Router table Vs Buying hive

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wadey

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What are people's opinions/experience with the cost of buying tools to fabricate your own hive against buying hives ready made?

Surely it would be a good investment to buy the tools to make hives for when I will need additional brood boxes etc. in the future.

(It would also be a good project while I continue to read Ted Hooper)

Also what equipment would I need. I am guessing a router table for a start...



Any advice would be great.

Thanks,

Ian
 
depends if you have the time to make them and the room to store the machines.
 
Depends on what build quality you want to achieve. You can make a hive with butt jointed, glued and screwed exterior ply, requiring few machines if you get the ply cut for you.
 
Depends too on how many hives you want. If just half a dozen, then cheaper to buy (in the sales). If a hundred then cheaper to make.
 
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When are the sales? I keep hearing the sales are the best times to buy.


Ian
 
How are your wood working skills - you need to work to quite fine tolerances.
 
When are the sales? I keep hearing the sales are the best times to buy.
Depends what you want. The largest UK bee manufacturers have a pattern thar has been followed for many years. Practically they can sell now at full price while colonies are expanding or swarming. The main sales are timed over the less busy seasons, from August/September through to January. They space out sales periods for retail outlets and online/phone ordering. Timing may vary, what is on sale also varies but usually includes the most frequently sold boxes (national broods and supers) and packs of frames among other items. Wooden items are usually of "second quality" wood. That's more knots than average, varied colours or other defects but usually servicable. Other items appear as sale goods at various times. There are also usually discounts at shows, National Honey Show in October, BBKA spring convention in April, other spring regional conferences and trade events. Most sales are discussed here as they come up. Many use them to restock for next season, if you have storage space and can predict what you need.
 
What are people's opinions/experience with the cost of buying tools to fabricate your own hive against buying hives ready made?

It depends on what you already have, and on how nice-looking you want your hives to be.

I bought a second-hand table saw to help me build my own hive parts, but I've come to the realisation that to do a proper job I'd have had to buy a saw costing about EUR 140. I use very simple joints in my hives (the type used by Rose hives -- glue and screws). In addition I think a good sander is also a must (now I fix problems with duct tape, but a sander would be better).

If you make your own hives, you can choose a cheaper material also. And if you make your own hives, and you have a good table saw, then you can use scrap wood (check out the 2nd hand web site in your area for people giving away their old tables, book cases and beds, and don't tell them you're going to cut them up when you pick it up).

Let see... a good table saw + a sander would cost me about EUR 200. The cheapest complete bee hive that I can get from a store is a poly hive, at about EUR 100 per hive. Free wood is free. The cheapest store-bought wood that I can find is floorplank wood, and about EUR 6 of wood goes into one hive box (so about EUR 20 per self-made hive of 3 boxes).

Keep in mind that my woodworking skills are very, very basic, and that I'm happy to use crooked hive bodies, as long as the frames fit and the bees don't escape except through the designated hole.

Samuel
 
Aldi have their router and router table on sale from the 5th of june. Well priced and work well have used them on the kit I have made.
 
Try gumtree for tools.

Some tools require precision, like a table saw. If the blade is skew (in one or both directions), or if the kickback guard is misaligned, or if the blade is not aligned to the measuring line, or something like that, you won't be able to see it on a picture or even if you look at the object in real life, but it will make your hive building a pain (or impossible). This is what happened to me when I bought a table saw on a Gumtree type of site, and those are things that you can't fix. I also had to buy a new blade (that cost as much as the saw), because the blade that came with the saw could not cut through the softest pine.

I would advise against buying a table saw on Gumtree. A new saw will have a guarantee, and its parts will be perfectly aligned.

My experience with the table saw also made me believe that a surface extender is an absolute must, and you absolutely can't get away without rails that help you to do cross cuts at perfect angles (don't think that you can do cross cuts by holding the plank in hour hands - hands aren't that steady).
 
What are people's opinions/experience with the cost of buying tools to fabricate your own hive against buying hives ready made?

So much depends on what you intend to make; the source of wood you have; whether you cost your time or not; the required level of finished appearance; and - whether you actually like working with wood.

If you intend making standard Langstroth or National boxes, then it's really pointless trying to out-compete those companies who buy wood in bulk and use production-line techniques. So, it's far better to buy seconds or similar flat-packs from their suppliers.

If you're making (say) Warre hives - then it's a different story. Even those commercially-made are usually one-offs or small runs. The Warre hive was actually intended to be a home-built design, so lends itself well to the home builder with few tools.

If you want to make Long Hives (my favourite) or any form of horizontal Top Bar Hive, then home construction is de rigeur - just don't expect to sell them for top money. But then, 'top-money' hives, built to the standards of high-quality furniture make absolutely no sense at all - unless you plan to be in the business of selling them to the idealistic inexperienced, of course - as they are simply boxes to hold insects, and that is all. A few years in the weather, and with a coating of propolis inside, reveals the reality of beehives - the construction of which needs to be closer to that of a garden shed than a piece of Chippendale.

Wood. Wood in Britain is expensive. Wood purchased from the High Street sheds is insanely expensive. So if you have a sawmill nearby, go talk to them. I have a pallet distribution yard near me, so that's my source of free wood (free plywood, free rigid plastic sheeting etc). If you're working to a budget, then you need to work with what you can easily source. Any fool can pay top-dollar and have the stuff delivered ...

Labour/Time. Why spend all day building a couple of 30 quid boxes, when you could be working at something else far more lucrative and buying 'em in ready made ?

Tools. One of my great passions in life is what I call 'field engineering' - and by that I mean the making of perfectly serviceable items by the use of minimal technology: just hand tools and the most basic of power tools. In my view, making boxes to house insects lends itself perfectly to this ideology.
If you need a router table - than make one using a hand-held router, If you need a table saw, then make one using a hand-held circular saw. With a little ingenuity, jigs can then be made for cutting hand-holds, turning a router into a thicknesser, and so on. Of course such methodology has it's limitations, and is pretty obviously not suitable for mass production - but then we're not talking mass production ...

Finally - do you really want to build your own bee boxes (and various boards, shims, NUCs etc) - or are you simply wanting to save money ? Doing something you really enjoy doing is an important consideration, in my view.

LJ
 
Because you can rout other materials such as PIR foam (Recticel, kingspan etc). You can build hives that are better performing than those available commercially.
 
I have all the equipment to build hives should I need/want to however as stated above the sale prices are often so cheap the time and effort and buying of the wood to start with make buying the kits in a no brainer.

That said if you like woodwork and have the time then it is all part and parcel of your hobby.

C B
 
Little John is spot on, on this occasion.

Here are my comments.

I have amassed my collection of saws planers, routers, etc over years of woodworking projects.

I doubt I would have bought them for just making a few boxes for bees.

I have never made a National deep box - I've simply bought in flat-pack seconds. I've never made a 14 x12 box - I've have made the ekes to extend bought-in flat-pack deeps. Shallows? Yes made a few, but not so many.

Made stands, roofs, crownboards, floors - and a couple of Dartingtons, too.

Making ten at a time is far better than singly.

I have also made windows, doors, staircases and a host of other timber products in my time.

A router is the ultimate universal tool for woodworking. It can cut, plane, thickness, shape, rebate, joint, drill or cut holes, and probably a host of other uses. It is just that there are other tools/machines that will do some of those things much more easily and more conveniently.

I enjoy making things, or repairing items. Some do, some don't. Some can and some can't.

RAB
 
I am an incompetent woodworker who only buys tools out of neccessity as the results of very good tools are offset by the incompetence of the woodworker.


TBH out of pallet wood - minimal woodworkeing tools needed.

Langstroth out of bought redwood(?)... cheap router and jigsaw..

Whilst the results to the professional look not first rate, they work and last.. my oldest TBH is in its 5 th season and still does not leak - it cost £60 to make. The next ones were cheaper £30 ish all in - each..


If I wanted I could have £3,000 of hive hardware in the garden: instead - including a polyhive (prize so very cheap).. I have about £500... for the same hives.

But then I spent my student days in Aberdeen - home of the misers..:)

Gotta go - got a Lang to complete before collecting a swarm for it this evening...

PS: anyone want some cheap birds nests complete with tree bumbles? :)
 
Can you cut straight with a handsaw?
 
The best thing for me is that if I need it I can make it quicker than I could order it and wait for it to turn up. And the cost, deep Nat cost me 5.50 wrc,I might of found a cheaper source too, but not telling lol
 

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