What did you do in the 'workshop' today

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That looks lovely.
I’m dreading having to do mine. It’s a job for winter when the days are dark and the Rayburn is on.
Have a good fair.
 
That looks lovely.
I’m dreading having to do mine. It’s a job for winter when the days are dark and the Rayburn is on.
Have a good fair.
I washed a load in the very heavy rain over last weekend. It came out pretty good. Filtered it through a metal sieve lined with a piece of ladies tights. First batch of candles made. Second lot later.
 
Abelo Super Warminng Trolley £580

https://www.abelo.co.uk/shop/warming-honey/supers-heater-trolley/

My Super warming stand - £7. The heater I had, the timber was offcuts from work and a bit of plywood, some bits of PIR, the aluminium tray was in my Dad's greenhouse for years, he rescued it when the Parish Dinners kitchen condemned it and I inherited it when he died and used it in my greenhouse. Biggest cost was the screws to hold it together.
 

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Abelo Super Warminng Trolley £580

https://www.abelo.co.uk/shop/warming-honey/supers-heater-trolley/

My Super warming stand - £7. The heater I had, the timber was offcuts from work and a bit of plywood, some bits of PIR, the aluminium tray was in my Dad's greenhouse for years, he rescued it when the Parish Dinners kitchen condemned it and I inherited it when he died and used it in my greenhouse. Biggest cost was the screws to hold it together.
Well done, Mr Robinson. Now you need a fan under it and a thermostat.
By the way....having the supers warm when you extract makes a huge difference
 
Well done, Mr Robinson. Now you need a fan under it and a thermostat.
By the way....having the supers warm when you extract makes a huge difference
I have an old computer fan that is going to sit on the top of the stack and draw the warm air up through a hole in a crownboard, although it may be sufficient just to let natural convection do the job - I've not yet tried it with a stack of full supers. The heater has a built in thermostat and with it set at about 3/4 the aluminium tray gets to just over 35 degrees. With an empty super as the first one in the stack I reckon that should be warm enough to warm the combs ... time will tell.

My dad reckoned I should have been named Heath ... I've had form for making things out of nothing almost since I could walk.
 
Thought I'd better also finish off the 400 plus top bars which have been sitting in boxes in 'blank' form, blocking the workshop.
Fortunately I've made most of the side bars, just weighing up the virtues of a single piece bottom bar as depicted on the Dave Cushman site
and also used by Denrosa on their frames.
 

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I have an old computer fan that is going to sit on the top of the stack and draw the warm air up through a hole in a crownboard, although it may be sufficient just to let natural convection do the job - I've not yet tried it with a stack of full supers. The heater has a built in thermostat and with it set at about 3/4 the aluminium tray gets to just over 35 degrees. With an empty super as the first one in the stack I reckon that should be warm enough to warm the combs ... time will tell.

My dad reckoned I should have been named Heath ... I've had form for making things out of nothing almost since I could walk.
And it worked ... the honey warmed just a little is a bit quicker to spin out and strain ... you are right. Very little honey dripped into the tray.

Now all my extraction is complete it's serving a secondary purpose - three empty supers in a stack make a perfect insulated box for my cappings strainer with a polycarbonate crownboard on top it's saving the usual grief of draining the cappings in the airing cupboard.
 
You don't have a warming cabinet for buckets? That does the job much more quickly
No .. I had an old fridge with a tube heater and ST1000 thermostat but when I got the Lidl Jam maker I decided that the space it was taking up was better used and it went to the tip (I jar up as I need it so I was not using the 'warming cabinet'). I'm not sure my two bucket draining system would have fitted in it anyway !

I was also intending to use some of the space I made for a small counter top fridge (working) to use as a Cheese cave .... that plan went awry when I told 'er indoors about my plan and the frosty stare indicated that cheese making was off the list of permitted activities (at least for the time being !)
 
Today I have mostly been making man-glitter.

sawdust.jpg


Yes, my table saw does have dust extraction.

Yes, it is almost entirely useless :D

As a handy side-effect of creating all this material to be used in my compost toilet however, I have also cut pretty much all of the parts required to make six UFEs for my newly-bodged five-frame nucs.

five-frame-nucs-01.jpg

five-frame-nucs-02.jpg

James
 
No .. I had an old fridge with a tube heater and ST1000 thermostat but when I got the Lidl Jam maker I decided that the space it was taking up was better used and it went to the tip (I jar up as I need it so I was not using the 'warming cabinet'). I'm not sure my two bucket draining system would have fitted in it anyway !

I was also intending to use some of the space I made for a small counter top fridge (working) to use as a Cheese cave .... that plan went awry when I told 'er indoors about my plan and the frosty stare indicated that cheese making was off the list of permitted activities (at least for the time being !)
The frosty stare would have helped curdle the cheese. Got to look for the silver lining.
 
Before I ask if you could share any more info about these nucs, is there a link to a previous post where you've done just that? I can see the wood at the top to support the frames and the walls, all of which is clear. Are the floors the standard UFEs which some of us here make? Anything you could add about the roof or cover for the insulation eke / crownboard?
 
Before I ask if you could share any more info about these nucs, is there a link to a previous post where you've done just that? I can see the wood at the top to support the frames and the walls, all of which is clear. Are the floors the standard UFEs which some of us here make? Anything you could add about the roof or cover for the insulation eke / crownboard?

There may be a post somewhere; I'm not honestly sure. However, having made these ones I think I can improve the design so they're easier to make. I'll post full details once I have that sorted.

The main walls are 40mm PIR for the ends and 25mm PIR for the sides, glued together using foaming PU glue with bamboo skewers for additional support. The wall bases have 5mm or 10mm (can't recall which off the top of my head) timber strips glued to it, mostly to prevent the PIR being damaged by a hive tool. The tops have 40mm deep timber glued to them, rebated on the ends to take the frame lugs. Again part of the reason for using timber there is to protect the PIR. All the joins, internal and external, and any exposed foam areas, are covered with aluminium tape. I plan to paint them when I've had a sort-out in the workshop and identified cans we no longer need. 40mm PIR is a standard size but not one of the commonly-used ones so I had to order that. he rest I try to scavenge from people who are doing building work.

The crown boards are clear, with the upper sides tall enough to take a lump of 50mm PIR to insulated them. I made the sides of mine from 15mm birch ply, some of which is laminated on both faces (one with a most appropriate hexagon pattern), mostly because I have access to quite a lot of scrap ply from work. Given that it will be covered by the roof I wasn't really worried about it getting wet.

The floors (which I have cut but not yet assembled) are a fairly standard UFE design, just like a narrower version of the ones I and others here use for full hives.

I've sized everything so the external dimensions of the nuc boxes end up as 460mm x 230mm. That gives 380mm x 180mm internally, which should be sufficient for five (35mm spacing) Hoffman frames with a little wiggle room. It also means that putting two side by side should mean that a standard National roof will fit over the top. I may make some single roofs at some point, but I don't feel the need right now. Could be handy if I want to move a single nuc to another apiary for some reason, but if necessary I could swap the frames into a poly nuc to do that, or if I want to set up a colony as five frames over five.

If there are any other details you'd like, by all means ask.

James
 
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