Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[eltalia]

G'day... thanks for dropping by in your interest in Skeps.

Finally today I got to commission one of the set of three
being laboured over these past weeks. A simple enough
build, delays came from thinking ways around running
a Skep in tbe tropics with a bee type known to swarm
without swarming controls in place. Heat and humidty
were not so much a problem as wind and rain. Wind as
the finished shell is top heavy and weighs in at just 3kg.
Rain as cow dung and ash - the traditional mix - would
not last a week in our Wet Season where falls of 400mm
overnight are not uncommon. Add to those an environment
loaded with all brandnames of bugs and we needed a
bottomboard to sort them out.
Then a provision to allow easy mount to a TBH or Lang had
to be built in.
It took time. If it all works as allowed for future builds would
be around 12 manhours with realtime values of maybe three
days depending on weather.

So here is Skep01_2017 in action immediately after loading
it up, and then 20minutes later as the bees settle.


skep2017.jpg
http://thumbsnap.com/nzulcnMe
QX_set.jpg
http://thumbsnap.com/NJpJJKGc

Wholly experimental, I suggest we wait till after the Wet Season
to declare any outcomes... cheers

Bill

[Adriaan]

congratulations Bill,

Well done. It looks good. What materials did you use?
cow dung will rain of here in Belgium too if not under a roof.

What volume is the hive? Traditionally the volume is about 30 liter, that is less then a single broodbox.
I have two straw skeps:
-a big one (50 l) that I populated june 2016, it swarmed may 5th this year.
-a small one (30l) that I populated may 2017 it swarmed 8 weeks later.
Swarming is a good thing.

I did a skep building course about 40 years ago and the teacher (a traditional skeppist by the name of Floor van Os) told us that an experienced skeppist should be able to make a skep in eight hours, not counting the time needed to collect the straw, the bramble bindings and the spiles. I built about a dozen over the years but still need about 20 hours to complete one.

Unfortunately I still haven't figured out how to post pictures so I can't show you mine.

friendly greetings

Adriaan

[AndyC]

My first skep.

I call it a regional variation. . . . . . .

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mw4xor1oabwo8ai/2017-10-29%2007.49.22.jpg?dl=0[/url]

[eltalia]

Yeh Andy these are 40L, give or take a cupful as the construction is not so precise. These are made from blown polystyrene/polyurathane foam and Plaster-0-Paris as I doubt we here in North Queensland would have local materials to do a wicker weave, plus the last I did was 50years ago - a school based 'craft' lesson. Individually the design would take way longer than weaving simply because of waiting for materials to cure, and the cost would be prohibitive.
For the three I built the prime cost was a sheet of plywood ($23), the
blow foam ($32) and the plaster at ($26).... not all quantities bought were used. The rest - paint/screws/PVC/chaulk I have in my kit, always.

I cannot say - as I do not own the BB site - but I have deduced the site runs on a shoestring budget and so allowing pix uploads could prove expensive.
It is so easy today to use a share site and post the link (s) with a brief description. Some still won't use these, a very small number of users, and anyway someone is going to report a rogue link pronto. So if concerned, wait and watch helps
Thanks for your kind thoughts Andy, appreciated here.

Bill

[eltalia]