Plastic honey comb foundation (wax-coated); top bar of frame; side pieces; bottom bar. (All for a medium honey super.) http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Detail on top bar. The groove down the middle is for the plastic honey comb foundation. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Side piece for medium honey super. Holes are for adding wire to the foundation for extra support -- it's heavy when it's full of honey. (The brood boxes, or Deep Honey Supers, are built exactly the same except they have longer -- deeper -- side pieces.) http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Detail of bottom piece of frame. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
The ends of the top and bottom bars are glued as well as nailed together. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Top bar glued on and nailed. It's much smaller than it looks. Those nails have to go straight down. Another nail for extra support will come in from the side and underneath. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Side view of the top bar and extra support nail. This is the tricky part. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Slightly angled nail to avoid cracking. The underside of the top bar has a groove down the middle that I have to avoid as well. There's less than a centimetre of wood to work with. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Completed frame for medium honey super. Zenfully tedious work. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
The plastic wax-coated honey comb foundation gives the bees a guide for building full honey combs. I may let the bees build their own honey comb from scratch on the second hive (when I build a second hive). http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
2 side pieces for medium frames. The top one is defective. (View the next 2 photos for more details.) http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
The piece on the right doesn't have wire-support holes and the bottom notches are too small for the bottom bar to fit. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Close up of one of the 10 defective side pieces sent to me from Manitoba. (I had to chisel out pieces to make them fit afterwards -- big pain.) http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Complete frames, one deep, one medium. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Another concern: Should there be this much space between the frame and the foundation? (I don't know.) http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
One more concern: Should there be so much space left over in the super after placing in the 10 frames? http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Medium honey super and brood box, each fill with 10 frames. (I don't like that extra space left over. I'll have to ask around about that.) http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Medium honey super with one frame taken out. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Out-of-focus shot of brood box with one frame taken out. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Brood box with 10 frames (aka a hive body); medium honey super with 10 frames (aka shallows). Despite the frames not being as snug as I would like, I think I've done a good job so far. (I'll still need to coat the outside of the boxes with linseed oil for weather protection.) This is only half the hive. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
I decided to reinforce the bottom bar of the frames with some heavy duty staples. One little nail holding bottom bar on seemed flimsy to me. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
Done. Medium supers on the top. Deep supers (or hives bodies) on the bottom. http://mudsongs.org/building-honey-comb-frames/
