Building Frames

As Earl intends to harvest the spring honey in late July, we have to get the honey supers on the hives.  Honey supers are shallow boxes that sit on top of the hives.  The brood boxes (where the eggs get laid) are deeper and sit on the bottom.  Each honey super contains 9-10 frames, and within the past few days we put together 15 boxes (which means we built 150 frames).

The first step is putting grommets into the side pieces.   It isn't really different than doing it in fabric--the grommet (technically it's more of an eyelet since there isn't a back to it) goes onto the setting tool, which is aimed into the pre-drilled hole.  Hit it with the hammer to set it.

 

This box with the springs on it is a jig.  Earl places all the grommeted side pieces between the boards on the end.  The springs hold them in place.

Then he puts the tops  and bottoms in the slots (it's a lot like Lincoln Logs)...

 

...and secures them with the staple gun.

Look at this creepy spider that I found when I was grommeting in the basement by myself.  I was so squicked out.  I don't know what kind it was, but it had a shiny black widow type body except it was very dark brown with lighter dark brown markings.  It looked *very* poisonous so I sprayed it with about 6 squirts of OFF insect repellent, which did the trick.  But then I realized that I sprayed something that was supposed to go into an insect colony with insect repellent...  We are not using these boards.   

 

Then you nail two carpet tacks into one of the sides and attach wire to the one closest to the top.  The wire gets laced through the grommets and secured on the other tack.  This is Earl tightening the wire.  If it isn't taut, you can't secure the foundation comb to it.

First we were cutting the wires one at a time, and then I decided to put my yarn skills to work.  This was much more efficient.  I measured out half of the necessary distance and put a peg at each end.  One full wrap is the right amount of wire, and you wrap as many as you need and then cut through all the wires at once.

 

The wired frame gets put into this jig, and the wooden strip on the bottom of the top piece gets broken off.

 

The foundation comb (made of beeswax) gets inserted in the grooves of the frame.  The wooden tool that you see Earl holding has metal bits heat up and melt the beeswax onto the wires.  Then the wooden piece that was broken off gets stapled back on, and voila!  You have a frame!!