'Unboxing' and Assembling Honey Keeper's Deluxe Deep Hive Frames
Updated: Jan 15, 2021
An incredibly boring unboxing and assembly of the Honey Keeper Beehive 10 Deep Frame Kit with Foundations
We'll be starting a hive or two this Spring and I've begun to hoard bee stuff. I plan on building everything myself, but I wanted one set of commercial frames as a sort of benchmark for size and quality.
The plans I'll be using can be found for free on the Michigan Beekeeper Association's site. It's a great resource for noobs like myself. Also, that knife there is an Opinel No.06. It's French. It's got the perfect profile and bevel for EDC tasks and the steel makes me moister than an oyster. Opinel doesn't pay me to say this stuff...I just really dig the brand. I used it to not only open the box, but also to pick my teeth after consuming a large quantity of bagel seasoning. Woo!
Today I'm vaping some Critical Sour Diesel CBD bud I grew in my PAX2 vaporizer. It's relaxing without being super psychoactive: perfect for cramps!
More information about my cannabis endeavors will eventually be available on this blog.
ON TO THE UNBOXING!
(It's really not that exciting...I'm just trying to be one of the cool bloggers)
There's two common depths of Langstroth hive: 8 frame and 10 frame. I'm building 10 frame hives because I'm greedy, strong, and honey is an addiction for me. Frames are the individual modules that hold the comb. They sit inside a box that's called a
super. Supers can be one of three different heights: deep, medium, and shallow. I'll get into why these exist in a future post, just know I need 10 deep frames to fill one deep super.
My ten frame kit arrived with the following: 20 side bars, 10 top bars, 10 bottom bars, 10 black plastic foundations, and brass finish nails.
What wasn't in the box but is needed: a hammer and wood glue.
What isn't needed but helps: cup for glue, something to spread the glue, and a barely dampened cloth to wipe excess glue off the frames.
The provided directions are fairly clear and assembly is super easy. Start by lightly coating the mating surfaces of both a side bar and the top bar with wood glue as shown above. Make sure the thin channel cut into the top bar is facing in toward where the bottom bar will go. Don't get any glue in the channel. Use either wood glue or other non-toxic glue like Elmer's. Bees are sensitive to odors and fumes. Don't gas the bees with CA glue or some god awful UV cure epoxy. Repeat for the other side of the top bar.
Everything fit well and there weren't any rough cuts or ends that needed sanding. The wood used is supposedly New Zealand Pine. It feels much more plastic than the finish grade pine boards here in the States. I might just be imaging that though.
The bottom bar is attached the exact same way as the top. You do, however, need to position the black plastic foundation into the channels cut in the top and bottom bars. I did this while I was attaching the bottom bar. You can also fully assemble the wooden frame and then bend the foundation to fit into the grooves. No glue should be used on the foundation since it needs to be replaceable.
Once all the wood parts are glued and pushed together, carefully hammer the nails into the top and bottom bar. The top bar needs four nails and the bottom needs two. See the photos above for placement.
It was at this point I questioned everything I know about pine. I 100% expected the ends of the boards to split when I hammered in the fairly hefty nails. No splits...not one. I've assembled five frames so far and everything went together with zero issues. I figured being on the cheaper end of spectrum these would splinter and crack and I might end up with 7 out of 10 in a usable state. I suspect all 10 will work fine.
The only thing left to do is give the foundations a light coating of beeswax. I don't have much else to say other than nothing I've mentioned in this post paid me to like them (hell, none of them even know I exist). I like kittens, pickled herring in sour cream sauce, and silly socks. Are you even still reading this? I doubt I would be. I just look at pictures in other people's blogs. Oh man, what if my pictures make no sense? What if you HAVE to read this drivel? Shit, I'm sorry. I'll stop. Uh, have a good day and I dunno...share or like our site/this post?
Yep, it's awkward now.
(P.S.: if you like our posts and content and are feeling 'gifty', why not get schwifty and checkout the homestead Wish List? It's like a hot camgirl's wish list without the hot!)