Created this prototype because of a request from a customer. While I have built fully insulated Layens hives in the past, I have built them based off Dr. Leo’s website at https://horizontalhive.com but was not a big fan of the internal framing of the box. Yes, I believe it is strong enough but I prefer to have solid wood in the corners and the build process was weird to me. The guys at Borrowed vessel Beeworks (https://borrowedvesselsbeeworks.com/beehive/the-modified-layens-hive/) have a smaller version where you build the walls and then screw them together. This process is much more efficient and a solid construction as well. Their walls are too thick and did not have the correct number of frames.
So I checked one of my unsed Layens hives and started drawing it up. In this case I want to use 1″ of foam insulation…there is really no need for more insulation in Texas…more certainly will not hurt but I figure it would mostly be a waste. Once I figured up the inside dimensions it was just a matter of assembling the walls. Funny thing is I know frames are 1.5″ and if we want 20 of them then we need to wall front/back wall length to be 30″. Well this did NOT work! I failed to account for imperfect frames!!! So this prototype was supposed to be a 20 frame box, it is just a 19 3/4 frame box. Pretty simple to make adjustments for this in the future. It also gives you 2 inches below the bottom of the frames, which seems to be the case with most Layens boxes.
