My HPU Apiary Project

[elizabeth.pruitt]

Good Evening All,
Most of you do not know me, and the few of your that do probably don't remember by name. My name is Elizabeth Pruitt, and I have only recently begun my involvement with the Guilford County Beekeepers Association as well as NC State. I attend the Thursday meetings for the Beekeeping Class, and will try to make the Tuesday member's meeting as well. This was just my introduction to the community, below is the reason for my post:

I am a student at High Point University, and have taken steps to become involved with this wonderful community for two reason. First is a purely personal desire for beekeeping education and to create friendly connections, the other is for a current project that I am working on. From now until April 15th, I am attempting to build from scratch my own functional Langstroth/Observational hive hybrid to implemented on my college campus, with an artistic spin. This entire project will be documented digitally with photos and other multimedia, where I will go on to provide a presentation across the state and possibly beyond. I hope to bring enlightenment to viewers by not only sharing the importance of the honey bee and the ease of with they can be kept, but encourage others to do as I have done; to become beekeepers themselves and have an involved role in their community at large. I would be happy to answer any questions about my project in depth for those of you that are curious.
With that being said, I do need all the help I can get. My grandparents had kept bees in the past for decades (I am not a complete novice), but most of their equipment has been lost to time or damage since their retirement from the hobby. I have a meager budget provided from the school, and any tools or advice anyone would be willing to lend is an extraordinary help. I would also love to schedule a tour around a local bee keeping yard to take a look at some hives. You are truly a generous group of individuals, and I want to show my university just how caring and helpful you can be. I come to you with an open mind, and an even more open heart.

Thank you so much for your time.

*P.S. I am a local to Randolph County, but I do not mind making a drive if any of you should ever need an extra set of hands or a young back. I am happy to provide any time or help if I am able. And I can bring friends.

[Jacobs]

I am not sure what you are planning with a Langstroth/Observational hive, but my cousin built one for me by modifying a deep box to put in plexiglass windows on the back and on both sides. The small back window did not give much of a view of the bees at work, and I am not sure how interesting looking between frames would be. The bees tended to put honey in the outside frames of the deep so that after a brief period in the spring, about all to be seen through the side windows was a few bees walking over capped honey. For the view to remain interesting, I would have to be willing to disrupt the bees by moving brood frames to the outside and to continue doing that as the bees finished with brood rearing in the frame and began back filling with nectar.

Brushy Mountain sells an observation hive, and Dadant now sells a similar copy. It has a lower nuc box that holds 5 frames of bees and a display area above. The 2 are separated by a queen excluder so that you can find the queen on a frame, move it up to the one frame display area, and workers can tend to brood and move about, but the queen cannot move out of the display area.

I'll try and post a few pictures later. If you are going to be at class Thursday night, grab me after it is over--I would like a better idea of where you are headed with your project.