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Author Topic: Making Hive frames?  (Read 11804 times)

Offline Royall

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Making Hive frames?
« on: June 02, 2012, 09:59:48 pm »
I guess this would only be question a woodworking retiree with more time than money would ask :-D...... BUT, has anyone made there own frames? Not just buy and assembling but cutting from scratch? If you have, what wood are you using? Yes, I know they don't cost that much buy you mainlanders have better shipping rates than we do! :shock: I made a few medium supers and figured I could sell them faster if they came with frames. I am limited to what woods I can get here and really don't want to use Koa, Sapele, Milo, or Mango!!

Aloha,

Royall

Offline BlueBee

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2012, 11:20:40 pm »
Yep, all these frames are homemade.  



From fore to aft:  foundationless mating frame, foundationless medium frame, narrow frame deep, narrow frame jumbo frame.  

I would not recommend making frames unless you have no other options and/or you want to do some custom bee keeping.  It’s tedious work to make frames.  The high volume machines the bee manufactures use are much more productive.  

I made my frames out of white pine (pinus strobous) that is abundant in my area.  It’s a soft wood and I’ve had some warping issues with a couple of my frames.  You really hate to have them warp when you spent so much time making them!  Luckily not too many.  

The colorful dots you see in the photos is my frame spacers.  Push pins from the office supply store.  They work very nice.  Got that tip from Robo and later read that Brother Adam also used a similar type of spacer for his frames.  I like them spacers a lot more than the hoffman style spacers the commercial frames are made with.


Offline wayne

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2012, 11:33:28 pm »
  Cool. THAT just might be the answer to my 2 comb per frame trouble. How do you join the corners?
I was born about 100 years too early, or to late.

Offline hardwood

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #3 on: June 02, 2012, 11:35:48 pm »
I vote for Koa! I've got a full custom woodworking shop and wouldn't dream of making my own frames. I buy white pine frames for $.47 each in qty...couldn't produce them myself that cheaply. BTW, I had a best friend for 15 years (black lab) named koa and have one now that's about the same age named ipe. Have also had dogs named bubinga, wenge and cedar.

Scott
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Offline BlueBee

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #4 on: June 02, 2012, 11:43:05 pm »
 Cool. THAT just might be the answer to my 2 comb per frame trouble. How do you join the corners?
I’ve been meaning to get the measurements for my jumbo frames and post how I built them for CV, but haven’t gotten to them yet.  Here’s a photo description of my deep frame construction from last summer.  



Couple other photos in this album: http://s1082.photobucket.com/albums/j365/MichiganBee/Bee%20Hive%20Frames/

The spacers on my medium foundationless frames are such that they mate up with the Mann Lake PF plastic frames correctly.  My mating frames just use a staple for a spacer.  The staple makes for a nice spacer too; better than a nail IMO.

Bewarned....As Scott says, there are better ways to spend your time than making frames  :)

Offline Royall

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #5 on: June 03, 2012, 05:51:05 am »
@ Hardwood..... Yeah, Koa is really popular (if you have the bucks!) I don't care for it that much. Just like when I lived in Brookings, Oregon, they had Myrtle trees and every tourist would want to buy something made out of Myrtle! To me the grain was too muddy looking. I like Ipe. Makes a great deck but hard as hell on saw blades!  :-P I guess if I had dogs they'd have wooden names too! lol I wish I could buy frames here for that price. From what I found so far, everybody buys them from the mainland. Cheapest I've found so far is .80 each. I could live with that if the shipping doesn't get to outa hand.. Has to be USPS to get good rates. UPS/FEDEX for a box that would hold enough parts to make 100 frames would run about 55-65 bucks.

@ BlueBee..... If I was going to use them myself, I'd be making and using you design! But I don't know it the Beeks here would buy a hive loaded with something different than what they're used to.. Can't blame them much.

Mahalo!

Offline BlueBee

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #6 on: June 03, 2012, 11:11:05 am »
Most of my frames are commercial; the all plastic mann lake PF stuff and wood + piecro frames.  They’re so much faster and cheaper.  My main purpose in building frames was for my non standard sized bee boxes.  Namely my jumbo boxes and my mating boxes.  My lamination like design worked out pretty good for my jumbo frames, but I did get some warping with a few of my deep versions.  I’ll never make anymore deep ones; it’s just much more productive to buy them.  The manufacturers have perfected them. 

I am going to have to build some more jumbo frames this summer for some more jumbo hives.  My lamination approach for the side structures is a bit time consuming to assemble and I might try to come up with a new way to make the side pieces.  I might also ponder using some other material that is less likely to warp.  I think the widths of the Hoffman sides probably helps with warp/twist issues vs my ¾” wide side bars.  I doubt I’ll go back to Hoffman though.

Offline alkaline19

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #7 on: June 04, 2012, 04:09:38 pm »

Bluebee, nice work - my question for you is where did you find foundation to fit the jumbo frames? Or are they spliced together by hand?
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Offline Jim134

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #8 on: June 04, 2012, 04:32:04 pm »
$0.65 A frame if you buy a 100 9-1/8" but the S&H may kill you about 5500 mi or so from the Big Island HI

http://www.humbleabodesinc.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=12



   BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)
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Offline Royall

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #9 on: June 04, 2012, 05:12:01 pm »
Mahalo Jim for the link to Humble Abodes. I called and talked to Annette there and she is willing to pick up a few flat rate boxes from the  post office to see how many frame components she can cram into a given size box. Really nice person to work with. Not too many business take the time for things our to the ordinary.


Royall

Offline jredburn

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #10 on: July 01, 2012, 02:30:49 pm »
Royall
I am a retired construction stiff and have a fully equipped woodworking shop and lots of time (little money).
I make my own frames.  I make them out of whatever wood is in the shipping pallet that I pick up for free.  I cut the pallet apart rather than try to pull the nails.  I have jigs made up for every operation (cut) that needs to be made and each jig holds 10 to 20 pieces.  I make them in batches of 100.  I can make a batch in about an hour and a half.
Regards
Joe

Offline Royall

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #11 on: July 02, 2012, 05:58:46 pm »
That's cool Joe! How about posting some photos of the jigs you made to speed up the process?? May save me a bit of time as I tend to "over analyze" projects! :-D

Offline Jim134

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #12 on: July 02, 2012, 10:19:41 pm »
"Tell me and I'll forget,show me and I may  remember,involve me and I'll understand"
        Chinese Proverb

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways."
 John F. Kennedy
Franklin County Beekeepers Association MA. http://www.franklinmabeekeepers.org/

Offline Royall

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #13 on: July 09, 2012, 09:44:41 pm »
Thanks for posting the videos Jim! Helps out a bunch!


Offline Javin

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Re: Making Hive frames?
« Reply #14 on: July 17, 2012, 04:27:01 pm »
I guess this would only be question a woodworking retiree with more time than money would ask :-D...... BUT, has anyone made there own frames? Not just buy and assembling but cutting from scratch? If you have, what wood are you using? Yes, I know they don't cost that much buy you mainlanders have better shipping rates than we do! :shock: I made a few medium supers and figured I could sell them faster if they came with frames. I am limited to what woods I can get here and really don't want to use Koa, Sapele, Milo, or Mango!!

Aloha,

Royall

The bees don't seem to care too much about what they build their hives in.  I've been making my frames from the cheap, kiln-dried 2 x 4 x 8's.  You can get a lot of frames from one two by four.  (Still haven't dialed in the best way to make the most of the wood yet, though.)  I just avoid the chemically treated stuff, coz even though the bees will gladly build on it, there's no telling how much of that stuff leeches into your wax/honey.

I stick with the straight-up dadant design.  Rigging a router into a routing table makes it a pretty quick process.