rae
Field Bee
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2009
- Messages
- 826
- Reaction score
- 1
- Location
- Berkshire
- Hive Type
- 14x12
- Number of Hives
- 8 and 3 nucs...it's swarm time...
I mentioned on another thread that I could post up some photos and explanations of how I make hive boxes and a few people thought it was a good idea. Once caveat: this method works for me, I'm not the best hive builder in the world (far from it!), but I'm probably not the worst either. Your method might be different! Oh yes, there will be plenty of tool porn in this thread. I know some of you like a good bit of tool porn.
I'm not going to go into the gory details of hive part sizes - Scottish beekeepers has a good reference for the national hive.
I have 6 hives, and hopefully next summer I will still have 6 colonies. Having bought nice cedar hives from T*ornes, I don't have enough supers, as I've ended up buying brood boxes, floors and roofs as we have expanded this year. Honey production on the "new" hives was not great, so they did not need the requisite 3 supers. They will next year. So I need supers, and I will need some more broods for temporary expansion during the swarming season. As such, these don't need to be great quality: summer use only, not too fussed about the thermal characteristics, they don't need to survive winter weather. Shuttering ply is cheap, waterproof and strong. So I use that. I don't see any point in the amateur making cedar hives: cedar in small quantities is very expensive, and the price from T*ornes or others is roughly the same as your material costs. On the other hand, supers made out of shuttering ply are cheap. A sheet can be had for £25 from Travis Perkins and it makes 10 supers. Add another £25 for a big lump of pine (for the handles) and you've got a price of £5 per super. Not bad.
Right, so you've got a ginormous 2400 x 1200 sheet of 18mm ply from Travis Perkins. Somehow you've managed to get it home. You need to make it manageable, because unless you've got a very big table saw with a sliding table, your first few cuts will not be accurate.
Here is my cutting lay out:
Basically I split the sheet into two unequal parts along the length. The bigger bit is 930mm high (2 x 460mm + 10 mm waste), and this will make hive parts vertically - in the diagram I've marked out some super sides and 14x12 sides. The smaller bit can make super parts.
Once you've made the first cut, the subsequent cuts are much easier as the board is manageable. I didn't take photos of this stage, but eventually you end up with a load of hive parts like this:
(Ignore the fact that the parts have slots machined into them, I didn't take photos early on, we'll cover that later). Those piles are 5 14x12 broods and 9 supers.
The key thing to remember about national hives is two dimensions: 18 1/8 inches and 17 inches. The "long" walls of a box are 18 1/8 inches x whatever the height of the bit you are making is. The "short" walls of the box are 17" x (the height - 15/16)".
So the sides of a national super are made of parts:
18 1/8" x 5 7/8" - the "long, deep sides"
and
17" x 4 15/16" - the "short, shallow sides".
Each box you make will require two of each. Yes, if you are a child of the decimal era, doing sums in imperial makes your brain hurt. Thankfully, I have a lot of American tools marked up in imperial, which makes hive building easier.
Time for tool porn. Here's my set up:
It is an old Electra Beckum table saw with the original rubbish fence removed and an Incra TS-LS instead. The Incra is a thing of beauty. At the far end of the photo there is a scale, and the big red lever locks the fence into place. So I dial in a width on the scale, lock the lever, and cut. Repeatable, again and again.
If you pull the fence right back, it exposes the router table. I've got an Elu 1/2" router under there, with enough chuff to do moulding of oak panels - shuttering ply doesn't bother it at all.
The slots that the "short sides" lock into are 4mm deep (if you are using 18mm ply) and 1" in from the edge of the board. Thankfully the router is on a rise/fall mechanism, so getting 4mm is simply a matter of setting it on the tail of a caliper, and dialling it in:
Set the fence distance to an inch from the side of the cutter, and push all of the "long deep" sides though. Remember to get both slots on the same side! At the end you will have a big pile of slotted "long deep" sides...and a lot of chips:
Note the Heath Robinson extraction at the end of the table. This is very important - wood dust does bad things to your lungs over time, and I always wear a decent face mask when doing this stuff. Ear defenders too.
This is how the ply sides fit together. The short sides fit into the slots, forming a box of 18 1/8" (460mm) square.
I'll get some pine in the next few days and we'll make the handles!
(no idea why the forum repeats photos - can this be turned off?)
I'm not going to go into the gory details of hive part sizes - Scottish beekeepers has a good reference for the national hive.
I have 6 hives, and hopefully next summer I will still have 6 colonies. Having bought nice cedar hives from T*ornes, I don't have enough supers, as I've ended up buying brood boxes, floors and roofs as we have expanded this year. Honey production on the "new" hives was not great, so they did not need the requisite 3 supers. They will next year. So I need supers, and I will need some more broods for temporary expansion during the swarming season. As such, these don't need to be great quality: summer use only, not too fussed about the thermal characteristics, they don't need to survive winter weather. Shuttering ply is cheap, waterproof and strong. So I use that. I don't see any point in the amateur making cedar hives: cedar in small quantities is very expensive, and the price from T*ornes or others is roughly the same as your material costs. On the other hand, supers made out of shuttering ply are cheap. A sheet can be had for £25 from Travis Perkins and it makes 10 supers. Add another £25 for a big lump of pine (for the handles) and you've got a price of £5 per super. Not bad.
Right, so you've got a ginormous 2400 x 1200 sheet of 18mm ply from Travis Perkins. Somehow you've managed to get it home. You need to make it manageable, because unless you've got a very big table saw with a sliding table, your first few cuts will not be accurate.
Here is my cutting lay out:
Basically I split the sheet into two unequal parts along the length. The bigger bit is 930mm high (2 x 460mm + 10 mm waste), and this will make hive parts vertically - in the diagram I've marked out some super sides and 14x12 sides. The smaller bit can make super parts.
Once you've made the first cut, the subsequent cuts are much easier as the board is manageable. I didn't take photos of this stage, but eventually you end up with a load of hive parts like this:
(Ignore the fact that the parts have slots machined into them, I didn't take photos early on, we'll cover that later). Those piles are 5 14x12 broods and 9 supers.
The key thing to remember about national hives is two dimensions: 18 1/8 inches and 17 inches. The "long" walls of a box are 18 1/8 inches x whatever the height of the bit you are making is. The "short" walls of the box are 17" x (the height - 15/16)".
So the sides of a national super are made of parts:
18 1/8" x 5 7/8" - the "long, deep sides"
and
17" x 4 15/16" - the "short, shallow sides".
Each box you make will require two of each. Yes, if you are a child of the decimal era, doing sums in imperial makes your brain hurt. Thankfully, I have a lot of American tools marked up in imperial, which makes hive building easier.
Time for tool porn. Here's my set up:
It is an old Electra Beckum table saw with the original rubbish fence removed and an Incra TS-LS instead. The Incra is a thing of beauty. At the far end of the photo there is a scale, and the big red lever locks the fence into place. So I dial in a width on the scale, lock the lever, and cut. Repeatable, again and again.
If you pull the fence right back, it exposes the router table. I've got an Elu 1/2" router under there, with enough chuff to do moulding of oak panels - shuttering ply doesn't bother it at all.
The slots that the "short sides" lock into are 4mm deep (if you are using 18mm ply) and 1" in from the edge of the board. Thankfully the router is on a rise/fall mechanism, so getting 4mm is simply a matter of setting it on the tail of a caliper, and dialling it in:
Set the fence distance to an inch from the side of the cutter, and push all of the "long deep" sides though. Remember to get both slots on the same side! At the end you will have a big pile of slotted "long deep" sides...and a lot of chips:
Note the Heath Robinson extraction at the end of the table. This is very important - wood dust does bad things to your lungs over time, and I always wear a decent face mask when doing this stuff. Ear defenders too.
This is how the ply sides fit together. The short sides fit into the slots, forming a box of 18 1/8" (460mm) square.
I'll get some pine in the next few days and we'll make the handles!
(no idea why the forum repeats photos - can this be turned off?)
Last edited:
Worth every penny, it is just brilliant stuff. No one has spotted the Stihl yet... 
