Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => EQUIPMENT USAGE, EXPERIMENTATION, HIVE PLANS, CONSTRUCTION TIPS AND TOOLS => Topic started by: divemaster1963 on May 10, 2016, 07:07:54 pm
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My bushkill vac worn out so I made a new one.
What do you think?
John
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I really like the slider for the vac hole/ entrance. I'm stealing that one.
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Why not just get a standard blast gate like the og one?
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Why not just get a standard blast gate like the og one?
Personally I used what I had on hand. I used my same hoses. The metal was some thin sheet metal. I cut the groove with a cordless saw blade to get it thin enough. Had to add the brace in center to keep the metal straight. It has worked great on three cutouts with very little kills. Once I got the vent set.
John
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Looks like it will work just fine. What did you do on the opposite side of the entrance to soften the landing. I have a piece of metal rolled to so that instead of slamming into wall they slide up 90 degrees. You can also place a piece of foam to absorb the impact instead of hitting the wall.
Jim
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I have found that the design was well thought out. On the ibdera side of the vac there is pegboard this defuses the suction. That alone reduces any impact from going thru Pike into the box. Really really low losses once you learn the swting of the airflow rate.
John
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Looks good. I use a sheet of plexiglas on top so I can watch them come in. It helps get the vac setting right quicker.
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Looks good. I use a sheet of plexiglas on top so I can watch them come in. It helps get the vac setting right quicker.
With the pegboard under vac head plexiglass would be hard to see thru. Unless I drilled all the holes by hand.
John
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Does a curved surface for the bees to slide against help slow them down so they are not injured or does
tumbling against it cause more damage to the bees?
It looks to me the curved surface would be better.
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With this style when you get the suction adjusted right .by the time the bees get to the box with the; pegboard the air is diffused enough that they don't hit the back of box. The trick is getting the sucton right . once you have it set you can leave it there for all the removals.
John
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Looks good. I use a sheet of plexiglas on top so I can watch them come in. It helps get the vac setting right quicker.
With the pegboard under vac head plexiglass would be hard to see thru. Unless I drilled all the holes by hand.
John
Plexiglass could be used as the bottom slider and viewed from the bottom if set on something? This would really be neat seeing the bees coming in.
.
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Does a curved surface for the bees to slide against help slow them down so they are not injured or does
tumbling against it cause more damage to the bees?
It looks to me the curved surface would be better.
With this style when you get the suction adjusted right .by the time the bees get to the box with the; pegboard the air is diffused enough that they don't hit the back of box. The trick is getting the sucton right . once you have it set you can leave it there for all the removals.
John
This is my finding as well noting they come in for a soft easy landing. I do not know how you built your set up with peg board but I built mine with the peg board across the entire top under the vacuum part which evenly distributes suction across the entire length and width of the box. Unlike all other vacs that I have seen; some very good ones I might add.
I especially like the idea of the catch box being a regular bee box with screen on the entire top and slide out bottom. With this set up the bees have plenty access to fresh air on the ride home when vac top is removed, the entire top is open to fresh air through the top screen. I used regular aluminum window screen. Even on the hottest days there is no worry of the bees overheating on the ride home.
With the slide out bottom, this catch box can be set up on top of the cut out comb box and simply slide out the slider bottom so bees can enter the new (brood and comb area) which we have rubber banded into frames. (once we have this "new" hive in its new location). I also recommend placing a regular top on top of the catch box so no light is above the catch box and screen area so bees will more readily move down to the comb box. (I learned this by watching JP and Schawee), lol
Adding, I see you put a support bar just above the slide in bottom. I did not do this. My catch box is wide open with nothing inside but wide open space. My slider bottom might have been thicker than yours. I used the side of a washing machine housing to cut out and make my bottom slider. :shocked: :cheesy: rigid and works great!
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Adding I can not say my vac is a version of the colorado vac but a home built Colorado (type) vac, as I used the peg board across the entire top as colorado did in their well made vac and video. As far as I know they are the only vac company that does this?