If you’re living off the grid and you have all your basics down, but you want to try something a bit more adventurous, then maybe you should consider adding a beehive or two to your property. Not only will having a hive provide you with fresh organic honey, but you’ll also have a steady source of workers who can pollinate other crops you may have growing in your garden. If you discover a hive of wild bees in your property, you may hire a Honey Bee Relocation Specialist to move it to a more suitable location or completely get rid of it especially if someone in your family is allergic.
There are plenty of options when it comes to this, some of which you can buy outright, but if you’re the type who likes to build everything from scratch, well, there are designs for that too, and with a little bit of research, you may even be able to come up with one that fits your needs even better than those already available.
One DIY method involves using the larger quart sized mason jars, plywood, woodscrews/shims, and additional wood for framing your starter hive. The use of the mason jars gives you an easy to remove, and essentially already packaged, jar of honey. For the details on how to build it, Click here
Another DIY method uses a 10 gallon aquarium, which you can get relatively cheaply, especially if you check out various for sale websites such as Craigslist or the Facebook Marketplace.
You may even find one for free if you find someone just wanting it gone. After removing the bottom of the tank, and building a box frame to set it in, you’re actually almost done. The bonus is that the premade beehive frames that are sold at various stores and online fit almost perfectly into the aquarium.
The bonus is that it can be a great project to with your kids since it allows you to watch your hive in action. You can see the how-to-video here
Whether you chose to build your own hive, or buy one of the many kits and complete hives already for sale on the market, you’ll be helping to sustain the troubled bee population and providing yourself with organic honey for your off grid homestead.
