What did you do in the 'workshop' today

[REDWOOD]

Hi all, just wondering how everyone cuts their joints when building nationals. At the minute I'm using a table saw with a jig I made. They all fit together nice and snug but cutting out the notches in the sides takes me forever. Just wondering how I would go on if I had lots to make?

Sliding miter saw with a homemade end stop, I can cut one rail every 2 minutes although I don't make the notches for supers, just a few more screws

 

[nantmoel]

Planning on using my 'Woodrat' to cut the tendons in the side rails and the mortice in the hive sides. I must venture on with the spindle moulder I bought last year. I can stack and tape a load of sides and run my Woodrat fitted with a 20mm cutter this will make short work of the mortice to accept the side rails.

 

[8ace]

Planning on using my 'Woodrat' to cut the tendons in the side rails and the mortice in the hive sides. I must venture on with the spindle moulder I bought last year. I can stack and tape a load of sides and run my Woodrat fitted with a 20mm cutter this will make short work of the mortice to accept the side rails.

What spindle do you have? Has it got a sliding bed? I reckon a good 90% of a national hive joints can be run on a spindle with an adjustable groove block I'd love it if I had one at home

 

[Islandbees]

Where did you get the wood rat from. I've seem them before and they look really handy. How many sides can you mortice at once and what router but do you use? It certainly beats cutting them with the table saw

 

[ugcheleuce]

Made meself a home-made "honey spinner mini". Haven't tried it out yet.

 

[nantmoel]

What spindle do you have? Has it got a sliding bed? I reckon a good 90% of a national hive joints can be run on a spindle with an adjustable groove block I'd love it if I had one at home

It does not have a sliding tenon attachment, however I have now bought a finger joint cutter, to finger joint the lengths. I have mad two complete supers out of the smaller pieces and today cut another 36 hive rails ready to be tenoned, I used my Woodrat for the test supers, it did an excellent job.

 

[ugcheleuce]

Made meself a home-made "honey spinner mini". Haven't tried it out yet.

Okay, tried it. It's quite a bit more wobbly than the official version, but I think I would have extracted as much honey with it as the official version. From two British National super frames full of capped honey, I was able to extract about 1 kg of honey in 15 minutes. That's not an awful lot. Afterwards, the extracted frames were still quite heavy with honey.

Now if I understand centrifugal force calculations correctly, the Honey Spinner Mini would require one to spin that axle two to three times as fast as that of a commercial extractor to get the same force. This is due to the small radius of only 3-5 cm, compared to 20 cm on a commercial extractor.

 

[nantmoel]

Just completed a load of rails for my National 14x12's, well they look like a load but when I counted them I have enough to make up 9 hives with enough wood to make another 9 sets of rails. All tenoned, rebated and angled bottom rails. I have enough wood to make 9 full side's so not too bad, thats 9 off 14x12 National Hives for £130 (not including my time and electric). Opps I made two supers as a 'set-up' guide and enough Nuc Rails for 4 Nuc's.

 

[einsteinagogo]

rendered down bits of wax I've been collecting all year, with my new bargain small Thorne round wax melter. Quicker than a solar wax melter, not as messy as a steam extractor - both I've tried. I wonder why Thorne stopped making the round wax melter with integrated kettle element, square easier to fabricate than round? kettle element integration too many electrical directives...?

filled with rain water, and let it render - brilliant.

I've got a few customers for wax cappings for face cream, so this is to do this week.

I also received my new Sievret blow torch, a little upgrade to my hand held blow torch to sterilse frames, supers,QE, brood boxes as the end of year approaches.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Just did the first test run of the honey dryer we have made, works well, very similar design to the Lega disc dryer.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Ha.....I certainly need one this year.
Supers of uncapped honey (22% water on the ones I tried)...a couple of sunny days and they pile it in only to eat most of it in the rainy week that follows.

 

[maddydog]

Put together and painted 8 new Swienty 14x12 boxes. Prefer them to my two (no sold) paynes behemoths Ten frames and a dummy but can't see it being a problem.

Also made up 8 underfloor entrance floors for my likely expansion next year. Really impressed with these this year, cheap to make and completely fox the wasps. Had issues at two of my apiaries and the little buggers either can't fathom a way in or the entrances are too well guarded. No need to mess around with mouse guards either.

 

[Swarm]

Put together and painted 8 new Swienty 14x12 boxes. Prefer them to my two (no sold) paynes behemoths Ten frames and a dummy but can't see it being a problem.

Also made up 8 underfloor entrance floors for my likely expansion next year. Really impressed with these this year, cheap to make and completely fox the wasps. Had issues at two of my apiaries and the little buggers either can't fathom a way in or the entrances are too well guarded. No need to mess around with mouse guards either.

Spot on with the underfloor entrance, plenty of room for guard bees, they are all I use.
Also agree about the swienty but I use them without the runners, so TBS. There is no bee space moulded into the bottom of the boxes so they sit directly on the frame lugs of the box below. I could only see this as causing problems with propolis and squashed bees so I took the runners out and made up some TBS supers instead. Just something you may need to consider
A ten frame 14x12 is probably better than eleven, unless you have prolific queens.

 

[nantmoel]

Put together and painted 8 new Swienty 14x12 boxes. Prefer them to my two (no sold) paynes behemoths Ten frames and a dummy but can't see it being a problem.

Also made up 8 underfloor entrance floors for my likely expansion next year. Really impressed with these this year, cheap to make and completely fox the wasps. Had issues at two of my apiaries and the little buggers either can't fathom a way in or the entrances are too well guarded. No need to mess around with mouse guards either.

Can you point me to a supplier of these hives in the UK, I found them on their website and just wondered how much they are and what they look like. The picture on their website in not that clear.

 

[Erichalfbee]

C Wynne Jones and Solwaybees.

 

[maddydog]

Spot on with the underfloor entrance, plenty of room for guard bees, they are all I use.
Also agree about the swienty but I use them without the runners, so TBS. There is no bee space moulded into the bottom of the boxes so they sit directly on the frame lugs of the box below. I could only see this as causing problems with propolis and squashed bees so I took the runners out and made up some TBS supers instead. Just something you may need to consider
A ten frame 14x12 is probably better than eleven, unless you have prolific queens.

All my kit is BBS so would be a pita to change. I'm only using the poly brood boxes, the rest of my stuff is cedar and I use a standard roof with 50mm kingspan glued in. A bit more care when replacing the q ex is all.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Knocked up a few more rhombus clearer boards, started tidying up ready for the autumn sales

 

[Swarm]

All my kit is BBS so would be a pita to change. I'm only using the poly brood boxes, the rest of my stuff is cedar and I use a standard roof with 50mm kingspan glued in. A bit more care when replacing the q ex is all.

Yes, I do the same but I'm not a fan of 14x12 so on standard. You should be ok with the brood in one box.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Ha.....I certainly need one this year.
Supers of uncapped honey (22% water on the ones I tried)...a couple of sunny days and they pile it in only to eat most of it in the rainy week that follows.

Working very well, it has reduced the moisture from some honey this evening down from 20% to 16.5% in just under four hours.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Impressive