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Bidzina Mosiashvili | Laser Cutter

There’s lots to buzz about in the business of bees, and according to Business Administration student Bidzina Mosiashvili, the struggles of the COVID-19 pandemic was what laid the groundwork for his innovative approach to beekeeping.

“I was sitting at home, and I didn’t really know what to do… Beekeeping was perfect, because I could drive from Calgary to Foremost AB, 3 hours by myself, to be on a farm with no-one around me in a 20 km radius. It was just me and the bees for the entire summer until COVID was over.”

A Business Administration student, Bidzina is an entrepreneur and self-described lifelong learner who used the Maker Studio to help address a common design flaw in beehives. Using baltic wood and the Maker Studio’s laser cutter, Bidzina created an incised wood piece for beehives that protects the hive from environmental damage and pests, even on the hottest summer days and chilliest winter nights.

“In a beehive, you have the bottom board, then you have the box and the top cover,” Bidzina explained. “In a normal entrance, there’s no bottom board. Other bees, wasps or mice can climb right up and get to the honey, the eggs and the bees. That can destroy their entire hive.”

But with a series of precise cuts made possible by the Maker Studio’s highly accurate laser cutter, Bidzina was able to create a design solution that kept his hive safe and protected.

“With [my design], you place this board here and it fights wasps, mice, other bee colonies and cold weather all year round, without you needing to reduce the entrance. You just put it on and you don’t have to worry about it.”

While Bidzina’s design is one-of-a-kind, he found inspiration from other makers in the local beekeeping community. A friend and fellow beekeeper from Kamloops created a patent-pending honeycomb design to help protect his beehives from pests. Dubbed “The Cozy Board”, his design uses a honeycomb pattern on the beehive’s bottom board to protect the colony.

While the beehive is still susceptible to heat, Bidzina explains that slits in the bottom board add double-layered protection to the bees’ eggs, honeycomb and queen.

“The bees still get hot, and when that happens a bunch of bees come down and hang out in the bottom area,” says Bidzina. “When they hang out there and other bees and things try to get in, they have to first go through a layer of bees, and then they have to go through one of these slits.”

After learning more about beekeeping over the pandemic and starting his own YouTube channel, Bidzina was inspired to take his business to the next level through the Institute for Innovation and Entreprenurship’s LaunchPad Program. The Institute’s educators helped Bidzina narrow the focus of his business from selling bees to providing innovative, customizable solutions for entry-level beekeepers.

“You can already buy beekeeping kits, but there are a lot of random things that come with it,” says Bidzina. “You can’t take away or add to it, and I wanted to make my kits more customizable.”

The result of his effort was the creation of a new business, B’z Bees, which offers beekeeping starter kits and custom installation to local Calgarians looking to attract these precious pollinators to their own backyard. Each kit includes a 5 frame nucleus colony with a healthy bee population and queen. 

B’z Bees not only provides customers with the tools they need to start beekeeping on their own, but also offers guidance to beginner beekeepers throughout the season for healthier hives. They also provide extraction and bottling services so customers can enjoy their hard-earned honey harvest.

While Bidzina has seen success with his business, he’s also full of valuable advice for other young entrepreneurs.

“If anyone has something risky that they want to do, I would say go for it! Just know that as many peaks there are, there are also valleys coming after it. You have to be able to handle those peaks and valleys… You always have to leave room for error.”

What’s in store next for B’z Bees? Bidzina will be looking to work with local farms and businesses to provide beekeeping events and workshops. He’s also interested in starting his own beekeeping landscaping company.

Jon Axford | Carvey CNC, CNC Router 

By combining practical work experience with knowledge gained in his Bachelor of Computer Information Systems Degree, student Jon Axford brought his own miniature arcade game to life with help from tools in the Library’s Maker Studio.

“This project was something I started before the pandemic hit,” says Jon. “I had some friends that had purchased or made their own arcade cabinets, and I liked the idea. I had a spare Raspberry Pi I could use to make my own, and I had previously made a small handheld emulation system using one.”

A video game and cosplay enthusiast, Jon combined his passion and experience building working props for cosplayers to create a miniature tabletop arcade machine. Precisely cut wood makes up the cabinet’s outer shell, while the inside was entirely constructed and programmed by Jon using skills he picked up while working as a software developer.

In speaking with Jon, it’s clear that his passion for tinkering is what helped bring some of the most exciting, minute details to the machine, including a retro crystal joystick and traditional arcade buttons that sync up with gameplay.

“My current endeavor with the system is to create a daemon (system service) that controls the colours of the buttons, as well as the image displayed on the marquee so that they change to reflect the emulated system or game that is running, from simple colours that match the system, to disabling the lights on buttons that are unused for what's currently running,” says Jon.

Jon was referred to the Maker Studio by Jordan Pratt, an instructor in the Faculty of Science and Technology’s Mathematics and Computing Department. After sharing some of the images of working cosplay props he had constructed with his instructor, Jon decided to visit the Maker Studio to learn more about the equipment available to students.

“I have some of my own maker tools at home… For example, I have my own 3D printers that I used to produce a few parts, but what I really needed was a large format CNC router. While the Maker Studio has a small CNC router, it wasn't until they were able to build the [CNC Router] that I had what I needed to finish the physical build of the project.”

The Maker Studio built the CNC Router to test out the machine in the studio and see if its functionality could support students like Jon in bringing their design ideas to life. Jon was the first MRU student to try the machine, using it to cut the wood pieces he needed for the arcade game’s outer cabinet. He applied skills he had learnt using the Maker Studio’s smaller Carvey CNC to great success with the larger and more versatile CNC router.

“Using what I learned in operating the smaller Carvey CNC, I ended up being the first person to get to use the [CNC Router] at the studio,” says Jon. “We used it not only to make my cabinet, but also to fully understand the differences in operation of the larger machine, including best practices on how to be able to recover from issues like a machine stoppage so that you don't need to throw away a half-carved out board.”

While Jon is excited to test out his arcade machine himself and play some of his favourite classic games, he also plans to showcase his work for charity. A member of Extra Life Calgary, a non-profit that brings together gamers from across Southern Alberta to raise funds for the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation, Jon is looking forward to showcasing the machine at the guild’s fundraising events.

“Having neat things at our table does a lot to attract attention,” says Jon. “Usually I bring one or two of my cosplay props, but more recently we have brought another guild member's full sized, coin operated machine... This gives us yet another option, and because I made this able to be powered entirely off a single USB-C PD cable, I can use one of my USB power banks to power it even if there are no nearby outlets.”