Renewing Brood Boxes

At this years Beverley Beekeepers Auction I picked up an unprecedented 8 Commercial Brood Boxes. After sterilising them it was time to check the joints and add cleats to the sides giving me better handles to move a heavy box with than the rebate handle which is a standard part of the Commercial specification.

Finger Joints and screws, Rabbet Joints with screws and possibly glue

The boxes had been made in a variety of styles, some had finger joints reinforced with screws, some had what I think are called rabbet joints which seemed to be glued and screwed and a few had the sort of large finger joint type things I use because cutting all those small fingers is hard work. Of the ten boxes only one had lose corners. It was one with large tab finger type joints and no screws.
 

Bracing corners

After a few minutes with a tee square to hold the corner straight, a drill for pilot holes and a clicky screw driver I put 4 2" wood screws into each corner making it far more solid. The other boxes were all very solid. Not sure how old thy were but some smelled of tar when I was sterilising them so I'd guess they've seen a few years use and being well made I'm sure they'll see a few more years use yet. They all had a little rectangle of wood ground away which I think must've been a brand from a previous owner.

Four of the boxes had rebate handles the rest had handles attached to the outside by now rather rusty nails. Using a clawhammer and a pry bar I removed the old handles and replaced them with longer cleats of tanalised wood. You wouldn't use tanalised wood for hive bodies but stick to the outside of the box I suspect they'll be fine and will live a little longer than untreated wood.

Wooden Cleat, glued and screwed

You only really need handles on two opposing sides of the box, but i prefer to put them on all four sides to give me options when I'm moving hives. I actually only put new cleats on six of the ten boxes. Hopefully I've got more than I need and four should be surplus. Once done I painted them all. I used an uneven mix of green, black and brown shed & fence paint to give them an old and worn look as an anti theft strategy and only treated the outer sides.

Empty Brood Boxes make an excellent advent re playground for cats.

Cleanse it with Fire!

After the surprising abundance of Commercial Brood Boxes and frames at this years Beverley Beekeepers' Auction I had a little cleaning work to do. Used beekeeping equipment can be a vector for nasty diseases and viruses so properly sterilising second hand kit before introducing it to the bees is a must.

Toby surveying the work ahead.
He didn't help.

Normally hive boxes are sterilised by scorching with fire. Gamma irradiation works pretty well too but isn't hugely popular in the UK at the moment. The Hulk was created when Dr Bruce Banner came into contact with Gamma rays which tells us that Stan Lee knows bugger all about Gamma radiation. The cost of acquiring and storing your own radioactive isotopes and equipment pretty much rule that out for most beekeepers over here so I decided to go with fire.

So far I've always used a small butane torch, the kind that uses small metal cylinder you buy from DIY shops. Looking at the job ahead I was pretty sure I'd be blazing through cylinder after cylinder trying to scorch all those boxes so it was time to upgrade. I popped to Toolstation and picked up a gas hose, regulator and torch kit -basically a Roofers Torch but a few quid cheaper for buying it as separate items. With torch ready I then needed a tank of propane. You can get them from garages and they offer much better value for money than buying loads of little disposable canisters. The downside is you need to pay about £40 deposit on your first bottle. I didn't really want to do that. It turns out that because of the deposit system the gas supplier remains the owner of the actual gas bottle and they exchange it whenever you get a refill. This means that scrap merchants won't accept them and you cant take them to the tip, unfortunately nobody ever seems to get a full refund on their last gas bottle so it's a canny move by the suppliers. This means unwanted gas bottles tend to get fly tipped a lot. I had a drive around till I found a nice red 13KG Calor Gas bottle sat doing nothing popped it in the car and took it to a local garage. There I exchanged it for a 6KG bottle of propane saving myself the deposit -and presumably returning a lost bottle to circulation, Everyone's a winner -well me anyway :)

Flame on Johnny

The bigger the bottle the cheaper the gas, I opted for a 6KG bottle rather than 13KG simply because I need to be able to lug it about the patio and at some point it's likely I'll want to take it to the apiary. Something I hadn't realised was that the nozzlethingbit (it probably has a better name, but I don't know it) on the gas bottles are made with a reverse thread so when I tried to attach the regulator turning it clockwise it didn't go in at all. After a light bulb moment I spotted the problem and managed to assemble the thing. With it working I blazed through all eight Commercial Brood Boxes with ease. LPG gives a hotter flame than the butane mix in the small cylinders and with my new torch I was using a bigger flame too. It did take a little getting used to working round the hose though and at one point I singles off a 2" wide strip of hair from my right forearm. Oops. No major damage though.

Sterilised woodwork

With the boxes now sterilised it was time to turn my attention to the frames. I decided to boil them in a Soda Crystal solution using one of my Burco Boilers. They didn't fit in completely so it meant boiling them in the solution then turning them over to do the other end.

Hot Tub Time Machine

I stopped them floating up I used the Burco lid as a weight. It took ages to get through all the frames and a few I had left still to do.It occurred to me that the metal boiler was probably losing a lot of heat out of the sides as the evening wore on and temperature dropped so I grabbed a few brood boxes and put them over it.

Sheltering the Burco in a few Brood Boxes to keep the heat in/

After boiling each frame was given a quick scrub with a nylon brush in a plastic tub of water and stacked up to air dry. Once thoroughly dried the frames were put into the brood boxes for storage.

Stack of cleaned frames left out to dry