Building hives… Initially, I purchased my hive bodies. I figured I would buy them and get things rolling quickly. I did some looking first, and thought the finger joints were just too much for the amount of time I had (or didn’t have).
Finally, I had a weekend with decent weather, and enough time to get some time to tinker, so I decided to give building deep hive bodies a shot.
The first thing I decided was that finger joints were officially, highly overrated. I have watched countless YouTube videos about how to build various hive parts. There are some GREAT videos out there, so if you have not watched them, do a quick search and see what you find. Videos range from the extravagant to the cheap and quick. I opted to fall somewhere in between. Rabbet joints were how I decided to build mine.
I am fortunate in that I have a table saw and a dado blade. I have had them for years, and the dado blade has been used all of once. Time to give it a workout.
First, I did some quick measurements of another 8 frame deep I have sitting around. The one I measured measured 9 3/4 inches deep, so I ripped a couple 1×12 boards down to size.
Next, I marked and cut the lengths of board I would need for sides and ends. The sides measured 19″ and the sides 13 7/8″. The chop saw made relatively quick work of that, but I now see the advantage of a sliding miter saw… that would have been nice and saved some flipping.
Having done that, I had to figure the dado out. This was slightly trickier, and cost me a board. You know the old saying, measure twice, cut once… yeah, I forgot that step.
I stacked my dado up to 3/4″, since that is the true size of a 1″ board. Next, I had to figure out the depth. This is where I messed up, and cut way too much board, leaving a very thin piece left. Not going to work. So, I lowered the blade a bit, down to about 3/8 inches (where I thought I was the first time, but my eyes are aging) and tried again, using the ruined board as a trial board on a different edge. This worked out much better. The result, I had dadoed ends and frame rest at the same depths. I then nailed them together using 6d nails, and ended up with this:
Initially, I thought the rest looked too deep, but when I put frames in, there was still plenty of room at the bottom, so I think I am ok here.
I made two hive bodies using the two 1×12 boards, with very little scrap.
Next, I took an old partial sheet of plywood and the scrap from ripping the 1×12 earlier, and fashioned a telescoping outer cover. All this took was a measurement of the dimensions of the hive body, add 3/4″ to each side for the width of the board, plus just a wee bit to allow for a bit of movement/swelling. I cut those and nailed it up, the result is shown below.
Next, I have to fashion a bottom board. I actually have several 8 frame bottom boards, but I want to build a screened one. So, I did some googling. My attempt for those will be what Jarod Morrison builds in his video HERE.
