The Lodge at Otter Creek

The “Vermont Square Hive” Comes to The Lodge at Otter Creek Bee Yard – According to John Mailloux, Bees have been part of his life from early on, as his Dad started beekeeping in the 1940’s.  John can recall, many times, hearing him recount how when he first started keeping bees, just a handful of colonies took an immense amount of time and effort, he could not imagine tending any more.  Then as time continued, he added a few more hives, each time becoming more convinced that this must be the maximum amount possible to take care of. 

By the time John arrived in the early 50’s, beekeeping had become his folk’s livelihood. During the summer, John was taken to the bee yards and allowed to crawl in the grass while they tended to the colonies. 

Somewhere around the age of 10 or 12 years old, John had his own hive to care for and by then, he had helped in nearly every aspect of beekeeping.  “We would build equipment from rough lumber in the winter, divide strong colonies and install packages in the spring, add supers, crush queen cells, and clip queens during the early summer, harvest the honey in late summer, feed and set up for winter in the fall, all the while bottling honey for retail and wholesale markets.  Each year as part of my pay I would receive colonies of bees.  By the time I was in my late teens I owned 100 colonies.”

In the mid to late 1970s, after graduating from the University of Vermont, while teaching agriculture in Middlebury, John decided to expand.  He borrowed money to build and populate 100 new hives.  “At that time, my folk’s beekeeping operation totaled 1,100 hives – together 1,300 colonies and we were the largest producers of honey in New England.”

In the late 1980’s, John sold the last of his hives to pursue other interests but remained involved whenever possible. He continued as a sporadic member of the Vermont Beekeepers Association, attending meetings mostly in the winter.  Then in the early summer of 2009, John attended a workshop on nucs given by a former Association President, Mike Palmer.  This was the inspiration he needed.  “I had heard of nucs, but my folk’s operation had never included them – Mike’s workshop showed me the opportunity and method of quickly populating colonies – all I needed was a bit of rough lumber!”

John ended the season in 2010 with 12 colonies and being fully enthused; I intend to have at least 35 colonies by this year’s end of 2011.

Now the exciting part – during the winter of 2009, after much research, John came across an article, written in German, on the internet, it was roughly translated, yet it depicted a fellow beekeeper that claimed he was using a smaller square hive, one that approximated the shape and size of a hollow tree.  His claim was, that compared to the standard, larger rectangular hive he would make two to ten times more honey, depending on the year, with the smaller hives versus his larger hives.  The worse the year was for the rectangular hive, the better the year turned out for the square hive.  Plus, the square hive overwintered the harsh mountainous German winters much better than its counterpart.

So John started to think, why would that be, just a wild claim?  What could possibly make this square hive that much different and to also produce such results?  Is it the size, a smaller area to heat?  Are there no distant corners to become stranded in on cold winter days or nights? 

But wait, being square, the beekeeper perhaps would turn the second hive body 90 degrees?  By doing so, this places each frame in contact with each frame above or below the other.  All ten frames become adjacent to all ten frames above or below.  This means congestion, or traffic flow thru the hive should be reduced.  Access and airflow would be maximized.  In a natural hive, found in the wild, bees build comb every which way, and bridging is rampant.  Could this be the reason?

After spending the equivalent of days on end searching websites over the internet trying to find evidence that someone was placing their combs crisscrossed over the others in their own hive – John found nothing and had to try this concept, so in the winter of 2009, after a bit of design modifications, John built-the very first, to his knowledge, the “Vermont Square Hive”.  

In the spring of 2010, he installed a three pound package of bees into this new custom hive and was astounded by the results.  The bees seemed to love it, they built out comb on the foundation of each frame without rotation, a process most often required for standard hives to encourage the filling out of frames on the outer edges of the hive body’s exterior walls. 

Despite the set back loss of their original queen, this colony, established from a package, starting out on foundation only, without drawn comb, produced nearly 50 pounds of honey at removal for this first year.  An amount in excess of their own honey needed for stores required for their winter survival.   This was as good or better results than the hives John had established with nucs on a standard style Langsthroth hive setup in the same time frame, with at least 4 drawn comb frames.  Yet, not surprisingly, this colony survived the winter, when some of the others perished and the square hive emerged the strongest of the lot in the spring.

Of course, one square hive in Vermont, doing so well for a year, doesn’t mean getting out the chainsaw and cutting all your old standard hives down to match – so this winter the old rough lumber was whittled down into 20 new “Vermont Square Hives”, some of which will be installed at The Lodge at Otter Creek’s new Bee Yard in Middlebury, VT, 4 of the hives installed will be square and one of the hives will be a standard Langstroth rectangular hive for demonstration and comparison purposes.  John will be installing the hives on Saturday, May 14^th and will do a presentation for the community on Sunday, May 22^nd, 3 p.m. at The Lodge, in which he will share the art of beekeeping and attendees will see firsthand the installation of a 3 pound bee package and the introduction of the queen bee.  Throughout the year, John will be tending to these hives providing more documentation, better records, lots of pictures and many happy bees!

John Mailloux is an insurance agent for Paige & Campbell, Inc located in Bristol.  He and his wife Susan own and operate Weeping Pine Farm & Apiaries in Williamstown, Vermont.  Together they build bee equipment, tend to the colonies, and process the honey, some of which is made into a varied array of products such as soap, lip balm, skin crème, furniture polish and leather conditioner.