Wild Things Farm

One person's demolition project is another's construction project.   A friend of mine added a garage to his house and in the process demolished part of the porch.  The porch ceiling and floor were both made from cedar boards.  They were headed to the burn pile but he offered them to me.  I saw beehives!

One of "the winter projects" is to build 7 beehives.  I'm wanting to expand the apiary and I think 10 is a good, reasonable number of hives for a novice beekeeper.  I've been waiting for warmer weather to continue working on the boxes, and every day I think it will be warm enough but today I decided to just do it although the high for the day was only 31 degrees.

My woodworking shop is on the back porch so I put on down-filled overalls and jacket and started up the table saw.

All the sawing was done outside, and the glueing and nailing done in the warmth of the house.

The boards are not wide enough to make a medium box (I use all medium 8-frame supers) so I'm gluing two of them together then trimming it to size.  The piece that is trimmed off the glued boards is then cut at an angle on one side to shed water and then glued and air-nailed over the seam--voila! a dual purpose handle and joint reinforcement.

The ends are notched to accommodate the frames and allow for "bee space".   Corners are glued and nailed with finish  nails.

The handles are ending up at different positions on each box but I don't think that's going to be a problem because every time I look at the them I'll know they are in the "free" position!

Plans are to just let the hives weather.  Can't wait to get back in the bees and the gardens!