Dadant 12 or 13 Frame Deep Hive

[slacker361]

like these aren't heavy enough......

[BlueBee]

Slacker, I don't move my jumbo brood boxes.  You're right, they're too heavy.  However everything setting on top of the brood box (ie honey supers) is MUCH lighter than deeps or mediums.  So I end up picking up less weight than in other bee hive designs.  I never pick up the big brood box.  I practice light weight bee keeping.

CV, my jumbo frames are exactly as wide as a normal deep frame; they are just deeper.  I have also made a couple of other mods to make them a little easier to handle and I am using 33mm frame spacing (35mm is normal deep spacing).  I figure a person can have some artistic leeway when building something from scratch.  I'll try to pull up a photo of my frames and add dimensions for you sometime in the next week.  

[CVinc5]

Thanks BlueBee

OK, you are using the piecro plastic foundation...I looked at there website but don't see anything the size of what you are doing..how are you accomplishing this? Splicing on another piece?

[CVinc5]

Any updates for me BlueBee?

[BlueBee]

Out of town for a few days.  I will try to get some photos with dimensions soon.  I'm always behind on something :(

I made my frames out of 3/4" thick lumber and cut a groove on the inside that was about 2 saw kerfs wide to hold/support the pierco foundation.  I used deep pierco foundation for the jumbo frames.  I used 1 full piece and cut another full piece in about half to achieve my jumbo size.  I must say, it was a pain in the butt to match up pieces of plastic foundation!  It would be great if piecro or somebody else offered their plastic in larger sheets that we could simply cut from.  I haven't checked around.  It would be great to know if somebody does find a source.

You could just use 1 deep sheet of foundation in a jumbo frame and let the bees build the remaining space freehand.  However that will probably result in a bunch of drone comb and quite likely crisscrossed too.  I think I would avoid foundationless when working with such large combs. 

The piecro foundation does result in what I would call normal sized bees.  If you make your jumbo setups based on small cells you could go with smaller frames and still have just as many bees per frame and 1 box for brood.   

[CVinc5]

Thanks for the info...gives me something to start with. I'll do some checking on this end about larger size plastic foundation.
I'm headed to Colorado for a week, got a date with a fly rod and a stream, I'll do research at night during down time.

[CVinc5]

And I already ruled out foundationless...too easy to cause damage when inspecting in this hot Texas heat....

[Sour Kraut]

OK, someone help me out here

[Sour Kraut]

sorry  bout that, didn't realize the TAB key made for instant reply

anyway

Somebody..........the math doesn't add up for me


If I have a box 19.75 outside = 18.25 inside and should hold 13 frames with 3/8 left over to divide on either side of the outside frames ( 13 x 1.375 = 17.875 )

but I see posted '11 with 1-1/2 spacing', '12 with 1-3/8 spacing' and '13 with 1-1/4 spacing'

what, if anything, am I missing here ???

[Jim134]

And I already ruled out foundationless...too easy to cause damage when inspecting in this hot Texas heat....

Why not wire ??? foundationless frames look at at Reply#5 at

http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,5093.msg302282.html#msg302282


 

Rail, are you going to make the brood boxes out of solid wood?  Plywood?  Other?

What are you planning to use for frames and foundation?

In 2010 you cloud still get frames and foundation Dadant by calling them.




 

     BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)