dry fitted my brood box but......................

oliver90owner said:

tiling quadrant in use in a 14 x 12 brood box with TOP BEE SPACE.

Is there a bee space under the frame lugs? Just looks a bit tight in the pic.

If not, there should be.

RAB

Click to expand...

That's a very good point - when I made this hive last year I did not know about or check for bee space under the lugs. I've just checked and I have 5mm above the side and 6.3mm above the rails so it is a bit tight in places - might explain the amount of propolis near the lugs. I recall that I concentrated on getting a Beespace above the frame (top bee space) and to increase space under the lugs would decrease it above the top bar of the frame. Difficult to correct now!

Anybody got thoughts on the plain plywood QX on DC's site http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/excludertypes.html Has any forum member used this type of QX and did it work effectively?

CVB

Difficult to correct now!

Most certainly if it is in use, but not so difficult if you take it out of use.

Several ways of doing it. Small snub-plane, wood chisels, router - or a combination of them.

I used a router.

RAB

oliver90owner said:

tiling quadrant in use in a 14 x 12 brood box with TOP BEE SPACE.

Is there a bee space under the frame lugs? Just looks a bit tight in the pic.

If not, there should be.

RAB

Click to expand...

how much space should be under the lugs

irishguy said:

how much space should be under the lugs

Click to expand...

A bee space.

irishguy said:

how much space should be under the lugs

Click to expand...

Oliver90owner is saying it should be a beespace and if you think about it, that makes sense - the bees can then move about under the lugs.

That being the case, you'll need a gap of 6 - 8mm under the lugs so if you're using tiling quadrant, you might need to adjust the width of the quadrant with a file.

CVB

I used 8mm Quadrant with the quadrant above the step for the frame lugs so that gives the necessary bee space:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/99514363@N06/sets/72157644189061495/

If you haven't chosen between metal or plastic runners yet...

Acetic acid will eat the metal ones, a blowlamp will melt plastic ones. Worth bearing in mind if one of those is a favourite method of serious cleaning.

Ray

Ethanoic is not a means of sterilising a box.

Buy stainless steel? Then no problem.

Remove plastic runners before flaming? Then no problem.

oliver90owner said:

Remove plastic runners before flaming? Then no problem.

Click to expand...

With 1.8mtr lengths of tile edging at £1.90 in my local tile discount shop you can afford to pull the old ones out and replace them with a couple of new bits ... buttons !

pargyle said:

With 1.8mtr lengths of tile edging at £1.90 in my local tile discount shop you can afford to pull the old ones out and replace them with a couple of new bits ... buttons !

Click to expand...

And if you scraped the propolis off the quadrant before you threw it away, you'd probably have enough propolis to to sell to Hedgerow Pete for onward sale to Poles in Birmingham as a cough syrup!

CVB

oliver90owner said:

Ethanoic is not a means of sterilising a box.

Click to expand...

Hi there

I am relatively new so may have got this wrong but...

BBKA website on apiary hygiene...
"Clean all used equipment (supers, brood boxes etc) in
between use. If solid floors are used or there is a solid sheet
below the varroa mesh these should be changed and treated
regularly. A blow torch is a convenient way of sterilising
these wooden parts. Fumigation with acetic acid or sulphur
dioxide is very effective if reuse is not urgent."

Have I got the wrong idea somewhere?

Ray