Odd super sizes

[JamezF]

Amongst a pile of kit I was donated many years ago I have some brood boxes and supers built in the style of a commercial hive, with finger-jointed sides and rebated hand-holds cut into the outside faces. But they're national footprint, and inside the sides that support the lugs have a spacing piece top and bottom to hold a second piece of timber forming the inside wall so the internal dimensions are correct for a national hive -- these sides are hollow, basically. The internal wall also extends above the top spacer and is tapered to form a frame rail.

A few of the corners of the supers are in need of repair where years of inserting a hive tool has worn them away so I was going to fix them up, but standing next to a modern super I noticed they're the wrong height. They look to be 5¾" rather than 5⅞" tall (or about 146mm instead of 150mm in new money).

Is this some design I'm unaware of, or does it look like a bit of a cock-up on the part of whoever made them?

I could of course repair them by cleaning up the worn edges and adding a new strip of timber across the bottom to bring them to the expected height, but it would mean there's more than one bee space above the frame lugs of the box below and I'm not sure how the bees might react to that. Correcting it probably takes me into the realms of deciding that's it's just less pain to buy a new one. I could always take them apart and recycle the cedar into other stuff I need.

James

 

[JamezF]

Examples of the construction, if my explanation is not clear. This is probably the worst one of the lot. I'm not sure it's worth doing any work on.

Putting a spare national super frame in makes it quite clear that there wouldn't be enough space between the bottom bars and the top bar of the frame below. Probably 4mm at the most.

James

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

looks like you've got some original 'simplicity' (un)modified National boxes

 

[JamezF]

looks like you've got some original 'simplicity' (un)modified National boxes

Ahhh, good call. That does appear to be consistent with the description on Dave Cushman's site, though I can't find anything else about them. I guess that makes them likely to be quite old.

Not sure what to do with them in that case. Having them hanging around unused seems a pointless waste of space, but making them usable once again may well be more effort than it's worth.

James

 

[Wilco]

Wood may have contracted over time. Work out whether the frames stick out the bottom, if need be add a rim. If they don't stick out the bottom you could always put the rim at the top. Just make it consistent with your kit.

 

[ericbeaumont]

making them usable once again may well be more effort than it's worth

The drawback with the unmodified original National is the base rim - quite wide, effective at crushing bees - and the handholds, which really ought o be called finger-holds.

On the other hand, they're at least 70 years old and made of very fine cedar (admittedly, contraction is likely to have screwed dimensional accuracy) so in these tough times I'm sure it won't take much to persuade you to repair and re-use.

At the very least they would make good bait hives or market display stands.

 

[JamezF]

Bait hive is a good idea. Though at the rate I'm going I'll end up with more bait hives than "proper" ones

James

 

[Antipodes]

Is this some design I'm unaware of, or does it look like a bit of a cock-up on the part of whoever made them?

I agree with Wilco that they may have contracted over time. Could they perhaps have been dipped in hot wax at some time? It can be hard to tell if they have, because the surface wax will get sucked into the wood as they cool (immediately after dipping) and then the surface gets weathered, but when dipped my radiata pine boxes shrink down from about 147mm to around 144mm.

 

[JamezF]

I agree with Wilco that they may have contracted over time. Could they perhaps have been dipped in hot wax at some time? It can be hard to tell if they have, because the surface wax will get sucked into the wood as they cool (immediately after dipping) and then the surface gets weathered, but when dipped my radiata pine boxes shrink down from about 147mm to around 144mm.

To be honest I think they're probably far too old to be able to tell if they were dipped. I certainly agree that there may have been some contraction of the timber though. I had a roof with dovetail joints that had eased apart. I took it to pieces and reassembled it with the joints tight and it's now barely wide enough to fit over a hive

One of the reasons I quite like the idea of using these as bait hives is that I can just repair them to match the existing and don't need to worry about the size difference. Even with the supers I could stack a pair and put a standard set of National frames inside. As I said earlier, having them sitting around doing nothing is just wasteful, but if they're a little piece of UK beekeeping history then it would be quite pleasing to keep their design as it is and still be able to use them. Who knows what interest there might be in them when I shuffle off to the great beehive in the sky?

James