Monday, April 25, 2011
The finished product should look something like this. I modified a design I found online, warres original design used an all wood sloped roof. This design incorporates a screened vent for exhausting excess moisture without drilling any complex sloped holes too keep the rain out.
After drilling the slats clamp them to the box and drive screws in, I use deck screws #8 1-3/4" they are cheaper and hold better in soft woods. Do NOT glue boards down just use screws.
All the wooden parts are assembled.
The reason I didn't use glue is so I can run some window screening under and around the slats like so. Just back up the screws for the main two slats and remove the small middle one. This is to screen the space between lid and quilt as well as outside.
Now cut a square of galvanised steel 496mm x 496mm
Clamp and center the sheet of steel.
Once the sheet is centered tighten clamps and bend one side down. Now measure and punch a hole in the center with a nail then drive a screw through this hole I used #8 5/8 dome head screws for this. Starting from the center of the lid work your way towards the ends screwing down the steel.
When you get to a corner cut so that you can fold one side over the other to make a nice safe corner. After this is done you are finished your new lid! Next time I will show you how to build the base and stand.
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4 comments:
Hello Sam. I am in my third year keeping bees in Ohio, and started with TBHs. Lots of success - but not a ton of honey. After lots of reading, my dad and I made a Warre hive for this year. After having completed the construction, and I still confused on how the hive will have good air-flow with the original design. I like the design above; do you have this roof on all year (in winter also)?
Yea the idea is to allow a small amount of air transfer into the quilt material (same as house insulation (keeps it dry this way) air doesn't really flow through the quilt it just acts like a layer of insulation and moisture wick for the hive, I drilled a 1/2" hole into the top of the top box for winter in case the bees found the bottom entrance blocked, this way if they didn't like the 1/2" hole they could close it.
The problem I had with my tbh is winter cluster split killed a lot of my hives, its very hard for the queen to move through the hives since the comb is all perpendicular to the hives long axis, with the warre the comb is always parallel to the long axis (up and down). Plus I have found that bees like to store honey above themselves so if they don't have vertical space they tend to focus on making more bees, I have ready that brood expansion tends to be sideways and honey "tends" to be vertical.
This is just a general observation, but I did find my tbh produced lots of bees and very little honey (can also be affected by seasons flow ect) This being said I am a big fan of the warre system, in my pages I have a detailed plan for my warre design.
I will try drilling a few small 1/4'' holes on the "mouse board" on my Warre roof to accomplish air transfer.
I second your TBH observation. I had to split mine three times. There were insane amounts of bees, but I only was able to take maybe one bar of honey.
You could also cut a larger hole and cover with some hardware mesh (1/8" size) or window screen (not as mouse proof though). I'm sure part of the reason honey production is low in a tbh is the less efficient ventilation profile, I had my warre's "warm ways" last summer and my bees were bearding a lot and fanning until I turned them "cold ways" then the bearding almost stopped and the fanning was reduced dramatically. One hot summer in my tbh my bees were bearding to the point they started making comb outside the hive..
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