While passing through Port Macquarie Tim Heard and I took the opportunity to drop in and see Warwick who had an article published in a recent ANBA Cross Pollinator Newsletter. It was also great to meet Chelsea of Sticky Tips Bees when she dropped in. Chelsea owns a Honey Bee business in Port Macquarie.
Warwick has a well set up workshop where he produces a different style of native bee hive. He was inspired by Bob Luttrell’s Aus Novy hive design and has been working on his own designs and further developing his methods.
The whole box is a stack of sections. Each section is a sandwich of four layers of PVC board stuck together with bees wax. The standard version can be made of three sections and extra sections can be added on top or underneath to increase the volume. Warwick says he’s had good success with adding new sections and creating new colonies in the extended sections.
When cutting out the shapes from the full sheet of board, the round area that is removed from the middle of each section is then used to make another smaller design box (pictured below) which reduces material waste.
Contact:
- Tim Heard – Sugarbag Bees – website https://sugarbag.net
- Chelsea – Sticky Tips Bees – Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stickytipsbees/
