MakerSpace Bee Hive make our own honey?

Is doing anything on the roof an option??

Garden is no issue.

Flying stinging insects being invited to live near the ham radio antennas is a show stopper for me.

I am not allergic, I just hate the things. ( yes, I know how useful they are. They can useful elsewhere. )

For those who are allergic, this would be a very bad thing indeed.

Great remote project. Preferably VERY remote.

Iā€™m willing to bet the landlordā€™ll say ā€œNO!ā€.

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Not our building. Not our landlord.
But I could be wrong. Put together a proposal. Take it to a BOD meeting. Letā€™s see if they can get that approved by the ownerā€¦

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Has anyone been on the roof? Is there stairs?

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Iā€™d be willing to bet itā€™s a quick no. We donā€™t know the roof load rating. No easy access. No guardrails on the sides or skylights. And probably the least concerning is no water.

The water could be collected from condensate.

Now if there was stairs to the roof & the load ratings were ok, but at the same token the roof (our roof) is not designed to have a lot of traffic on it.

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Yes.

Thereā€™s a ladder. Itā€™s not exactly ā€˜funā€™ to climb.

Last I heard, weā€™re also prohibited from climbing it - complaints from our neighbor to the north and landlord disdain. The roll roofing material doesnā€™t take well to constant foot traffic. The roof itself bounces a bit with every step. Itā€™s simply not made for regular, routine access.

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Thatā€™s what I thought. Older building

roll roofing material doesnā€™t take well to constant foot traffic. The roof itself bounces a bit with every step. Itā€™s simply not made for regular, routine access.

ahā€¦ good to know. well if thatā€™s the case, sa live rooftop garden and solar panelsā€¦

im about to get my hive going and set up. interested in connecting and chatting with other DMS beeks! what were your woes?! what worked well? treatments or no? what types of feeders you use? what type of bees? have extra tools you are selling?

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got my hive set up and my bees installed. ^^ i think a fun DMS class would be box building 101 or building a feeder or something.i feel comfortable talking about the bee parts but i dont know enough about the woodworking or laser to facilitate this ><

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I think this would be a great class. I have suggested in the past that Science sponsor this (my interests donā€™t necessarily intersect with theirs) - Iā€™m positive that local bee keeping organizations would be happy to have someone do it. So this is almost a no work class/event.

If there were a standard set of plans there could be build events.

Somewhere on Talk, several years ago, one of our members made a hive. Instead of just the normal ā€œslit openingā€ it was made with small arches just large enough for a single bee to go through. It had sensors that detected going in or out. An Arduino recorded IN-OUT, TIME, TEMP. This was great, it showed activity and how it relates to time and temp (Iā€™d probably add Humidity and possibly rain and wind speed if really inspired). But this was now collecting real data or the biology of bees: basic science IMO.

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as for standard set of plans for a hive. people have typically used the ā€œlangstrothā€ hive since the late 1800ā€™s its basically a box with a lip built into either end. and thin wood frames that the bees build onto. if i were more adept at making joints or the lip i would head this up. the dimensions are from here or the langstroth wiki.

4 1ā€³ x 12ā€³ clear pine 19-7/8ā€³ x 9-5/8ā€³ x 3/4ā€³ These are the long sides.
For the 3/4ā€³ finger joints, start your first cut 3/4ā€³ from the
bottom. Note that the top finger is 5/8ā€³ (not 3/4ā€³) and is trimmed
to 3/8ā€³ long.
4 1ā€³ x 12ā€³ clear pine 16-1/4ā€³ x 9-5/8ā€³ x 3/4ā€³ These are the short sides.
For the 3/4ā€³ finger joints, start your first cut at the bottom.
Note that the top finger is 1-3/8ā€³ (not 3/4ā€³).
Rabbet a cut 5/8ā€³ wide by 3/8ā€³ deep along the entire inside top
length.
4 1ā€³ x 12ā€³ clear pine 16-1/4ā€³ x 1-7/8ā€³ x 3/4ā€³ These are the hand rails.

p.s. the files for the hive counter are on thingiverse. sadly keeping a pi or arduino running 24/7 seems too power hungry to be reasable for most since you dont typically keep your hive right next to your house.

im more than willing to work on this with science dept if there is any interest from people at any level. newbies or seasoned vets.

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That may have been what Iā€™ve seen built. By plans Iā€™m thinking something on MultiCam that can crank these out. They could also be done using a table saw and a router for the dove tail and rabbets.

Iā€™ll look and see what Arlingtonā€™s rules are. Iā€™d love to build and have a hive.

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I can help with that if you wanted to get together for it. Iā€™m interested in beekeeping, and I have some experience with low power arduino stuff. You could have it running off of a single 18650 for quite some time if you set the sleep states up correctly.

i dont have much multicam experience but i can do up the cad design for these if wanted. just needs a dxf sketch eh? agree that would be so cool just to pump out a dozen or so. could even get fancy with dms branding etc.

@malcolmputer i have most of the arduino parts. best i saw from my limited research (for solar powered camera live feed was like 11 hrs on a 10k MaH battery :confused: but these were also raspi3.)

maybe we should have a general purpose bee meet up. then see what people do and dont have interest on for further classes. and from the beek 101 to the 2nd class we can drum up some attendees.

raspi3 will be roughly 500mA, with an absolute best case of 100mA draw.

arduino will be ~30mA worst case, best case in the microamp range.

Any circuit that can track and log that many inputs would be fine. Iā€™d make mine solar powered. Not interested in web cam other than when Iā€™d want to see - then a switch would work negating as much power required and to be stored. Actually hadnā€™t thought of the web cam!

Be interested in getting together with some folks - we could design and build these as a group, go faster.

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I wonder how long it will be before battery people will go to Amp Hours instead of this thousands of milliamp hours non-sense.

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