Tag: layens

Ozarks Homesteading Expo 2024

It’s almost time for the Ozarks Homesteading Expo, which will be on September 6-7, 2024 at the Webster County Fairgrounds in Marshfield, MO. This will be a fantastic event for anyone wanting to learn to live a more independent, sustainable life. There are many great speakers scheduled, demonstrations of traditional skills such as animal processing, wood milling, blacksmithing, etc., and over 150 vendors with goods to equip your sustainable life.

Visit ozarkshomesteading.com for more information and to buy tickets to the Expo.

I’ll have a booth at the Expo, where I’ll have books, Layens hives and swarm traps available, along with a new hive stand available for the first time. I’ll also be speaking at 2:00 pm on Saturday on the topic: “Keeping Bees Doesn’t Have to be Hard”. I hope you’ll come by to say hi!

The new hive stand, described in the video below, has been developed by Kris Hopkins of hopkinshomesteadstore.com, where the Hopkins family sells high quality steel raised garden beds. Visit their website and use code “SODBUSTER” for a 5% discount.

Splitting 1 Honeybee Colony into 2 in the Same Hive!

When you might be short on extra hives to house bees, but need to split a colony, it’s possible to use multiple entrances of a horizontal hive to facilitate a split, housing both resulting colonies in the same hive. In these videos I prepare for the split by moving the colony to use the central hive entrance, then split it into two colonies, each residing in one end of the hive.

Conversion Hive Construction Video Coming!

Since posting videos showing the use of my conversion hive to move bees from Langstroth to Layens frames, I’ve received several requests to share plans of that hive. I’m currently working on a video showing how that hive was built, but that project was done before I started making YouTube videos so I’m learning some new video editing skills to retroactively put the presentation together.

That build video should be posted soon but, in the meantime, here’s the video showing the setup of the conversion hive and addition of bees: