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welcome to rascal apiary we got a request to build a long length straw hive and we've never built one before kind of excited about doing it so we got some plans from another youtuber and we'll link him in the description and we're going to go ahead and build it what do you think i'm excited about it so most of our eighth year we have length draw traditional length straw pies where you stack boxes on top of each other but we also have a ware but we've been talking about moving some we have a few hives on a platform we've been talking about moving those hives off the platform onto some center blocks or something else yeah instead but this is going to be one of those methods where we get one of the hives off that platform and we're just going to move them into a new home that long lane yeah that's exciting so we'll we'll only put the the long length probably right in front of the platform where the bees currently are so that moves not going to be a big haul for them it's within three feet so it's it's gonna just wait for the weather to warm up and we'll move them in there uh i'm kind of excited about that because that means i'm not gonna have to lift heavy boxes and uh i'm i'm a little curious how the bees actually function in a coffin like you know structure or a log structure because in my mind i see like the first couple as brood and then it just becomes honey afterwards but what what if they're just crazy bees and they go brood bird brewed brewed all the way down and then and then start filling honey and then they just like you accordion back and forth like that's going to drive me nuts because i'm used to just having you know the box on top and i go oh all this is honey and i can set it aside but yeah it's going to be different with the management techniques too and like i said we haven't had a long wing before so we'll keep you guys updated with throughout the season with how the management goes and and if we like it or we don't maybe we won't i don't know we'll see we're going to keep it regardless definitely so well let's get into it and here's our build [Music] [Music] so okay mike is in the workshop he's planting some wood right now so i thought i'd come in and update you guys on what's going on we purchased uh all of our wood some of it's from a friend of ours who wants a sawmill and then the rest of it we bought at our local hardware store the stuff from the big box store we actually purchased two two by twelves that are six foot long and that's going to be the body of the hive and we also bought two two by fours that are eight foot long and we'll end up cutting those in half and they'll be the four legs for the hive now the wood that we purchased from our sawmill friend it's all rough cut lumber so if you go to the store and you buy say a 1 by 12 it's not actually 1 inch thick it's really three-fourths of an inch thick so that's what we're working on right now mike's gonna put all that wood through the planer bring it down to three-fourths of an inch so that when we go to build it it actually matches with the plans that we have so stay tuned [Music] so [Music] so [Music] now that all the wood's been planed we just finished cutting all of the boards to length and to width um there's actually quite a lot and here we've not really hit a snag but definitely something unexpected so when i was doing my math and i'm sure this was just on me when i was doing the math i didn't account for how small the pieces would be cut to width so we cut a lot more to length than we really needed to so we have now probably maybe six boards or more that are just extra and i'm sure we'll use them in a future project but it's just something that we didn't account for but other than that things are going pretty smoothly so we'll see hopefully they keep going just as smoothly all right let's get back to it next we're going to cut um the the legs i think and um then we're going to start routing all the little edges so let's go [Music] [Music] we're cutting wood and i'm starting to notice that everything's kind of doubled like we have so much wood left over which is great because it's raining today and if i had to pull more wood off of the pile it was just going to be a wreck and we would never finish this project this weekend we'd have to wait till next week and then i gotta figure out what am i gonna put out next saturday so that's a relief too much wood we could almost build two of these things with it and uh yeah i'm super excited about where this is going and we're working together really well [Music] routing on the table saw is pretty simple as long as you have a helper that can hold one end if you're doing it by yourself oh my gosh i was leaning on the on the uh the piece of wood trying to push through [Music] [Music] [Applause] i have never used my hand router to do the frame rest i i was just thinking like hey let's speed this up trying to make this in one day and it's a little dicey you you start to go the wrong way and that router will shoot off on you uh if you're just pushing it through the you know the routing table it's super easy i got a bigger router i just put it in the routing table and just move it down but we got lucky we got lucky somebody didn't get hurt and that somebody's me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] routing's all done everything is ready to be assembled mike had a great time playing in the hive which i thought looked like coffin he says bathtub what do you guys think bathtub coffin something else i don't know anyway now it's just time to assemble so let's go glue and screw it up [Music] so moment of truth like a glove [Music] so oh end of day one didn't think that it would be a two-day project but it totally is so we got legs on we got our box i used it as a uh a boat at one point i just sat in it and relaxed it's mighty copy got a bottom board on and solid and we're gonna work on a roof tomorrow next day and call it day two and be done [Music] we have the major hive body put together has a bottom board it's got legs it's elevated looking good pretty excited about it uh we did do a couple modifications um the entrance the the plans that we have are for you know long skinny slot like that uh we have some swarm traps that have just some smaller holes like using hole saw and uh so we did that and then the plans also called for three entrances so you could split it up and put three different colonies if you wanted to we're just going to use the one for now because we do only plan on putting one colony in there however if later on we're like oh this this colony is not building up as much as we had hoped or wanted then we can just add in another follower board and then drill another hole in on the opposite side but later on down the road so we don't plan on doing that yet we also the plants that we used i called for a screened bottom board and for the most part we don't run screen bottom boards in our apiary so we did install a a solid bottom board and then the other thing that one other thing is the the bottom so the plants that we have had a small kind of a cabinet for oil pans for the the small high beetles to fall through the the screen bottom board and into the oil pans we don't really have a small high beetle problem because we keep super strong bees and we also have beetle blasters that we install in our hives so we haven't really had that big of an issue in in the past several years at least and um so we were thinking maybe instead of that small cabinet maybe we'll make it a little bit deeper and it'll go under the hive and then we can store a couple of you know apiary items so like maybe an extra hive tool or some smoker fuel or you know a couple of little things along those lines that um queen clip you know things that maybe you have in your your hive bucket toolbox whatever you use um but maybe you don't or maybe it breaks you need another one oh you're thinking we could keep you know a couple things just out in the api instead of having to run back to the b shed so that's where we're at right now i'm super excited it's looking really good so what do you guys think how does it look to you [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so day two i uh i walked out and i looked at the hole that's for our oil trap and it just wasn't rectangle enough for me it looked a little wonky i went ahead and made it uh more symmetrical and then i started working on the roof so the roof what we decided to do is we have these like triangle areas with ventilation holes on each end and then i went ahead and took some wood and toned and grooved it so that they'd fit together i originally did 45 degree angles on both sides uh opposite 45 degree angles so that water can hit it run off and at the pinnacle they they would kind of come together that was a giant mistake because i forgot 45 degrees is for a box um and we're working with like 25 degrees so i had to go back and end up cutting the tops again to 25 degrees so they they match up pretty well but uh i i think that went really well i got to use my new routing bit for tongue and groove which i plan on redoing the floor in the house so i was kind of excited to try that on a smaller project before i take on a bigger project but that worked really well and we got it all put together you'll see that there's two strips of wood that kind of give it the support at the top and what we're going to do is also support it at the bottom we're just figuring out how we're going to do that the the roofing is different than what the plans called for the plants just said take a piece of plywood and throw it on there but i mean if we're going to be fancy let's be fancy and uh after that we we got it all together you'll see we got a chain in and then that's all she wrote [Music] so [Music] so [Music] uh so it's day two and we have the entire body put together we cut some boards for the cover boards in place of an inner cover we also drilled a couple holes and a couple of the boards for ventilation or in case we need to feed for whatever reason and then we we made a couple plugs as well if we need to close them up and screens that we can just set on top so we don't have to worry about bees getting up in the roof we do plan on drilling a hole and installing a bee escape and the roof as well like under the awning and just in case any bees get trapped up in there they can find their way out let me see we got the roof on it's looking really good mike did some tongue and groove it's super exciting because it looks amazing um goodness what else we're still going to plan on on making like a little cabinet underneath the hive but we're focusing on finishing you know the big stuff first so we just got to get some more bracers put it in the roof once we decide how we want to do that and oh we have to install another chain so we have a chain on one side of the roof and it's still it's working but it's pretty heavy so we're gonna install a second chain on the other side just to to make sure it's not going anywhere and um i think i think that's about it super excited about it it's looking amazing and i can't wait to tell all you guys about how the bees like it [Music] putting together the follower board seems like an easy task our hive is 10 inches deep and then i want to put a uh essentially the the rabbited shoulder edge which i'm just going to take a sticker which is just a straight cut piece of wood and put it on top and that can be the frame rest but it needs to be taller than a regular frame and it needs to the the frame rest needs to be a little bit thicker so that it reaches the top of the inner cover essentially so the bees can't get past either on the bottom the sides or the top and doing that i measured everything it was 18 and a fourth inches across 10 inches deep i put the whole thing together and before measuring or before test fitting the actual uh portion that goes in the hive without the frame rest i put the frame rest portion on and now anything that i have to do to like kind of adjust any of the dimensions to make a little smaller so it fits better i now have to do with the sander let's try to finish we're looking good pretty excited i know i keep saying that but it's because i am super excited about this project okay so we have the hive body we have the cover boards the roof is now complete we've got a little nice uh roof topper to cover where the boards meet so there's no rain getting in there at all we're good okay we added the chains on either side on the inside of the hive so they'll go on top of the cover board in between like where the roof space and the cover board is okay so that's there and then we were like well the chains are like kind of coming out of the hive when we try and close it so we added some magnets so the magnets will grab the chain when you close it keeps it in the inside the hive super excited about that okay uh we also added a never you really want to call it like a slide so we have an oil trap tray that will slide under the hive and we have that little screen that's maybe that big just inside the hive on the bottom instead of having a full screen bottom board i just have a small piece like i said it's about that big so if small high beetles try and get in they'll fall through the screen into the oil trap and then we can pull that out from behind the hive empty refill go on okay mike is working on the follower board right now so that one's a little bit tricky we've never had to make that before i think it's coming along okay it's not the prettiest thing but it should work um the measurements a little are a little wonky but i i think we're getting there i added a little trim piece in on the front of the hive so it's above the the entrance like i said we have a small hole for the entrance instead of like the typical slit uh so i just put a little trim piece there and it has an angle on it so if anything rains it should slide off of that not get into the hive we do get some driving rain around here not fun but should be should be okay um mike also put a small landing board it's a nice little angle underneath the entrance to the hive so if the bees are coming in heavy and they overshoot or i guess undershoot they'd hit the landing board and be able to climb up and in uh what else let's see what else have we done we're getting ready to make a little cabinet to go under the hive i think i mentioned this earlier to put a couple things in maybe a smoker maybe a hive tool or something along those lines but yeah it's looking really pretty i'm super excited about this and i don't know if you guys have looked this up before but long laying hives pretty expensive i know we were looking at one the other day and it was like 300 plus dollars mike and i were talking about it this morning we're going man that's a lot of money it's worth it it's so much work so we've been working on this for two days okay two days and now this is our first one so of course it's going to take a little bit longer but it's a lot of work you guys like a lot but i think it's going to be worth it it looks so nice so let us know what you guys think about it are you interested have you already made one what do you think about it all right we're going to get back to it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right all finished and i'm there's a couple of things i'm not too happy with it's the first time i've done gabled roof and with the tongue and groove i just really hope water doesn't get into the hive uh and i kind of wish that i cut everything really even if you look at it it's a little meh fatty wampus and then um the actual doors for the storage cabinet are a little off that's our first time doing that too so on on something that's kind of like this other than that i think the hive itself is very functional it's going to do exactly what we want it to do and that's house b's and uh we we also added a bee escape in the top under the roof joist yeah yeah um so it's a little bit more sheltered from the rains and such but we also added a plug so if there are bees up in the top we can cover one screen and there these are naturally drawn to the white so they'll go towards the other screen which is where the escape is so that's i'm pretty excited about that hopefully it works pretty well yep we use the magnets for the chains that's different than the plans uh the storage cabinets different than the plans we were able to get that uh oil pan in there pretty nice and i had to route uh the doors at the top so that the pan could slide in there and the doors wouldn't inhibit it and then uh there were a couple weird things like that but i think overall yeah it's gonna do the job i like how we did the storage cabinet because i took some old uh supers that they were the first time i made uh shallow supers and turns out my my jig was just a hair off i think it was like a 16th off so when you put it together the the long ends were a little bit higher and the short ends were a little bit lower on the finger joints so we went ahead and just took some of those we cut them so that they're the same width and then put them together and that became our wall that went across the back uh bottom of the storage cabinet and the sides it looks super cool i thought that was pretty awesome i think it looks super cool i don't know what do you guys think do you like it and i know you're expecting us to paint it and show you what the the finished product is painted we're not going to do that we're going to make another video on what we do to actually prepare this hive for the outdoors and what do we do to prepare to put bees in so look for that in a upcoming video and that's it thanks for watching let us know what you think are you going to build one do you already have one yeah if you already have one tell us little additions that you you added to yours because i was thinking a table on the side and now that we built it i'm like the inside is a table um yeah it really is and then we also have that cabinet storage underneath which is going to be really nice i think yeah tell us tell us if you like the cabinet area and if you wish you had one and maybe maybe i'll throw in the end portion of the video i'll throw in the dimensions and what it took to make that all right have a nice day thanks for watching you

Channel: Rascal Apiary

Views: 18,449

Keywords: Beekeeping, How to manage bees, how to build a bee hive, beekeeping equipment, honey bees, rascal apiary, beginner beekeeper, bees, beekeeping building, beekeeping videos, Free bees, long langstroth, hive maintenance, horizontal hive, horizontal bee hive, long langstroth bee hive, do it yourself, DIY, building a beehive, Homesteading, long horizontal hive, langstroth hive, beekeeper, BEST BEE HIVE, flow hive, long lang, no lifting, free honey, layens, treatment free

Id: ulIwlL5bS_s

Length: 32min 51sec (1971 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021