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  • Half brood boxes / nucs - faults in plan required?

  • Bee Hive building & a place to share howto's on equipment
Bee Hive building & a place to share howto's on equipment
 #1779  by Chrisbarlow
 27 Jan 2019, 14:56
Thinking of making up some half brood boxes that will hold 5 frames and when two are sat together have the same foot print as a standard modified national.

The idea is get some ply boards cut into 23cm strips, I know that is 0.5 cm deeper than standard but then the side, floor and roof can all use the same strips of wood and I just have to cut then to the desired length. They will have top and bottom bee space, although if they are on top of each other the bee space is still out but I'm not to fussed about that. What's half a cm amongst friends anyway :o

I intend putting side entrances in with disc covers and making the floors and roofs in the style of the American transport roofs that seem popular over there. So roofs and floors are interchangeable. I would then like to put a hole in these floor/roofs that I can add a plastic bung in so they can have contact feeders added for feed.

I'll intend to use 9mm ply and strips of wood on the inside to sit frames on.

I won't be over wintering in them but using them to mate queens in whilst on queen rite hives (over solid crown boards), drawing frames and building up nucs ( whilst over qe)

I'm looking for a simple design and manufacturing process.

So can any one see flaws in the idea or any ways to improve upon it?
 #1780  by AdamD
 27 Jan 2019, 16:03
A box that is 1/2 size - so 5 frames plus a bit of extra width would work well although you may need to consider a dummy board to take up the room or you will find that sooner or later, comb will be built to fill in the void.
For roofs and floors, you may wish to have some floors that are ventilated (good for moving colonies).

By having 1/2 width boxes you can stack them up 2 high for overwintering or two wide on an existing brood box if the need arises - it's good to have some flexibility. If the wood is treated, I see no reason why you could not overwinter on these - especially with two stacked vertically, with a slab of insulation on top and a solid roof to throw the water off.

Although it would be good to not have a double bee-space between boxes, it should not be too much of a problem. One thing with nucs, is that you might want to put in a frame with a queencell hanging from the bottom bars of a brood frame, so you do need enough space for this or you will potentially squash it.
It is useful to have the floor fixed to the brood box of a nuc, for easy transportation or just moving about the apiary.

My original 5 frame nucs have floors that are regularly removed (unscrewed) and then fixed back on. I have plastic queen excluder that has been cut down to fit the nucs (I use tin-snips) if I am uniting, for example. And I have a nuc super too which happens to be on one colony over wintering now - with queen excluder removed of course.
If I were to make nucs again, I would make them 1/2 the width of a standard brood box.
 #1782  by Jim Norfolk
 27 Jan 2019, 17:12
Sounds a good idea, using the warmth from the hive below. I like the idea of having two half boxes which together equal one brood box. My only question is 9 mm thick enough or is there room to go wider?

I once made a twin nuc box by putting a divider in a brood box. One side failed but the other did well. I suspect that the two sides may not have been totally bee tight and the queens may have met. I went back to making single boxes after that with small entrances 2 cm wide and top bee space and a bit of ply over the top covered with a piece of insulation under a large cement roof tile. Solid floors and sat on a couple of bricks. Cheap and easy to make using ordinary pine board and OSB. I used Polyvine water based exterior varnish to provide some protection.
 #1783  by Chrisbarlow
 27 Jan 2019, 18:26
Cheers guys, fair point about the dummy board, although I've just quickly done some maths and Hoffmann broods are 35 mm wide which means there would be enough space for six frames, however if 9mm isn't thick enough then 12 mm is the next option in which case it won't fit 6 frames and there would be a large gap and a dummy board would be a really good idea.

As for treating/painting, I made some mating nucs last year out of ply with 460 mm Sq base split up into 4. I painted them with masonry paint and the stuff worked a treat.

I've done the splitting existing kit up with divider boards and found it difficult,. I find making from scratch with ply easier and cheaper.

A few spare ventilated floors would be a very good stand by position. Easy enough to make with insect mesh.

I'd thought about attaching the floors but at this moment in time I don't think that would meet my requirements but I will re-evaluate in season. If I did go down attaching floors I think I would look at some sort of sprung clasp over screws.
 #1784  by Patrick
 27 Jan 2019, 20:19
Like Jim I too made some twinstocks in National boxes by creatung a division board into a standard brood box and attaching a permanent floor. Two things - firstly due to several points in the cross section not being level at top and bottom making it truely bee tight between the two halves was more problematic than I had anticipated. It also requires two crownboards to be created and I suspect my versions were not virgin queen tight. Like Jim, I invariably ended up with only one laying queen and ended up combining them - hardly the point. I am sure the problem was my poor woodworking skills.

A beekeeping mate took second hand National boxes (which round here you can pick up for about a tenner) and simply cut them in slightly under half on the runners sides, creating two halves he then sided each cut half with exterior ply and attached a simple permanent floor and drilled entrance and made a half crownboard. They could either be given individual roofs or put side by side under a normal roof as two five frame nucs.
 #2009  by sean
 19 Feb 2019, 13:28
Hello Chris I use a standard national brood box or 14 x 12 with a 42mm solid piece of timber flush top and bottom to divide the box,I use a standard omf floor with a divider and two half size crown boards with feed holes,I drill a small entrance above the bottom rail,one each end.imake half size brood boxes to go up to 5 frames at a time if required ,standard hive stand ,standard roof .They do well in this configuration and overwinter well if required hope this helps
 #2011  by Chrisbarlow
 19 Feb 2019, 14:00
sean wrote:
19 Feb 2019, 13:28
Hello Chris I use a standard national brood box or 14 x 12 with a 42mm solid piece of timber flush top and bottom to divide the box,I use a standard omf floor with a divider and two half size crown boards with feed holes,I drill a small entrance above the bottom rail,one each end.imake half size brood boxes to go up to 5 frames at a time if required ,standard hive stand ,standard roof .They do well in this configuration and overwinter well if required hope this helps
Thanks Sean, that's interesting. Its nice to hear they do well in the configuration and over winter well as well. I was not planning on over wintering them but I am starting to think I might have a go.
 #2037  by Chrisbarlow
 21 Feb 2019, 15:30
Ive started doing this today. I went with 12mm ply in the end.Ive got 8 out of 1 and 1/2 sheets of ply (8ftx4ft) but that doesnt include floors or roofs. I Another sheet of ply should make another 8 nucs boxes. The floors and roof I think I am going use 18mm ply and attach them using toggle catches. like these at screwfix

https://www.screwfix.com/p/toggle-cabinet-catch-nickel-plated-45-x-36mm-10-pack/15443?tc=PT9&ds_kid=92700022061874960&ds_rl=1241687&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1244072&ds_rl=1249481&ds_rl=1245250&gclid=CjwKCAiAqaTjBRAdEiwAOdx9xhVGbOgWIQy7x7KZ1DtWTk7_2CHStWUbkmfBMsbPmf-PnI4_uY-6HRoCfUsQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I did find the B&Q ply that I used is not the greatest and some of it once cut needed more wood glue and stapling up. I use b&Q as they will also cut the sheets in to managable sections.

They all still need painting.
 #2107  by Chrisbarlow
 25 Feb 2019, 17:57
Got the boxes painted, painted them with an air compressed paint spray gun and masonry paint with 20% water added. Touched up the corners afterwards with neat masonry paint using brush. They are looking alright, Still need to get the floors sorted.
 #2864  by Chrisbarlow
 29 Apr 2019, 21:46
Update on this. I made 7 in the end. I used 12mm ply. I picked hardwood ply but I think I should have gone for softwood ply. Currently running 2 x 6 frame overwintered nucs in them. They all got painted. They are sat on a piece of ply 46 cm square and each has its own crown board 23cmx46cm with a standard roof on top. Each nuc is 3 of these boxes high. Seems to be working well. Both are expanding well. Good at drawing comb out and should be good for splits once I have some mated queens.

Only failing so far is I should have made more boxes but should rectify that shortly.