I was just addressing some issues on the website and I noticed on the news feed from the BBKA that Ted Hooper has passed away. As a new beekeeper myself his book “A Guide to Bees and Honey” is the bible on beekeeping and his passing is a sad loss to the community.
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British National BeehivesBased in a small workshop in Tideswell in the Peak District we make Highest Quality British National Beehives out of 1st grade American Western Red Cedar or High Quality Red Deal according to the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) Modified National Hive Plans. Everything we sell we make here in the Peak District. We also stock other items of Beekeeping Supplies including Frames, Foundation Wax and Hive Tools. The driving forces behind peak-hives.co.uk are sustainability and quality workmanship. Sustainability because, well it matters quite a bit we think and quality workmanship because customer satisfaction is paramount. Cedar Scarcity.Unfortunately building materials are extremely scarce at the moment and pricing is highly volatile. This goes for Western Red Cedar too. I have decided that until the market settles down I will not be making up any Cedar hives or hive parts. We'll be back in operation once the supply issues have been resolved. Many thanks.webcam...Want to see your National Hive being made? Here's what's going on in the workshop right now. The image is updated every 10 minutes during working hours. Click to see full size... blog...The rest of the centre column is an ongoing blog of what's new at peak-hives.co.uk and other items of interest...veg garden...renewables etc, but please don't let reading about the allotment distract you from placing your order...:-)Had a busy and tiring day felling two Western Red Cedar trees with tree surgeons Paul and Dan. The trees had to come down anyway as they were about to topple the chimney stack on the house they were next to. Once they were down I sliced them into National Hive sized logs and then as soon as possible it’s down to Simon at Rowsley Sawmill where they’ll be milled into 2″ boards ready for air drying this summer.  Peak District Western Red Cedar Here at Peak Hives we’re very keen to obtain locally sourced materials if at all possible and many thanks to Dave for giving the heads up on the trees and to Paul and Dan for letting me come along on the day. Can’t wait to get one of Peak Hives National Beehives made up out of Peak District Cedar. Local tree surgeon Paul has contacted me with regard to a couple of Western Red Cedars that he has to fell. They need to come down anyway as they are threatening the buildings nearby. He’s been very helpful and positive about these trees being used for National Hives rather than just burning them as firewood and is in negotiation with the owners now to see if it’s possible to do a deal on their unwanted trees.  Peak District Western Red Cedar Many thanks to Paul! Peak Hives are now producing framed and wired queen excluders suitable for National Hives with either top or bottom bee space. Our metalwork supplier sent us the metal grills a few weeks back and I’ve just had the chance to set up the workshop jigs to produce high quality frames to go round the excluder grill. As with all our other National Hive seperates they can be found in the hive parts section in the left hand column. I’ll also add them as an option on purchasing a complete hive this evening.  Framed Wired Queen Excluder My metalwork supplier has recently sent me a batch of high quality queen excluder grills. The mission before me (…’should I choose to take it’. R.I.P. a fond childhood memory – Peter Graves) was to come up with a frame suitable for both top and bottom bee space. To tell the truth they’ve been sitting on the shelf for a couple of weeks now irritating the hell out of me that an obvious solution wasn’t immediately at hand. The National Hive order that I’m currently working on includes a couple of excluders so in the end I bit the bullet and spent a couple of dead (£££) hours ‘uhmming and aahing’ and making up various workshop jigs. By five o’clock PM with the help of the new Startrite Pillar Drill I’d got this far…  Making Queen Excluders By six I’d cracked it and I’ll make up the two for the order in the morning and tomorrow evening have them on the site as a Peak Hives product. Happy beekeeping 2010. Nick These four flat pack cedar national nucleus hives were custom made to the client’s preferred dimensions. Took a little longer than usual as I had to order special meshes for the varroa floors but they’ll be packaged and sent today and I’m sure the customer will be satisfied as will their bees…  custom made nucleus hives Hi. I’m always on the lookout for new machines and I came across this Startrite Mercury Pillar Drill. There’s not much to be done with one of these for making National Hives but seeing as I had been coping with a much inferior machine bought from B&Q or a.n.other vendor of rubbish machinery I jumped at the chance. The new machine is 3 phase and very good at what it’s supposed to do…the old is single phase and rubbish…easy to see which is the better machine.  Startrite Mercury In our endeavour to provide everything for the National Hive I’m pleased to say that we’ve found a local producer of National Hive Tools. Made in Sheffield. They are now listed in the left hand column for purchase. Here’s a picture. Click on the pic to see it in higher resolution.  Hive Tools Made in Sheffield Hi. Dave and Adele at the Peak Park have come up with another Western Red Cedar that is about to be felled. More locally sourced timber for National Hives! I’m very pleased and would like to thank both Dave and Adele for their support for the cottage industry that is Peak Hives. The tree is due to be felled anyway as it’s leaning a bit too close to it’s owner’s conservatory. My opinion is that it’s better used as timber for National Hives than put through one of those awful chipper machines and ending up as garden mulch. I’ll have to arrange milling again into 2″ boards with Simon at Rowsley Sawmill and then it can join the Cedar from Chatsworth that is already sticked and seasoning. It’s not really economically sensible to do this as the time and effort it takes is enormous but there’s definitely a satisfaction in knowing that the timber I’m working came from just down the road rather than the other side of the world. Here’s a pic.  Locally Sourced Western Red Cedar Here’s a couple of National Nucleus Hives I’ve finished today. On the left a flat pack National Nuc in Red Deal with a standard floor. On the right a fully assembled Cedar National Nuc with Varroa Floor (with slide out tray). Both take 5 Hoffman DN4 frames with an extra 8mm manipulation space.  National Nucleus Hive Options The first batch of locally sourced Chatsworth Western Red Cedar has been milled up by Simon at Rowsley Sawmill and I’ve just stacked and ‘sticked’ it to air dry. Simon’s milled it into 2″ waney edge boards which I can then machine up into either national hive rails or slice down the middle for hive ends/sides. Kiln drying would be too expensive so we’ll stick it cover it to protect it from the rain and wait…  Air Drying Chatworth Western Red Cedar I’ve had quite a few requests to produce top bee space national hives. Got an order finished this morning so just before my lunchbreak I decided to ‘jig up’ for offering top bee space nationals. Basically the difference in machining requires the production of a deeper top rail for supers and brood boxes and a suitable mortice in the brood/super sides to accommodate the deeper rails. Anyway to cut a not very long story shorter here’s a couple of pics showing the standard British National Hive option of bottom bee space and the new optional top bee space…  Bottom Bee Space National Hive  Top Bee Space National Hive I’ve also put together a little page on the debate between top and bottom bee space…here I’ll update the site to allow choosing top bee space as an option later tonight. |
Peak Hives now has it's own nursury for Pollinator Plants. We are keen gardeners and with our interest in beekeeping supplying quality pollinator plants seemed a natural progression... The polytunnel is now populated with our own propagated and carefully selected bee friendly plants. We're now taking pollinator plant orders for despatch between January 2019 and June 2019. Please indicate your preferred delivery window when ordering your plants. Lavender 'Hidcote'In flower and swamped in bees 'Hidcote' is a bushy dwarf evergreen shrub with narrow, silvery-grey leaves and small deep violet-purple flowers in dense, aromatic spikes 3-4cm in length
1 Litre Pot £4.99 2 Litre Pot £6.99 Achillea 'King Alfred'A low growing Achillea with silver foliage with sulphur-yellow flowers that appear in spring
1 Litre Pot £3.99 2 Litre Pot £5.99 Lavender 'Rosea'Fragrant rose pink flower spikes rise on short stems above neat, grey-green foliage. With its pretty pink blooms, Lavandula angustifolia 'Rosea' makes a lovely accompaniment to the traditional purple English Lavenders.
1 Litre Pot £4.99 2 Litre Pot £6.99 Potentilla ‘Golden Starlit’ (Summer)This brilliant yellow flower is perfectly complimented with a grey/green foliage which the bees love. Recommended by the RHS to be an excellent attractant and nectar source for bees and other beneficial insects.
1 Litre Pot £3.99 2 Litre Pot £5.99 Lavender 'Devon Compact White'An ever popular perennial with profusion of pink, slightly more petite flowers on very upright habit over dense, aromatic, grey-green foliage with a tight mounding habit.
1 Litre Pot £4.99 2 Litre Pot £6.99 Pulmonaria ‘Trevi Fountains’Pulmonaria 'Trevi Fountain'. A spring flowering perennial forming dense clumps of narrow white spotted dark green leaves. The flowers are cobalt-blue with a pinkish cast and long-lasting. One of the earlier flowering lungworts and so particularly valuable as an early nectar source for bees.
1 Litre Pot £4.79 2 Litre Pot £6.79 Potentilla ‘Scarlet Starlit’A Potentilla that has well-balanced but dwarf habit which carries crimson red flowers in the summer over foliage that has an eye-catching silver lustre. Recommended by the RHS to be an excellent attractant and nectar source for bees and other beneficial insects.
1 Litre Pot £5.50 2 Litre Pot £7.50 Veronica spicata ‘Heidekind’ (Summer)From June-August, each strong stem is topped with a fat, cerise-pink flower which should be deadheaded to extend interest.
1 Litre Pot £4.95 2 Litre Pot £7.95 Ceratostigma plumbaginoides (Autumn)C. plumbaginoides commonly called hardy blue-flowered leadwort is a low-growing herbaceous perennial with spreading roots, forming a mat of stems bearing oval leaves which turn red or purple in autumn. Clusters of rich blue flowers from late summer adored by bees.
1 Litre Pot £5.49 2 Litre Pot £8.49 Sage officinalis ‘Icterina (Gold)’ (Autumn)A cheerful addition to the herb garden and particularly attractive when topped by its purple-blue flowers in Spring and Summer.
1 Litre Pot £6.50 2 Litre Pot £8.50 Euphorbia ‘Baby Charm’ (Spring)Beautiful red tints to the attractive green foliage, with sprays of delicate green flowers on red stems in spring.
1 Litre Pot £4.79 2 Litre Pot £8.79 Helleborus orientalis hybrid ‘Pink Lady’ (Spring)One of the very best bee plants is the hybrid hellebore (Helleborus x hybridus) because the open flowers are easy to access and provide life sustaining nectar and pollen for at least two weeks or more.
1 Litre Pot £5.20 2 Litre Pot £7.20 Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii (Summer)Attractive to bees and other pollinators Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii bears attractive, daisy-like flowers with cone-shaped, black-brown centres from August to October.
1 Litre Pot £4.99 2 Litre Pot £6.99 Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ (Spring)Tangerine flowers. Loved by bees and ideal for cutting. Flowers May-August.
1 Litre Pot £5.79 2 Litre Pot £8.79 Iberis ‘Masterpiece’ (Spring)Iberis 'Masterpiece' is known for attracting bees, butterflies and moths. It has highly nectar-pollen-rich-flowers.
1 Litre Pot £4.99 2 Litre Pot £6.99 |
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