Our Little Sugar Factory
(Page 2 of 5)
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
In the first shipment, you get a smoker, bee feeder, hive tool, bee veil, a booklet of directions, a year's subscription to a bee magazine, wax foundation; plus a hive, a deep super and two shallow supers, knockdown.
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We spent about three evenings assembling the bee hive and supers - unassembled, 200 odd pieces look like a jig-saw puzzle. Each piece is so perfectly cut, it's fun putting them together.
The hive is simply a box-like structure. At the bottom is a stand with an alighting platform. Set on top of this is the bottom of the hive- 3 or 4 boards cleated together to make a floor. Upon this rests a large oblong box without top or bottom. This is called the hive body or brood chamber. In it are hung ten wooden frames each one holding a patterned sheet of wax. The bees draw these sheets of wax into cells. In the cells the young bees are hatched.
On top of this large box you eventually place a shallow box, maybe two or three. These are called supers and like the hive body each hold ten frames. The honey stored by the bees in the hive body must be left with the bees for winter food. But the honey stored in the supers can be taken away and extracted. A queen excluder is placed between the hive body and the supers to keep the queen from laying eggs in the supers. On top of the super - or supers - for they may be piled one on top of the other - is an inside cover. Then over all is the tin-topped wooden cover which telescopes down over inner cover and top super to make the hive waterproof.
All the above - hive, supers, bottom, inner cover, frames and sheets of wax are sent you in pieces - and you put them together. Very complete directions (printed in about seven languages for a bee hive is standard throughout the world) are provided. We had a little difficulty putting the hive together because our playful kitten chewed up the directions, but we still made out all right.
By the time you get the hive together and painted, you'll understand a little something about the art of bee - keeping. You'll also have a chance to study up on what to do when the bees arrive.
Let me tell you, you'll get a real thrill when you come home some day and find the second part of your order -a screened box about a foot square crammed full of 15,000 buzzing bees.
I'd read that anyone can handle bees - if they do it properly - and not get stung. But I'll admit I had my doubts the evening Carolyn took me into the garage, pointed to the cage of buzzing bees the expressman had brought and said, "Well, do you want to put the bees in the hive now or after supperremember, that's your department!"
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