The Perfect Beehive - How To Choose The Best Hive For Your Bees

Today I'm going to show you how you can buy a British National beehive in the UK for under £100. I'm also going to chuck in there a couple of extra bits of bonus information, a couple of small upgrades to that basic budget beehive setup that means you're going to get the best possible beehive for as little money as possible. So you know me, No Nonsense Beekeeping, we try and keep things simple and I'm always on the hunt to make things cheaper. That is not a race to the bottom in terms of quality. I'm the last person in the world that's going to recommend something just because it's cheap. If anything, I'm going to recommend you something because it's more expensive and it's going to last a lot longer and it's going to save you time. We've spoken about this on my live streams though. If I was to start again, if I was to go back into the beekeeping market with none of the equipment that I've got now but armed with the knowledge that I've accumulated over the years, what would I buy? Where would I buy it? How would it all fit together? And what would my operation look like? We're going to explore that in this video, and at the end of the video, I'm going to give you a couple of key upgrades that you can make to that basic beehive budget kit which really sets it above the competition. Right, first thing on the list is a floor. And as you can guess, I do not buy my floors. Never going to buy any floors going forward because floors are so cheap to make and they're so simple to make as well. So if you've not seen it already, this is my underfloor entrance. It's not my design, it's someone else's design, but it is so, so cheap to make. I'll stick the link in the description if you want to make one of these. I estimate with current costs, you're probably talking about £5 per floor. Most of that money goes into the mesh. You can easily skip dive for the wood if you just wanna do it on 1 or 2 hives. If you're doing it on a few, you're probably best to go and buy the wood as well. For the sake of argument, let's say it's £10 for the floor, including all of the mesh and all of the wood. So that's the start of my basic budget beehive, 1 underfloor entrance. Next on the list is a wooden single national brood box. Now you might think to yourselves, why are you going with the wooden national brood box? The idea of this is to keep the costs down as much as possible. Poly prices, very expensive at the moment. Wooden nationals you can pick up considerably cheaper, but here's the tip: make sure you get them in the winter sales. There is a time of the year to get all of this kit, and it's not in April. I know the timing of this video is a little bit wrong, but hopefully for people next year, this will save you a lot of money. Buy your wooden kit, cedar seconds quality kit, buy it in the winter sales. I never buy any first quality kit. I find wooden seconds is very, very good quality. It's generally made with homegrown English cedar. You get a few imperfections, a few knots, but the quality is very, very good. I wouldn't buy anything different. I bought a big batch of wooden nationals earlier on in the year. I got some from Thorn Beekeeping, I got some from Bee Equipment as well, and roughly I was paying around £17 for a single wooden national brood So far, £10 on the floor, £17 on the brood box. We're up to a total of £27 for the basic budget beehive. Right, next on the list, a plastic queen excluder. I prefer the wireframe queen excluders. That's what I've got in my apiary. If I was buying them again, I would definitely buy plastic queen excluders from a reputable source because the bees have no issue with them whatsoever. They work really well. In some instances, they're actually a little bit better. They're easier to clean. You can get them nice and frozen, get them sterilized. Very, very easy to clean. Best thing of all though, they're very, very cheap. You can pick these up for around £4 to £5. Call it £5 for the sake of this video, but they're very cheap. And this is what I would go for in the basic budget beehive. That brings us up to £32, and now we're getting into the supers. Right, you can play a little bit of a game of what is right with this super, because every single thing is wrong about it. This is due to go on the fire. I'm not opening up my superstore in the middle of February. Just wanna do the video and show you some of the supers that I'm throwing away. And this is the part of the video where I'm saving a little bit towards the So if it was me, I wouldn't be buying these shallows. I understand though some people do want to buy the shallows. So again, for the basic budget beehive, I'd be looking for Cedar Seconds shallows, and I'd make sure that I get them at the right time of the year. Different companies do different sales, but anywhere, say, between November to January, that's when you want to target getting these as cheap as possible. The price of these unfortunately has gone up a bit, but you can pick them up, Cedar Seconds, in the UK for around £14 within the sales. 2 of those, £28. That brings the total up to £60. We've done the floor, the brood box, the queen excluder, 2 supers, and now we've got the crown board. And by the way, if anyone wants to make a bid on all of this amazing equipment, stick it in because genuinely it is top class, well put together, and it is not rotten in the slightest. Joking aside, obviously that is going in the log burner later on. I'm having a clear out. But here we go, look at the delamination on that. This is just a standard crown board. You can pick this up easily in the sales. Again, get it in the sales and you're probably talking about £7. Add all of that up, we're up to £67 so far. And then to cap it all off, can't get everything wet, we've got a standard national roof. You can pick these roofs up for quite a cheap amount if again you get them in the sales, you get them so they're not assembled, you put them together yourself. I've seen these in the sales for anywhere between say £15 to £20. Let's call it £20 for the sake of this video. So that's a standard wooden national for £87. At today's prices. But that is not the end of the video. So first off, in order to achieve those prices, like I said, you need to assemble everything yourself. You're going to go and buy the wood, you're going to go and buy the mesh, you'll put together the floor yourself. You'll buy the wooden brood box as a flat pack cedar second at the right time in the winter sales, put that together. You're going to go for the cheapest plastic molded queen excluder from a reputable vendor. If you want my recommendation, I would either go with Thorn Maysmoor or a Bellow for the molded plastic queen excluder. The wooden supers, again, I would go for cedar seconds at the right time of the year. The crown board, get that from pretty much anywhere you can. Go for the cheapest one you possibly can. And then finally, the roof, you're looking to get it in the sales. You're going to assemble it yourself, and you're going to get all of that for £87. Now, we started off this video saying, if I was to start again, what would I use? I definitely wouldn't use that setup. But I appreciate some people do, so I wanted to do the video to show you how you can get the absolute best bang for your buck in terms of shopping around different manufacturers, getting it at the right time of the year. What I'm going to show you now is the setup that I would use if I was buying all of my equipment again, and then I'm going to save you one little trick at the very end that possibly is going to save you a lot of money. So let's go back through in reverse order. Cedar second wooden national roof. Would I use it in my setup? That one is a maybe. Wooden crown board, would I use that in my setup? Absolutely not. Cedar second wooden national supers at £13 each, not going to use those ones either. Right, you must be thinking, hang on, you've just put together all of that budget basic beehive setup and now you're not going to use any of it? Well, I've come to the point where I am going to use the rest of it now. So the underfloor entrance, that stays on the list, 100% going to use the underfloor entrance. It's cheap, it's effective, and it lasts forever. In terms of a brood box, wooden cedar seconds is currently where I am. I much prefer using poly boxes, there is no doubt about that. I see benefits to my bees, I like them personally from the way that they look and the way that I can operate my hives. But if I was starting again, I'd probably slightly err towards the second cedar wooden nationals. Going back up the list though, the queen excluder— if I was starting again, I would go with the plastic molded queen excluder, so that's going to stay as well. And then in terms of wooden national Supers, I wouldn't personally be using shallows. I would go for deeps above the queen excluder. I'd have one single box that I use for everything— brood boxes, supers. I would buy myself 3 wooden national deeps, and that's how I'd make up my beehive. So let's do a running tally. I've got the floor that was £10, the queen excluder that was £5, that's £15, and then I've got 3 £17 brood boxes. £51 plus the £15 is £65. Next up, I need a replacement for my crown board, and I'm not going to use a crown board at all. No crown board. The crown board has gone. I'm replacing it with the Abello feeder. This is a very expensive addition. This is currently £42, but get it at the right time of the year, you can get 10 to 15% off that. Sake of argument, let's call it £40. Adding everything up, we're up to £105 now, I think, if I got my maths right. And then finally, we need a roof. And I'm really, really stuck as to what I would buy for a roof. I'm going to show you 3 options and I'll let you decide for yourself. Right, my first option would be the wooden National roof, buying it so I have to assemble it myself. That's £17, and I've completely lost track of how much everything costs at the moment, so I'll recalculate in a little bit. This is the one that I'm leaning to at the moment, and you might think, well, you've just put a poly feeder on, surely you go with a poly roof. And my argument is I think a wooden roof is more robust, and the poly feeder is giving me all of the insulation that I actually need. My next option is a poly roof, and you can get this from Abello, or you can get it from any of the manufacturers that fit in with the wooden National. My pick would probably go for the Suyenti though. I know I give the Suyenti a really hard time on this channel, but the roof really does serve a good purpose. It's solid, it lasts forever. I've got no issues with water ingress on this hive. So you just need something that you can strap down to stop the water getting into the feeder And to keep the bees out. You can pick these up considerably cheaper than any other poly roof. You get these for around £20 to £25. But now I'm going to give you the biggest bonus that you're going to get in this video, and that is this. Did you guess what it was? It is a plastic horticultural tray, 600mm by 600mm, so slightly oversized. But we use these for stacking up supers in the honey extraction room, collecting cappings, all sorts of things. They're really good and they last forever as well. But if you're going down the route of putting on a polyash forth feeder, All you really need is something that's going to stop the bees getting into that polyash forth feeder and something that's going to keep the rain out of the polyash forth feeder. You just need a membrane, and something like this, this horticultural tray, works really, really well. You can pick them up for around £6 each. I think if I was starting again, especially as a bee farmer, I think I'd probably go down this route. Spend my money on the polyash forth feeder, which is expensive, and then totally cheap out on the roofs. I'd like to find one that Fits it a little bit better because it's not good when you're stacking it up in the truck. But if I could find a horticultural tray that fit around that polyashphalt feeder with a couple of centimeters gap either side, I think I'd be onto a winner there and it would save you so much money. So here we go, let's have a look at the finished product. We've got an underfloor entrance that I'm gonna have made myself, bit better than this one. That's gonna cost me £10. Then I've got my cedar second wooden national as a brood box. That's £17. I've got my queen excluder in the middle that you can't see there. That's £5. Then I've got another 2 wooden National cedar boxes that are going to act as supers. Then I've got my polyash forth feeder. Then I've got my roof on top. I'm going to add all of that up now and tell you what the final cost is. Well, I'm going to have to start writing these numbers down because no doubt I've made a mistake somewhere. I've got my basic budget beehive costing me £87, and then I've got my extravagant additional bonus beehive costing me £110. And you might kind of think, well, surely I'm going to go with the £87 one. I don't think you should, and I'm going to tell you now why that £110 hive is way better than just an additional £23. So first off, the other hive didn't include a feeder. So even at the very most basic there, you're going to have to buy some sort of feeder. You buy yourself, let's say, an English rapid feeder, that's going to cost you £10. And then if you buy an English rapid feeder, you need your roof to be able to take it, and the one that you've bought doesn't, so you need another super. So in order to add the feeding element onto that £87 version, you're talking £13 for a super and £10 for the feeder. That's £23 if I've got my calculations right, and that adds up to £110. So just by adding in that feeder element, you've already lost all of your savings on the other version. So you could say that these 2 versions are completely equal, and they are far from equal. The benefit that you get from using a single box system makes your life so much easier in terms of swarm control, in terms of Compatibility in terms of simplicity across your operation. You're also adding in the capacity of a single National Shallow into that operation, so you're getting effectively a third extra for free. But the biggest benefit that you're getting is you've got that polyashforth feeder to feed a lot of syrup when you need to feed them. You can flip it over, you can feed fondant, you get the biggest possible bonus that you can get with all of that insulation above the winter cluster. The bees really do like the insulation above them. I know I go on about that all the time, but it definitely works. And the only thing you're sacrificing is the roof doesn't look quite as nice. So what do you think? Which one would you go for? The basic budget setup, the slightly more extravagant setup, or do you have a bit of a pick and mix of your own that can beat either of those iterations? If you just want a completely ready-made poly hive, the one that I would recommend is the 12-frame from Abello. In this video here, I compare all of the 3 different iterations from Abello.