A Chattanooga-area beekeeper is repurposing campaign yard signs leftover from the November general election to winterize his hives.
Chip Kelly owns Harrison Bay Honey Farm and is the president of the Tennessee Valley Beekeepers Association. He raises queen bees and is interested in producing new bee colonies. After the election, Allison Gorman called Kelly and asked to donate her signs. Gorman, a Democrat, ran for the Tennessee House of Representatives and lost.
“I hate thinking of the signs just sitting in landfills, that bothers me a lot,” Gorman said by phone. “I am extremely happy to see them go to a good cause.”
Donating signs to beekeepers may be the best option for keeping plastic signs out of landfills.
“We just can’t take it,” Mark Adams, Hamilton County recycling supervisor, said by phone. Adams said later in a text message that the signs need special handling.
Bees unhinge their wings from the muscle and vibrate to generate heat, keeping the queen bee at a toasty 92 to 93 degrees, according to Kelly. To help his colonies maintain warmth, Kelly uses the yard signs, made from corrugated plastic, to insulate the hives.
The plastic signs corrode and break over time. Kelly said painting the signs strengthens the material. Large yard signs are used to craft five-frame boxes to keep the bees in. Bees will be placed into the box with a queen egg, and she will take over the hive once she completes metamorphosis.
The average worker bee lives about 63 days, Kelly said. Each bee has a job to keep the hive in top shape. Some clean, some feed the larvae, some guard the hive from enemy colonies and some are “undertaker bees” who remove dead bees from the colony.
Kelly uses campaign signs to make inner covers and bottom closures for his hives. Screened bottom boards are ideal for spring, summer and fall because they provide the hive with ventilation, but can cause problems for bees in winter by letting in cold air.
“Cold air doesn’t kill bees,” Kelly said. “It makes them work harder, consume honey and use up their resources.”
Credit: Sarah Dolgin
Credit: Sarah Dolgin
Kelly cut a campaign sign and slid it into the bottom piece to add a layer between the porous screen and the bees. He also cut a piece of the sign to go over the top of the hive to use for the inner cover and said the bees use sap from trees to create glue and seal the cover from the inside of the hive.
If a beekeeper wants to create a resource hive with two colonies of bees, campaign sign scraps can also be used to make a division board down the center of the hive to separate the colonies. Bees will gather on both sides of the board and feed off the warmth of the opposite colony.
Besides keeping warm, bees have to worry about pesky hive beetles.
Luckily, the holes in the sides of campaign signs are the perfect trap. The beetles are attracted to the holes and use them as hideouts so they can feed on the resources in the hive. Once the beetles are hiding in the cut yard sign trap, the bees will use their sap glue to trap the beetles.
Some beekeepers use boric acid to keep beetles away, but Kelly said sign scraps are a poison-free alternative for pest control in the hive.
To contact the Tennessee Valley Beekeepers Association, email beemailus@gmail.com.
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
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