (via www.instructables.com)
A common suburban backyard can be a perfect place for beehives if done correctly and you do a bit of research and planning before ordering your bees and supplies. Make a beehive in a jar! Interested? Then read this tutorial!
DIY bee hive in a jar (via removeandreplace.com)
This honey bee box is made up of a hive stand, bottom board, hive bodies (brooder), smaller boxes called honey supers, and a cover. The lower hive body is separated from the supers above by an excluder. Learn how to make a honey bee box to begin the beekeeping process.
DIY honey bee box (via www.wikihow.com)
Some beekeepers argue that these modern structures are imposed upon bees, maximizing honey production but potentially comprising their natural nest-building inclinations and very probably their health. This bee hive is made of a wooden log and is placed on a tree to imitate natural bee hives, read the tutorial and watch the video for more information about this project.
DIY log hive for healthier bees (via www.treehugger.com)