# Honey House ?s



## MTN-Bees (Jan 27, 2014)

I'm working on planning out a honey house and storage garage for up to a 400 hive operation. The garage size I'm looking at is a main building that will be 30x50 with 16 foot ceiling height. Garage door sizes I was looking at is 10x10. I'm also considering extending the garage with a 10 foot ceiling area that would be divided into a shop, warming room, and extraction room. I'm struggling with size of the rooms for the extension. From everything I've read you never seem to have enough room. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks, Rich


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## beeware10 (Jul 25, 2010)

the hot room is used for a short time. a lot of beekeepers convert this back to a work and wood shop for the rest of the year. a lot depends on goals and your cash resources. work flow pattern during extracting needs to be considered. Imo a heated concrete floor is the only way to go. a 10 ft door is not very wide for a truck if it is to go inside. docks are real nice but not mandatory with a loader. as you say you never have enough room.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I have a building with three 16 foot wide bays. The outside two have overhead doors. For some reason I got the one door 12 feet wide and the other 10 feet wide. I wish they were both 12 feet wide.

If I were building again I would have lower ceilings in the middle bay which I heat and where I bottle honey. I believe it would be warmer with lower ceilings.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Rich, you are right on the mark with the 16' ceiling height, more bang for the buck going vertical and figure on picking up a good used forklift. I'll echo what others have said about door size, 10' high is probably fine for most purposes but I will see that 12' wide suggestion and raise them 2'. I put in a 12' high and 14' wide door and haven't regretted it as we are constantly maneuvering trucks and forklifts in and out and the extra width sure makes things easier as the pad in front is often used as a loading area.


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## Broke-T (Jul 9, 2008)

We have around 500 hives and have a 40 x 80 building with 12 ft sidewalls and a 16 ft rollup door.. In one corner we have a 16 x 22 extracting room. The bottling is still done in my mothers enclosed garage. We have a hot room that will hold 2 pallets at a time. We store extracted comb outside in a steel shipping container. Mating nucs for queen rearing are stored in another building. 

I still have to go outside to change my mind. I would say you need at least twice what you are planning.

Johnny


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Obviously it depends on a lot of different factors. i just built a 54'x88'x14' high addition a year ago and a little quick math tells me I have a little under 30 cubic feet of storage for every colony we operate and I feel I am swimming in extra space, we even have plenty of room to pull in trucks and forklifts when needed. What Rich is proposing would allow him 60 cubic feet per hive while Johnny has 77 cu. ft and would like considerably more. I dunno. 
Here is a pic from last Winter with the last of our bees parked inside out of the weather because they couldn't fit on the last truckload south.


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## The Honey Householder (Nov 14, 2008)

2011 I did an all steel building at 16X50x100. Two rollup was 10x10 and 10x14, wish they were 12' wide instead. If I did it all over again I would have went 18' high, because I have a 2 bedroom apartment and office above the extracting area. Would have been nice to have had a little more head room. Warehouse space is 50X75 pallet racks along some wall for pallets of glass and other small supplies. 50X75 seem like a lot of space until you have loads of honey stack up and a load and half wax waiting to melted up. Only wish I could get a truck in the build. The fork lift sets in the place where the truck should. Poured a 75X75 pad in front to unload and load. 
1000 hives and custom extract two other operations we had storage container down along the pad to get more space this year. Looking to add roof and walls to the pad maybe next year. 

I would say go as big as you can afford X2. If business does good it still won't be big enough. Oh ya. Pole barns are a lot easier then all steel builds when it comes to finishing thing off. 

Best of luck and always leave room for add ons,

Ron


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## MTN-Bees (Jan 27, 2014)

Great ideas- thanks! I'm definitely considering converting the shop space to the hot room with a heated floor. I will increase the garage door size for sure. The 16 ft. height will allow stacking supers, so they will use up as much space. I'm going to try to keep enough space free to store a truck and loader inside. We just relocated to CA, so it's a bit more restrictive then CO.
-Mark: What is the length of your building? What height would you make the lower ceiling?
-Could I get away with 8 foot ceilings in the shop, hot room, extracting room?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Our hot room doubles as a winter work space. I wouldn't have any doors less than 8' high to accommodate forklifts with taller stacks. You could make an 8' ceiling work in your extracting space but personally I wouldn't, particularly if you are planning on having a bulk tank in there or if you might be using a spin float with overhead heat exchanger.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

MTN-Bees said:


> -Mark: What is the length of your building? What height would you make the lower ceiling?
> -Could I get away with 8 foot ceilings in the shop, hot room, extracting room?


The outside dimension of my building is 32'X48'. Keep in mind, I don't extract my own honey. My building is for storing buckets of honey, jars, and stuff that should be somewhere else. The middle bay is where I process and pack honey. I think 8 foot ceilings would work just fine in the middle bay. Then again, the fans and the lights are well off the floor where they are out of the way. So I could see myself saying the opposite were conditions opposite.

If you are not going to double or triple stack pallets of supers of honey I would think that an 8 foot ceiling in your hot room would work best. It would help keep the heat down near the floor. I have a friend who has a high ceilinged hot room and stacks his pallets three high. Those pallets on the floor stay relatively cold. No in floor heat. So he holds them up in the air on his forklift when it's time to extract them.

If you are going to install in floor heat then that will be different and maybe better. Do people with in floor heat in their hot room also use fans to keep the heat even throughout the room? Does the honey stay in the hot room long enough for the bottom supers of honey to dry down noticeably?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

You bring up an interesting question Mark. Our well insulated hot room has a 12' ceiling and a heated floor with no forced air movement. We routinely double stack honey pallets which are typically 7 mediums or 5 deeps high. Somewhat surprisingly to me, we have found that the bottom pallets stay a bit warmer than the top ones. Apparently the conductive heat of sitting directly on the warm concrete trumps the higher air temps closer to the ceiling.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

These testimonials pretty clearly point out that different beekeeping business plans have different storage needs. Honey packing requires a lot of space. Our space is used primarily for extracting comb and bulk honey storage. Not much dark brood comb makes its way into the building through the year. We do have a 12'x20' inside loading area which gets little use since our switchover to pallets and forklifts. Our approximately 30'x60' extracting room has a couple of large bulk honey tanks in it but the space is only partly utilized in the offseason for storage. It should also be pointed out that the more hives one operates the less per colony storage would probably be required.


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## The Honey Householder (Nov 14, 2008)

We have 8' ceiling in the extracting room, but we have a tank room with our bulk tank and bottling tanks in, where the ceiling are 10'. Honey house is my warm room. Only problem is I can only fit 26 pallets in it at a time, which still makes for a long day of extracting. We don't stock pile honey. What we pull the day before is extracted the next. Jim's right you have to set up for what you are going to need or what will work for your operation. We warehouse a few loads of honey, but most is sold out every Friday morning in season to keep the warehouse clear out.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

jim lyon said:


> Apparently the conductive heat of sitting directly on the warm concrete trumps the higher air temps closer to the ceiling.


Which ones do you extract first?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

sqkcrk said:


> Which ones do you extract first?


We just take them as they come and most of the extracting is done in the heat of the summer before the floor heat is even turned on. Since shb has reared its ugly head we separate each day's honey hauling into its own double stacked row and label it with the day it came in. Rarely does anything sit more than 4 days most of it is extracted within 2 days.


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

JIM, is your new addition all stick frame, that seem very popular back east, out west it seems steel, just wondering if were just creatures of our own environment. Nice addition BTW.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Keith Jarrett said:


> JIM, is your new addition all stick frame, that seem very popular back east, out west it seems steel, just wondering if were just creatures of our own environment. Nice addition BTW.


It's pole construction. Really happy with how it turned out EXCEPT I wish I had gone with16' sidewalks instead of 14'


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

"Pole barns are a lot easier then all steel builds when it comes to finishing thing off"

That's an interesting comment and one that I'm trying to figure out. Do you mean because wood is easier to work with if your incorporating wood frames stud walls into your overall design? I own a couple of companies, one being Steel Structures Inc. here in N.M. We have been at it around 22 years catering to the commercial building needs of our customers. We specialize in aviation hangars, riding arenas, strip malls, shops, etc. Having been a part of this industry for quite some time I have had an opportunity to compare pricing between various types of steel buildings, and sometimes pole barn type structures. In short both buildings types can provide adequate needs depending upon the intended purpose. The main advantage to all steel buildings is the clear-span capabilities especially on large buildings where interior support columns would pose an issue. Pole barns utilizing wood and steel in many cases are not certified to meet the required building codes. Marrying wood framing members to steel framing and sheeting can also be problematic as both materials expand and contract at different temperatures. Interesting enough in many cases our cost proposals have actually been less expensive than pole barn manufacturer's for a similar structure. Most interior improvements now to steel buildings is done using metal stud walls as opposed to wood because steel studs are less expensive than wood. We have drop shipped buildings from coast to coast and we make every effort to end up with very satisfied customers. For you large California beekeepers we completed several years ago a very large commercial storage building for Fred Cline, Cline Cellars Vineyards, in Sonoma. Be glad to chat with anyone regarding their specific needs.


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

MTN-Bees

I was going to also mention that the initial design and construction of your building will also dictate any possible future expansion plans down the road. As mentioned in many cases you will soon outgrow the building that you initially thought was going to be more than adequate for your needs. Adding on another bay to the existing end wall of a structure by removing all the sheeting and adding another main-frame etc. can easily be accomplished provided you design that end wall to accept that condition initially; i.e. main-frame condition vs. post and beam construction.


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

jim lyon said:


> I wish I had gone with16' sidewalks instead of 14'


I went with 24', sky the limit.


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

Adding height to a building is not a huge expense when you think about it. Your adding a couple feet to the bottom of each mainframe and skirting some extra sheeting.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

jim lyon said:


> Since shb has reared its ugly head we separate each day's honey hauling into its own double stacked.


shb is something we have not had to deal with yet. I built a large hot room 45*50 which doubles as my wintering room. It allows me to surge the boxes in and keep ahead of my extraction crew while working around weather delays. But a box is run through no longer than a week considering weekend delays . Hot room HEATED FLOOR is key 👍👍


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

Ian said:


> considering weekend delays .&#55357;&#56397;


WHAT......


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Keith Jarrett said:


> WHAT......


Lol
I give my honey crew weekends off
It gives my assistant time to work with queen rearing and nucs, and me other farm work needing attention


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## MTN-Bees (Jan 27, 2014)

If anyone has anything else please post you're ideas- this has been extremely helpful. I'm going to rework the plans this weekend.

Just out of curiosity- Do you have you're building on the same land as you're home or do you seperate you're home and business on seperate land? 

My wife is pushing hard to seperate our home from our business. She is still traumatized from filling the entire garage and basement floor to ceiling with woodenware last year when I ran out of space.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

My Honey House is on our property. Across the road from the house. Your wife should be glad she didn't live in my house the last 20 years. We had one end of our bedroom with jars stacked to the ceiling. My office had jars and lids taking up a lot of room. My bottling tank and filled cases of honey were at the end of the house which was basically our living room.

Hmmm, maybe that's why we never entertained guests.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

MTN-Bees said:


> If anyone has anything else please post you're ideas- this has been extremely helpful. I'm going to rework the plans this weekend.
> 
> Just out of curiosity- Do you have you're building on the same land as you're home or do you seperate you're home and business on seperate land?
> 
> My wife is pushing hard to seperate our home from our business. She is still traumatized from filling the entire garage and basement floor to ceiling with woodenware last year when I ran out of space.


I would definitely seperate if possible. Sure it's convenient to have your building close to your door but from a resale perspective it becomes much more difficult to get full value for two entirely different structures on the same property. If you want to sell your honey house as an existing business in a few years it would be impossible to do so without selling your home as well.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

We have run into the storage issue, garage is getting plugged up with boxes and stuff. In trying to work out what size we need, I came to the conclusion it's not at all about how many hives we are running. The first question that matters, how many boxes of honey do I need to store at any given time waiting on extraction? The second question, how many boxes do I need to store over the winter season? If we bring a hundred boxes back at any time, it doesn't matter if they came off of 25 hives, or a hundred hives, it's still a hundred boxes.

We are sizing based on a 'mostly manual' workflow for extraction. We will be using an 18 frame extractor, and typically have been able to run about 3 loads an hour, so a days work extracting should net in the range of 50 boxes. I want the warm room to hold 50 boxes when they are stacked no more than 6 high (mediums) so we aren't lifting from any more than shoulder hight. That's enough boxes to keep us busy extracting for a reasonable day, and once the boxes are empty, stacked floor to ceiling we can tuck a hundred in there for the winter. No point making the warm room much larger, that's just extra volume to heat. The other detail we've put a fair amount of thought into, is the workflow during extraction. We want to make sure that there is a logical flow, and we aren't handling things any more than necessary. Extra steps between the warm room and the storage vats doesn't accomplish anything other than make us more tired at the end of the day. With the layout we have in mind right now, one person should be able to manage the process and keep the extractor full all day, uncapping the next load while the current load is spinning.

Another thing I've been starting to consider. SHB is not here, but according to some, it's inevitable that critter will arrive before to long. At the recent BCHPA AGM, there was a lot of good information on the subject, and one thing that Medhat Nasr was pushing hard. For honey producing setup, SHB risk is not in the bee yard, it's in the honey house. If a box comes in with SHB eggs, and it sits in a warm room for a few days, then you will lose the honey and the comb in the box to those nasty critters once the larvae get going. If you aren't going to extract the box within 2 days of bringing it in, store at 10C or below, with humidity below 50%, for a few days, and the eggs wont hatch. I am seriously considering doing the warm room heat with a heat pump, then at the flip of a switch, I can turn it into a cold room. Our plans say, a normal honey pull process will be to bring in boxes on a Friday or Saturday, then extract the next day, but life has a habit of getting in the way of the best laid plans. It is inevitable that at times we will end up bringing honey home one weekend, then cant get to extracting till the following weekend, or maybe two more down the road. If we are bringing honey and putting it in a cold room, then a week later I can flip the switch to make it a warm room. Boxes sit cold long enough that any shb eggs that came in from the field aren't viable, and by extracting day the honey will be warm enough to extract. And ofc, at this time of year (hunting season), I can think of another great use for a walk in cooler.

But the most interesting revelation to me out of this exercise, it got me completely out of the mindset of 'how many hives', and into the mindset of 'how many honey boxes'. We have a goal, and that's to end up with enough honey boxes that we can run 3 cycles a year thru this setup, with a low end target of 2000 pounds of honey per year. To do that, I need a hundred honey boxes drawn out and ready to go. How many hives it takes to fill those boxes, that depends on how I manage them, and how much time / effort I put into moving them around to catch different flows.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

jim lyon said:


> I would definitely seperate if possible. Sure it's convenient to have your building close to your door but from a resale perspective it becomes much more difficult to get full value for two entirely different structures on the same property. If you want to sell your honey house as an existing business in a few years it would be impossible to do so without selling your home as well.


One thing to keep in mind is that if your honey house is far enough away from your home you won't get sucked back into doing home related things when you have set out to work for a day in the honey house. So maybe having a honey house on a completely separate piece of property at some distance from your home would be a good idea.


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## The Honey Householder (Nov 14, 2008)

I've had it both ways. I like not having to get in a truck when I need to go to the shop. My wood shop is on the homestead lot and I build the new shop on a lot behind the house. The new shop is on it's own lot and with it own drive. 




MTN-Bees said:


> If anyone has anything else please post you're ideas- this has been extremely helpful. I'm going to rework the plans this weekend.
> 
> Just out of curiosity- Do you have you're building on the same land as you're home or do you seperate you're home and business on seperate land?
> 
> My wife is pushing hard to seperate our home from our business. She is still traumatized from filling the entire garage and basement floor to ceiling with woodenware last year when I ran out of space.


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## beeware10 (Jul 25, 2010)

dollar wise a separate honey house will put more money in your pocket when you retire. you will get less for a combo house and plant.


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## cheryl1 (Mar 7, 2015)

You can have your business shop on the same land as your house but I would change the title at the courthouse so it is two separate pieces of property.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

The Honey Householder said:


> I've had it both ways. I like not having to get in a truck when I need to go to the shop. My wood shop is on the homestead lot and I build the new shop on a lot behind the house. The new shop is on it's own lot and with it own drive.


Yes, that's a good arrangement, a woodworking shop adjacent to the house is a plus for any home. I've had it both ways. The first one was with the honey house facility right out the back door. Ended up selling and parting out the bees and equipment to a nearby beekeeper then selling the house with the empty buildings in a seperate transaction. Considering the initial investment it was a net loser. I know of more than one beekeeper that ended up in a similar predicament when they were ready to sellout/retire. Currently my home is a mile away from the business, close enough to run back and forth if I need something but far enough to be separated from home distractions. Now if I decide to get out of the business it becomes much easier.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

MTN-Bees said:


> My wife is pushing hard to seperate our home from our business.


I already had a long established business that runs from an office in the home when I met my wife. She understands the ground rules well. If she doesn't want to live where the business is located, that's her perogative, and she knows where to find the door. The business is what pays for it all, so it's not going anywhere. But, in our case, that will never be an issue, she likes having the business at home as much as I do.

As far as building a new facility, first question I would ask. Are you building it to use it, or are you building it for resale value? They are two totally separate items. Should it be on the same property, or on another property some distance away ? First question I would ask, how long do you intend to run this business ? If you are going to run it for 20 years, tally up how much it will cost in both time and money to commute between the places over that 20 years. Maybe you are better off just banking / investing that commute money, then take the resale hit at some point in time in the future.

My own opinion, if you are building something with the intention of using it, it's a big mistake to put resale value as one of the high priorities in designing the build. It should be a low priority, and should not trump functionality for your intended use in any way shape or form. It's only important if your plans are short term, and resale is more important than operating your business. Then again, if you are building for resale, then imho, building a honey processing facility is the absolute wrong thing to make of it. It's a rather special purpose setup, with a very limited market, and you will never get it 'just right' for some future potential buyer.


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

My home and business are separated by 20 minutes, not by plan. It is nice to close the door on the dirt, sawdust and honey mess at the end of the day and be able to drive away from it until the next day without the mess bothering wives. But it would also be nice to mosey over and do some carpentry or bottling at night or weekends if it were right next door.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

As a child/youth, the "shop" was across the street behind Grandma's house. We could come home for lunch.It also was too easy for my father to duck over after dinner and not spend time with the family. Now the "shop" is 25 miles away, which makes for alot longer commute. We put the "shop" to bed with the bees, and do the "winter work" out of the garage/shop at home. 

As for the honey house layout, the old shop was one level, and new shop 2 story. The new shop does not have a sump, which is very nice, but with spancrete, they failed to put the proper slope in the floor. The Lapp's had an extracting room with a balcony. I can not remember if the extractors where up and the tanks down? That might solve the dampness in our down stairs. I could see how the slope of the land could be used to create a building that was two levels, bee trucks back into one end with lower ceilings, the other end for honey storage and high ceilings.

Crazy Roland


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