Every year during the almond pollination, we hear stories of beehives being stolen or vandalized. Unfortunately most of the time its other beekeepers doing the stealing (which is a big shame). Last year a Russian beekeeper from Sacramento was caught with thousands of stolen beehives in Fresno County. He was caught when he tried selling beehives to another beekeeper that had been branded by the original owner. This is exactly the reason why we started branding our equipment a few years ago. In the unfortunate event that our hives are stolen, we have a chance of recovering them if they have been marked with our Apiary registration number.
We’ve been using one particular brander with great success. It is the model 2100 “beekeepers brander” from Brand New Industries. The model 2100 will set you back $550 and comes with everything included to start branding (torch, brass branding head, propane hose, and nice metal case). Ours has been working flawlessly for a couple of years now and it makes nice deep brands that look great even when painted over. When you get the brass head hot enough, you can very quickly brand a lot of wood. For anyone looking for a beehive brander, we highly recommend this particular model.
We are not affiliated with Brand New Industries in any way. We just happen to really like their product and feel confident referring them to others. Here is a link to their website:
http://www.brandnew.net/estore/shopexd.asp?id=130
We’ve been building equipment like crazy lately and we certainly don’t want it stolen. I wish that we could keep a few Africanized beehives as decoys so that the bee thieves would learn their lesson when trying to haul them off. However, That idea is just too impractical as it would be ourselves getting stung most of the time… Our second best idea has been to brand our equipment and it does give us a little peace of mind.
Happy beekeeping
Estrada Farms LLC 