Another Roof? Super.

Been up to a little more woodwork. I have a roll of roofing felt knocking about and had some spare wood so decided to make a new roof. I have enough roofs for all the colonies I intend to manage but as my collection of Supers and Brood Boxes has grown a spare roof or two to sit on the stack when they're not in use will be handy. The wooden part of the roof is very simple to make, it's just a  box with one side open large enough to loosely fit over a Brood Box or Super with a 22mm baton stuck round the inside to ensure there's an air gap between the crownboard it'll sit on and the roof proper. I used wood glue on the mating edges, two screws on each corner of the vertical sides then 4 nails to hold the top in place before using more screws to secure it. All the screws and wood glue is probably overkill really but as roofs are used upside down to support Brood Boxes and possibly full Supers they need to be pretty robust.

Scoring the underside of the roof felt

My first attempt at using roofing felt was a bit rough and ready but I've since figured out how to do make the corners tidy by scoring the underside of the felt. Run a line along each edge where it'll fold over the edge of the roof and a diagonal short line on each corner from the inside to the outside.

Tucking in the felt

After nailing most of the way along the sides the corners can then be tucked in under a side before nailing  through the corner with a clout nail or two.

I used slightly longer nails to go into the ends of the sides, gotta be careful not to collide with a nail though.

Nearly finished

Looks nearly finished at this point but still needs a couple of vents adding. Actually if it's only ever going to sit on stacked spare kit you can probably skip these.

Lazy way to add a vent

To add those I drilled a holes into two opposing sides angled slightly upwards going through the felt, the wooden side and the baton behind it.

One fairly neat roof vent

A small rectangle of mesh, I used some spare bits of cut up mesh floor, is then slid up behind the felt. It's held in place by friction.

New roof fitting over a Super

The roof sides are meant to be 155mm tall measured on the outside but I just used some spare bits I had. You could make them longer to provide more protection for the hive especially if they're going to be someplace windy.

Yet more Supers

The season should be drawing to an end but I'm out of Supers and the colonies are still expanding over here so as well as the roof I decided to assemble a couple more Supers. I did some shopping around as I didn't ant to spend much on them. The cheapest flat packed Supers I could fine were from Peak Hives and installed 11 frames in each. The frames came from Smart Kraft and ordering fifty they came in at just under a pound each including nails and postage. A couple of parts broke during assembly but at a pound a frame I'd expect that, it's quite a saving over the larger suppliers. The foundation came from Easipet who I've ordered Supers from before, they came in at about 62p a sheet. I'd prefer to use 9 or 10 frames per Super really but if you put 9 undrawn frames in a box it's unlikely the bees will draw them out as the gaps are too big so you start with 11 and when they're drawn out change the spacing.. I used plastic metal ends to space the frames which I'll remove when the frames get moved onto 10 frame castellations next season.