Mary Sellhorn wrote:
>We are planning to build a honey house to use for storing all my equipment
> and for processing our honey.  We are just hobby beekeepers at this point
>  (only 8 hives) but planning to expand to as many as 30 hives.  Does anyone
> have suggestions for  a honey house?  My son-in-law is drawing plans  and
> wants to know what to include.
> My husband plans to make it abou 20ft. by 10 ft with plumbing and
> electricity. Anyone out there who has built a honey house have suggestions?
 
The suggestion to plan for expansion is a good one.  After many years of
extremely cramped conditions, I remodeled a former horse barn into a
honey house.  The extra room feels so good!  Another thing to consider
is to adequately insulate the structure and plan for heat.  In my
experience, if honey extracting goes on into the fall the cool days and
nights can make for very long extracting times with poor extracting
results.  I had a propane wall furnace installed, which keeps the room
as toasty warm as I like it. And the honey flows out so easily!
 
I had a long but narrow space to work with (32ft x 12ft), and plotted
constantly to try to get everything to fit.  I finally ended up by
designing most of the electric outlets along one side of the long wall,
where I lined up my uncapper, extractor and storage tanks.  I found out
that it always takes a few more electric outlets than planned, so add
extra if you can and plan enough circuits so that nothing gets
overloaded.  The other side of the long wall is where the extracted
supers get stacked up, so I didn't bring outlets over to there.
 
Since mine was a remodeled horse barn, I simply used the original large
horse door as the loading dock.  I graded that entrance so when my truck
backs up to it, the floor is just slightly lower than the truck bed,
which makes for very easy unloading of supers.  Something to think about
is how to cut down on unnecessary lifting.  If you plan it so that you
can get a hand truck under the supers and just wheel them from the truck
to the honey house, that saves a lot of work.
 
Good luck.
 
Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA