By George B. Schramm, LIBC President

The design and construction of the perfect bee house has always held a certain fascination for me. A small shed to store beekeeping equipment would certainly free up some room in the garage, and a place to secure the hives and provide some additional protection from the elements wouldn’t be bad. Also, having a single location to keep the bees and the equipment together would be convenient; no more schlepping everything out to the beeyard.
I’ve collected various books and plans over the years in an attempt to learn what has worked for beekeepers in the past, and to also understand the design elements to be considered when working with bees, essentially, inside a closed room.
Here are some of the design objectives I’ve tried to address, and some images of the plan I’ve been working on this summer in the hope of building a prototype next year.
• Adequate light: Unless you use electrical lighting, an abundance of sunlight is necessary to work with the bees inside. This is a challenge, especially while still trying to achieve the next two goals:
• Weather-tight: The enclosure needs to be at least as weather-tight as your average shed to keep out the rain, wind, and snow, otherwise it won’t be doing much to protect your equipment and bees. So, large empty openings for adequate light won’t work. Windows would seem to be the solution to adequate light and weather-tightness, but windows can be expensive and you don’t need the girls constantly beating their little blond heads against the glass as they attempt to escape. Window shades are a possibility, but unless you use Velcro, the bees will find a way to get trapped between the glass and the shade. Hence the next objective:
• Bee escape: Once you open a hive inside a room, you need to provide a pathway back to the exterior so the bees can re-enter the hive through the front entrance. Fortunately, the bees have a tendency to head for sunlight, so providing a bee escape at the same location as you’re letting in the sunlight would work well. In my current design I’ve used a translucent roofing material with a closeable bee escape vent facing south. I’m not entirely satisfied with the arrangement, so some field-testing may be in order.
• Use existing equipment: Many of the bee house designs I’ve come across use specialized or built-in hive bodies to hold frames, but after investing quite a bit in Langstroth equipment, and its various accessories, I’m reluctant (and too cheap) to give it all up. So the design needs to incorporate the ability to use existing equipment, which I’ve solved by placing the hives up against the outside wall on interior shelves and some strategically placed openings.
• Mobility: Being able to move the bee house as necessary is certainly a consideration. Placing the structure on wood skids is the easiest solution, but it also raises the floor off the ground.
• Ramp: Tripping out of your elevated bee house with an armful of honey-laden supers is ideal inspiration for inventing new and innovative invectives, but not so ideal for your blood pressure. A reinforced door hinged at the bottom solves the security problem and provides a ramp up to the elevated floor.
• Cheap and easy to build: Albeit these are relative terms, the goal is to use inexpensive material that’s easy to assemble. So, for the major components I’ve selected wood lumber in standard sizes that require the minimum amount of cutting (e.g. the floor is two uncut 4x8 sheets of plywood).
These are the major objectives I’ve tried to address with my current design. Suggestions are always welcome.