Making The Bees

The bees are two part urethane plastic.  We needed to know how much urethane was needed to fill the mold.  To do this, we gathered the clay from all the bees and placed it in a mixing bucket.  We then filled the bucket with water, making note of how much water we used.  We removed the clay and subtracted what was left from our original amount.  That measure was the total liquid we needed.  Dividing that in half gave us the amount for parts A and B for the plastic mixture.

Below, the clay in our bucket.

Here is the water level after we removed the clay.

Mixing equal parts A and B of the plastic.

Pouring our first test bees.

(notice the wire reinforcement for the wings)

Here we've suspended u-bolts into the mold.  The plastic will harden around them and give us a way to attach the bees to the fence.

Below you can see the plastic "kicking" or setting up.  

Taking the test bees out of the mold only 10 minutes after they were poured.

Our first batch of bees.

Every bee gets a clean-up around the edge.

(Notice the hardware embedded into the bee.)

Each bee gets primed and base coated with yellow.

BEES!