.. yet another adventure in carpentry.
You've probably noticed by now that I enjoy a bit of carpentry, specifically making equipment for bee keeping - so what have I built this time?
I'm not sure how many of you have actually come into contact with either honey frames or the large base frames that the bees live on but let me share with you an inevitability of handling them.
You are going to get sticky, whatever they come into contact with is going to get sticky and honey is a swine to get out of a cars upholstry (think of the carpet in the boot of your car - now think of how much you enjoy scrubbing that(.
So this time I'm going to show you how I built a frame carrier and how I made it more useful by ensuring that it can carry both base frames and honey layer frames.
It's perhaps worth noting that normally when you're transporting used stuff from the hives if it's in reasonable quantities you use either an empty honey layer or hive - so it's normally only when we're transporting amll amounts of equipment that everything gets sticky - so this project deals with transporting a small amount of frames.
If you're a fellow bee keeper this is going to be a very simple project with a little pine and a bit of plywood, the components are shown below:
As you can see the only metalwork is a few frame guides and a few frame guide pins (nails are not shown, nor are hinges).
So to start with we look need to consider what we want to carry, I've decided that I want to be able to carry either base frames or honey layer frames - I've also decided that I want to be able to carry at least two base frames or honey layer frames.
The honey layer frames are half the height of the base frames so it should be possible to carry 2 honey layer frames in the space of one base frame - so how to do it?
Lets start with the basics. In order to make the box carry honey layer frames we need to make the box split in the middle (otherwise we wont be able to get the frames in) - so lets start by making 4 end pieces - as shown below.
So now that the ends are made we need to start giving the box some shape
Note I'm using a frame to make sure that my initial measurements and calculations are correct (no sense in nailing everything together before you realise that something isn't right).
You'll also not that I have not specified any measurements - that's because depending on what type of hive you're using the frame measurements will be different.
So when the sides are nailed on this is what you end up with (this is the bottom one as it has a floor). Note that the corners are nice and tight whilst the end pieces also have guide pins - this will stop the frames flapping about and damaging each other (and spilling honey everywhere).
So once I'm happy with the bottom half of the box I make the top half, this is what it looks like on top of the bottom - you can also see now why it has to be two seperate boxes (look at the way the frame in the bottom goes under the wood of the top layer).
In this picture you can see that I've added a top board to the top section and I've also added a latch at the front to allow me to lock the two halves together (not shown - at the back I've got a hing between the top and bottom and also between the top board and top section).
the only thing left to do now is get it ready for mother nature - give it a little protection:
When the kids saw paint coming out I couldn't actually stop them - so I got to sit and watch (and stop them brining out more colours).
So I now have a nice box to carry frames around in, which is great for transporting small amounts of equipment between hives or between apiaries.
I hope you've enjoyed reading this and if you see me down at the hives you might get to see Ninas painting.
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