This is what beekeeping has done to me! I was never this way but now, well now, you might see me headfirst in a skip with my feet waving in the air as I rescue something that I could use for beekeeping. Recycling, that’s what I’m doing. Yeah.
It started during the second year of my beekeeping, the number of hives I had were increasing and I needed more hive stands. Then I saw it. The skip. For days, I walked past this beautiful big green skip on my way to work and each day I saw it fill up with beautiful clean timber cut-offs of 4 x 2 ‘s, (100mm x 50mm). My real job suffered as my thoughts kept returning to the skip.
How many hive stands could I make with that timber? What design would I use? It didn’t matter that my wood working skills are suspect. Would I be brave enough to ask the builders? Would it rain before I plucked up the courage to ask? Would the timber be gone, dumped, the next time I passed by? Still I hesitated. My anxiety built up for days until I couldn’t stand it. What’s the worst that could happen? They could say no! They might laugh at me! I decided I could live with that.
The builder I asked looked at me like I had two heads and called the foreman over. He too gave me an odd look until I quickly swiped out my phone and showed them photos of one my beehives on a hive stand and then they couldn’t be more obliging. “What size do you want them?” “We’ll cut them for you so that they’ll fit in your car.” I went home with a car full of the beautiful new timber. I returned later and gave them one of the rare pots of honey from my first crop and some scones so that they could share it during their tea break.
I made two decent work benches as well as some very solid stands with this timber. The hive stands are heavy, but boy are they sturdy.
Wood workers turn away now.
You may think that you’ll never be that way, scavenging for beekeeping parts, but you just wait. If you decide to become a beekeeper you’ll be laughing at yourself when you catch yourself doing it too.
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