Spring 2013 Update

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Daylight Savings Time has come, which tells us that Bee Season is almost here. What a year it’s been! In April of 2012 we moved Bee Thinking from its tiny, 1,000 square foot space in the Sellwood Neighborhood of Portland to a 3,000 square foot facility in the SE Hawthorne Neighborhood.

Inside Bee Thinking

Inside Bee Thinking

In May of last year Williams-Sonoma approached us about selling our hives (top bar hives and Warre hives) through their website and catalog. This, of course, was flattering and exciting news! In order to keep up with the demand and further refine the quality of our products, we built a relationship with a new manufacturer. We’re now able to produce at least 300 hives at a time, all consistently quality controlled and ready to ship to our customers worldwide. 

Due to the increased demand for our hives, we’ve also increased our staff from 2 to 4, with Alyssa starting as our full-time manager in July. This staffing increase has better enabled us to handle the deluge of orders, phone calls and e-mails that come with the spring rush. We’re doing our best to keep up, usually shipping orders within a day or two, but sometimes we get backed up. Please bear with us!

We’re teaching at least 2 beekeeping classes per month (sign up for beekeeping classes), with most of them filling up long before the date of the class (Sign up soon if you plan to take one this spring)! We also had a Mead Making class earlier this year that was a great success. We plan to continue mead making classes and begin offering other bee-related classes in the near future.

We’re continuing to innovate by improving current products offering new ones based on requests from our customers. Our top bar hive now features a full-length window, a modification that has been requested for a long time. Our new products that will be available soon include top bar hive screened bottoms, Western Red Cedar Langstroth hives (available for pre-order), and top bar hive nucleus boxes.

Cedar Langstroth Hive

Cedar Langstroth Hive

Swarms should begin around the start of April. In fact, in 2011 and 2012 our first swarms of the year were on Easter day. We’re working hard to prepare for swarm season, and we’re planning on adding dozens of bait hives all over the city to ensure we capture as many swarms as possible, while also keeping them from moving into walls.

Happy bee season, all!

 

Happy Holidays and Holiday Hours

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Warre Hive Christmas Tree

Warre Hive Christmas Tree

The Bee Thinking storefront in Portland, OR, will be closed on December 25th through January 1st due to the holidays. It has been a wonderful 2012 and we are thankful for each beekeeper and bee (knowledge) seeker we were able to meet and help out. By far our favorite part of Bee Thinking is the people we get to meet and chat bees with.

Even though our storefront will be closed, you all can still shop to your heart’s content on our website http://www.beethinking.com/. We will be shipping some orders on December 26th. However, most orders during this time will go out on January 2nd.

Bee Thinking Regular Business Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10 am – 6 pm

Holiday Closure:
Tuesday, December 25th – Tuesday, January 1st

Thanks for making this a very wonderful 2012.  We look forward to serving your beekeeping needs in 2013!  Happy holidays!

Quilt Box Effect on Hive

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What is a quilt box? is one of the most common questions we receive. It is essentially a small box with burlap or screen on the bottom, filled with sawdust, cedar shavings or some other organic material. The box sets on top of the topmost box the bees inhabit and is said to “absorb moisture” and “retain the nest scent and heat.” But does it?

A customer of ours recently gathered some data on this very subject by using temperature sensors in his identical Langstroth hives. He added a quilt box to one of them, and left the other one untouched. Here are the identical hives:

Langstroth Hives

Here is the quilt box:

Quilt box on Langstroth Hive

Here is the data he gathered:

Temperatures before and after Quilt Box

Note that the temperature fluctuates far less on Hegemone (the hive to which the quilt box was added).

In the next week he plans to add a solid bottom to one of the hives to see what impact it has on the temperature.

Difference Between Bumble Bees, Hornets, Wasps and Honey Bees

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Each year we receive hundreds of calls from homeowners with “bees” that they’d like removed. Often they are, indeed, honey bees. At least 1/3 of the time, however, they are bumble bees, hornets, wasps or yellow jackets (a type of wasp). I’m not aware of any wasp/hornet removal services other than extermination. There are some who remove bumble bees, but usually I recommend to customers that they just leave them until winter, as they will die out.

Few people realize that there are upwards of 20,000 types of bees in the world, and more than 6,000 in North America alone. This doesn’t even include hornets or wasps! Do note that all hornets are technically wasps…

Yesterday we received an e-mail from someone with what they thought was a bee’s nest hanging from their eave. This should be the first indication that it is NOT honey bees, as they tend to live inside cavities as opposed to in exposed nests.

Here’s a picture of the wasp/hornet’s nest:

Wasp Nest

Yellow jackets are a type of wasp that often lives in the ground. This is the most common call we receive, and the first question I ask is, “Where is the nest?” If it’s in the ground I assure them it’s not honey bees, but likely yellow jackets! Yellow jackets, like bumble bees, die out over the winter in northern states. So if they are out of the way and not bothering you or your family, you can leave them alone until winter and then plug up the hole.

Bumble bees come in a tremendous array of shapes, sizes and colors. They usually live in the ground or in some other small cavity such as a bird house or mailbox. Most of the time they are very docile, with little interest in humans, though like any stinging insect they can be aggressive if provoked.

Here’s an example of a sparrow house being used as a bumble bee nest:

Bumble Bee Nest

Honey bees prefer to live in elevated (as opposed to in the ground) cavities such as walls, chimneys or trees. They tend to be very docile even if you are standing directly in front of their hive.

If you’ve got some “bees” you’d like removed, please make sure that they aren’t wasps/hornets or bumble bees. If they are honey bees we will do our best to help you out!

Photos of our Store

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4 months later we’ve finally taken some updated photos of our new store in Portland! Here you go! Feel free to stop by at 1229 SE Nehalem Street, Wednesday-Friday 12PM-6PM, or Saturdays from 11AM-4PM.

Bee Thinking Store

Bee Thinking from the street.

Bee Thinking Entryway

Looking into the entry way of the store.

 

Top Bar Hive and Warre Hive
Our most important products: Top Bar Hives and Warre Hives
Top Bar Hive and Warre Hive Accessories

Top Bar Hive and Warre Hive Accessories

More Top Bar Hive Accessories

More Top Bar Hive Accessories

New Website, Shop Update and a Summer Sale!

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As you may have noticed, our website looks a little different! Over the past couple months we’ve been upgrading it to new software, and about a week ago we went live. So far it’s been working great! Please let us know if you run into any issues.

It’s been a very busy year! In May we moved into our new storefront in the Sellwood neighborhood of southeast Portland, Oregon. Initially we just needed a location at which we could store and ship hives, but we decided to turn it into a small storefront for our products. The response has been fantastic! Portland was clearly in need of a local beekeeping supply shop focused on the ever-growing population of backyard beekeepers! In addition to selling our products, we hold classes there as well! Our next class can be found here: Beekeeping Classes

Here’s a shot of the front of our shop:

Bee Thinking Store

Bee Thinking from the street.

We’ve just realized that this is the only picture we’ve taken of our new shop in the almost 4 months we’ve been there! We’ll make another post this week with some more updated photos.

Last, but not least, all of our top bar hive and Warre hive products are 10% off through September, 15th! If you are looking to start beekeeping in 2012, or if you want to expand your apiary, now is your chance to get a good deal!

Busy Bees and Busy Business!

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What a year so far! Our bees are doing great and so is business!

Here’s a video of some of our happy Warre, Langstroth and Top Bar Hives in our back yard on February 21st, 2011:


In addition, we’ve been working tirelessly to keep up with the influx of orders we’ve been receiving since December. By the end of the week we expect to have a lot of top bar hives in stock, and by next week we should be caught up entirely with Warre hives! I could not be more excited about the number of beekeepers looking into alternative methods such as Top Bar Hives and Warre hives. Here are some photos of the production process:

FSC Western Red cedar waiting to be turned into bee hives:

Lumber 1

Lumber 2

Assembled Warre hives ready to go!

Warre Hives Complete

Unassembled Warre hives parts, ready to be boxed:

Warre Hive Unassembled

Top bar hives being constructed:

Building Top Bar Hives

Top Bar Hives awaiting packing:

Top Bar Hives for Packing

Top Bar Hives Awaiting shipment:

Top Bar hives awaiting shipment