It's not just a hive, it's Bee Furniture!
We design and build hand-crafted honey bee hives from carefully-selected pine, spruce, and Vancouver Island grown Western Red Cedar. Each piece is cut, assembled, and finished with an attention to detail and a mind for quality, longevity, aesthetics, and most of all, the overall health of your honey bee colony. Our equipment is created in such a way as to increase ventilation in the hive, which helps maximize overall bee health, especially in our temperate but extremely wet West Coast winters. As a beekeeper, Certified Bee Master and craftsman, it would be my pleasure to show you the difference that Bee Furniture makes!
You have a choice - why not beautify your yard or apiary with hand-crafted Bee Furniture?
Starter Kit - ideal for new beekeepers!
Starter kit, hand-crafted from Western Red Cedar.
Shown with peaked, vented roof - now standard for all new kits!
All about our western red cedar!
We started out making beautiful, strong Bee Furniture using locally-sourced Pine or Spruce lumber. Pine and Spruce are easy to work with, light, strong, and very reasonably priced, so it was an obvious choice.
After the first year, I sourced a small supply of beautiful, Vancouver Island grown Western Red Cedar, and was able to build a few custom orders with it. Cedar contains natural resistance to rot and pests, so not only will it typically last longer than many other woods, but it also weighs less. The biggest benefit, in my opinion, is the naturally warm colours and grain characteristics; cedar can be anywhere from a light yellow through browns, reds, even purple and blue. I now work closely with suppliers who mill, just for us, some of the most stunning cedar we've ever seen! And this isn't just regular wood - it's sustainably grown and harvested, usually just a tree or two at a time. Often these trees have to be removed from residential lots for safety reasons or to make room for expansions, so rather than ending up as firewood, it's carefully removed and milled specifically to our specifications. This not only gives us the best possible wood, but reduces waste at the same time. We pay a little more, but we think keeping our old-growth forests intact is worth every penny. Most of our regular products are now also available in Western Red Cedar for just a little more, and like all of our products, each piece comes fully finished with four coats of bee-friendly tung oil, and is ready to use.
Frames, Tools and other equipment