Tonight I am going to work with the members of a Girl Scout Troop who are getting ready to set up their own beehive and to make an effort to keep bees. In the process they are developing a "Try-it" for the Georgia scouts. They have ordered their bees. A good friend of mine who had bees 30 years ago is cleaning out his barn in north Georgia and gave me old hive boxes for these girls. To try to kill any spores for AFB (American Foulbrood) the interior of the boxes has to be burned.
Beekeeping for me has expanded my home construction skills - non-existent before this endeavor. To burn out the hive boxes, I purchased a propane torch. It took me all morning to get the courage to figure out how to use it. (The hardest part was how to get the white top off of the propane container, but I was finally successful). I burned the interior of each box. It was a little scary - the flame is very hot and outdoors I could hear the flame but couldn't see it. I had a bucket of water sitting ready in case I needed to put out a fire.The package says menacingly not to do this on concrete (see the floor of my carport) because some concrete explodes with heat. I certainly wasn't going to flame inside my house, so the concrete carport was the place of choice and I simply crossed my fingers. Well, I didn't really - it took both hands - one to hold the torch and one to steady the hive boxes.
In the end I burned out a deep, a medium and three honey supers as well as a telescoping cover and an inner cover.
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