Bee shed: finishing touches

Yesterday I finished work on the bee shed project!

I started by digging a small ditch on the uphill sides, mounding dirt against the base of the walls, so rain will be diverted around the shed, instead of seeping under the walls:

Ditch

I then scraped off the worst excess of the expanding foam filler.

I mentioned last time that I wasn’t entirely happy with the top panel of the door, so next I replaced it with a clear panel, and caulked it:

Replaced top panel of door

The caulk goes on white, but cures to clear, so it’ll be less visible once dry:

Caulk

I may need to top up the caulk once it has cured, if I missed any spots.

Here are the finished walls and door; you can also see scraped off filler foam on the ground, which I cleaned up later:

Finished walls and door

To make it easier to close the door from inside, I added a handle on the inside of the door:

Handle on inside of door

It’s easy to lift the latch to open the door from inside.

The door wall from inside:

Inside door wall

The next step was to finish the shelving, with plywood panels:

Shelving

Cutting shelving:

Cutting shelving

The completed shelving:

Shelving

Shelving

Looking in from the doorway:

Shelving

Open door:

Open door

I could then move the hive feeders, boxes, lids, etc onto the shelves; I’ll move more equipment from the workshop in due course:

Hive boxes on shelves

Hive lids on shelves

The last step (other than removing the wood scraps and tools) was to install a mirror. These are reflective self-adhesive plastic sheets; not as smooth a reflection as a glass mirror, but safer, and good enough:

Mirror

The reason for a mirror in the bee shed is to help put on our bee suits in there. Though it’s fairly likely we’ll continue to put on the suits in the back of the workshop, as the bees can be a bit aggressive after an inspection, so getting some distance from the hives before taking off the suits is usually preferred.

Here’s me in the mirror, in my work overalls and hat; definitely some distortion, but not too egregious:

David in mirror

That concludes the bee shed project! I may do some minor tweaks, like touching up the caulking, but it’s basically done now. It will be a more convenient location for our beekeeping equipment, no longer needing to lug hive boxes etc on a cart from the shop, or going back to the shop to grab something in the hot bee suit.