We built the stands using some rough cut cedar 2×6. These are not your boards from the store…they had to be planed down and cut to width. In this case we were able to keep most of the material as they are actually 1 7/8″ x 5 3/4″….pretty certain they will hold up my truck so there will be no issue with holding up 20 frames of bees and honey. We also epoxy the bottom of all the legs of every hive we send out. It does help the legs repell water from the end grain, however, we HIGHLY recommend that the stands sit on some concrete blocks or a slab rather than just on the ground.
The hunter green roofs came in and they are fantastic. Before you ask the metal is covered in plastic so in the pictures it looks like they are scratched but that is just the plastic. The final customer request were numbers so I fired up the laser and knocked out some 3×5 inch numbers and they came out pretty nice. The customer wanted them on the back of the hive. The hives will be delivered next week.
This project took about two months to finish…much longer than I anticipated. Part of it was because I had not built a Layens hive in over a year but took a bunch of notes on every cut so I would anticipate they will get faster as we go. One of these days I want to type of some plans to post on the website. I realize much of the trim work is cut to fit but the plans should at least get you in the ballpark.
You might be able to tell that we are running out of room in the shop. Partly the reason for the stand/shelf on rollers. About half the shop is for storage of lumber and all my other normal stuff and clearly I need to stop, clean and rearrange…but there are enough orders in that this will not happen for the next several months! I anticipate June or most likely July before I can get caught up on orders.
Thank you again to everyone who is waiting for us to build their hive! I even took off two weeks from my full -time job to get caught up and while I got a lot done, I still have a backlog of hives to build. Your patience is very appreciated.
