okay it's happy Friday everyone today is March 29th and the weather's not
cooperating wouldn't you know it that when it warms up it also rains which
leads me to my frequently asked questions response this week which is
going to be how to build these feeder shims these things are valuable this
time of year because they're gonna help us get our bees off to a great start and
I'm gonna show you how to make it step by step there's a lot of different ways
to do this somebody is the most basic carpentry skills you can imagine this is
my pollen feeder I have man Lake top pollen substitute in here I think it's
ultra bee or something like that and it has been proven scientifically to
improve brood in the spring so I want to make sure that as many resources are
available to these bees as possible this year we're trying to really get some
robust colonies going and that's gonna lead us to the Shem that we're making
today lots of people have asked to show a step-by-step of how it's done and I'm
going to do that with rough cut lumber look what a lousy day we have and even
though it's warming up they told us it would be in the 60s on Sunday
you're dropping that right off it's gonna be 39 again so this is gonna be an
important fixture in your bee yard I have several of them this is my rough
cut lumber variable thicknesses vary by material walnut maple cherry oak pine
you name it it's all here and it's all different thing that says you can see
where the bark was here and this is a you know cut with a mobile meal that a
friend of mine owns and I just buy the lumber from him after it's aged a little
bit and this is a nice pine piece that I think we're gonna use today look at the
thickness inch and an eighth looks like if you're buying dimensional lumber at
the hardware store this would probably be a three quarter inch piece look at
this piece over a hundred years old I'm saving it for something special so
anyway our deciding factor for what we're gonna make it a five inch shim is
this controller here this little wheel I'm going to put everything in the video
description so if you want to look at any of this stuff it'll be there now on
the bottom here we have a standard man lake medium ten frame and we're
comparing it see the dimensions it's a little larger than the flow high
of 10 frame larger by about a quarter of an inch so if you're making this shim
for a flow hive you can I want to cut that quarter inch town just measure your
box and go by the outside dimensions 16 inches little over and width here and
they're all 20 inches long so we're gonna make that shim I found a piece
that's 5 inches wide already so all I have to do is cut the lengths and smooth
it down a little bit let's get on with that here I also put a nice straight
edge along this piece of wood here so that I'll have a reference it's 90
degrees when I'm squaring things up pretty easy to do now we're going to cut
the ends off here but these Diablo blades those things are super sharp if
you've never checked those out look into them why they cut through wood like a
solid cutting through wood and then we're gonna cut the next one here and so
we're cutting the links and then once we get that down we're gonna do a test fit
up here I don't want to dress this off because it's gonna be like fine
furniture for the bees I know you're probably jealous of my carpentry skills
here because this is what you would call a finish work and I hope you know I'm
just kidding somebody's going to yell at me for that
anyway I just stack it on top of the box here and measure the inside dimensions
and that's what you like to do too because your material thicknesses will
differ from mine and then once I cut the pieces to length I just dry fit
everything up here and make sure that it's all good before we go to clamping
and gluing and putting screws in it gonna dress it up again remember we're
making furniture for the bees look at the rough cut aspects of this wood I
think it's really great and it's a really good insulator but this is just a
feeding chim and these will stay on your beehives all year round you can use them
don't forget get some really good wood glue and a clear 100% silicon sealant
because we're gonna seal all the interior joint surfaces to make sure
bugs and mites and things can't hide so here it is we got the clamps on it
squared it up against that edge of that plywood it's sitting on and we're using
two-inch self-tapping stainless steel screws
get the ones with the square Drive heads or you're gonna be putting a lot of
money in your cursing jar there if you use the Phillips heads and things like
that these things going nice we did put glue on here I didn't show that step and
we're verifying that it's nice and square before we move on from here so
there we go we have a shim now normally a feeder shim would be just like this no
bottom to it nothing else it would just be a spacer so you could put a feeder
inside and stack it on your box but that's not what we're doing here we're
gonna put interior pine and I'm gonna show you how I do that and I'm gonna
leave bSpace underneath of it as well so we can put feet of all types under and
in this feeding shim so we're at 14 and a quarter there and then we're at 18 and
1/8 just under 18 and 8 remember put it all together screw it together square it
up before you take these dimensions to make them interior and I wrote down 14
and a quarter by 18 and 1/8 and I put a little down arrow there to show me that
it is just 108 so on though when I go to cut it now I'm using this big thick
piece of pine first I'm gonna cut the links but they're not going to be exact
yet I'm gonna show you why remember these edges are rough cut and they're
not parallel so I'm gonna have to square this up later and so I'm going to create
a straight edge on one side of each of these boards again this Diablo blade I
think that means devil trim light and we're gonna cut that off there and we're
gonna do the next one and if there's any bow or anything to the wood you want of
course to pick the side that's the truest when you make this initial cut
this just gives us a nice straight side to the board that we can now use to cut
a parallel cut so now we're going to cut to the dimension that you need flip it
over there turn on the devil termite blade and now we have perfectly parallel
ends so what did that do well that means that what we cut on the miter saw may
not be square anymore so we're gonna have to go back to that
that's why I cut these larger than it needed to when you're using dimensional
lumber you don't have to worry about that you've already got the perfectly
parallel lines in the nice and square anything else this is rough cut stuff
nice thick pine gonna be the bottom that's my feeder shamon don't forget to
bury that blade I don't want anybody getting cut there anyway now I cut the
pieces together because I want them to be absolutely perfect so once they have
that and you can see the bottom one was a little bit off there so they weren't
quite parallel when we began and now we're cutting the final exact dimensions
I need because remember this is a floating shim it's gonna go inside that
frame that we made so this is gonna compose the bottom of it which will be
like an inner cover integrated to the feeder shim nice and thick and again
this is just pine I used a really good wood for the outside now the other thing
is we have to cut that center hole because we're gonna use a rapid round
feeder and you want to give your bees access to this feeder xem so I'm gonna
put that as near the center as possible this is gonna really be critical if
you're making one for a 8 frame chim with the ten frame there's lots of extra
space here so this will be off-center a little bit and I'm using a two inch
Forstner bit it's gonna drill that through there look at these nice clean
ribbons flipping off of the camera there a nice sharp dead
and we'll cut through that and this is done before we glove the pieces that
compose that inner cover there you go so when we put this shim together we're
gonna clamp and glue that up and you don't get a lot of play time here this
video actually took me a long time to make I know we're doing this in just
fourteen or fifteen minutes here and now there it is inside edges are nice and
square and now I have these shims there are 3/8 of an inch thick and that's
because we're gonna create B space underneath this in recovery that's part
of this feeder shop so I'm gonna pull that out put the spaces underneath here
and then when I put this in after we glue it up we're gonna put blue glue all
around the circumference just gonna test fit it here first
always test fit first and now we know it's gonna set there and we'll have 3 X
page 3/8 of an inch of space underneath I also cut these 90-degree corners and
we glue those in there too and then we put a nice sealant with silicon we run
that bead everywhere because we don't want those mites
we don't want small hive beetle x' to have a place to hide this is the
underside that's set 3/8 inch gap we created and I'm showing that it's all
sealed up - so this is it from the bottom
look how basic this is you can't get a more basic joint design even with rough
cut lumber you can just kind of wing it as you go remember this is not critical
it's just nice heavy-duty stuff now we're going to go corner to corner here
because I'm going to find the center of this face piece here and then that's
where we're going to drill that upper entrance which is also going to be a
vent or it's going to be just closed off so we can use this feeder shim for a lot
of different things it has an integrated inner cover to it so this can be set up
with just a roof on it now if you do not have the rapid round in there you're
going to have to put an inner cover over the top of it but when you have the
rapid round feeders in here you to have an inert cover on top of this so
this is an interesting really basic thing and I hope this is satisfying
those of you who wanted to know how to make it if you have other questions just
write them down in the discussion beneath this just make a comment there I
use an inch and an eighth for that upper entrance hole bus entrance holes are
under an inch generally but this one we have control over you have the Queen
excluder you have the vent and you can close it off completely so again this is
for year-round use and I put some stainless steel washers there and I have
a stainless steel screw holding it in place here's another really ugly
homemade bottle board super thick again because I'm using this rough cut lumber
again and this one is all glued up and then of course sealed again with silicon
around the edges just trying to see how this thing's going to hold up next thing
I also built this slatted rack here that I'm going to put in this year I'm going
to put a few of these out in the BR just to see how they do and if you're doing X
alack vapor and things like that this gives the standoff space so your bees
don't get burned by that vaporizer when you stick it in there so we're gonna put
that out this year and I'm just showing it because we're creating a miniature
fan type here for demonstration purposes now we have a deep box that goes on top
of that and we're going to want to put some pre-waxed frames in there so there
they are we have ten of them now this is where if you're just starting out you
would be using this deep box by itself and you want to make sure that those
starting bees get lots of feed and that's where this feeder shim comes in
so we're gonna put that on there and what would you do depending on the time
of year it's early spring so we're gonna put a rapid round feeder in there and
you can start with your I feed but you know we're at the time where we can
actually put a two to one syrup in there or one to one syrup and that's by weight
one pound of granulated sugar for example - one pound of distilled water
mix it all up put it in there and now even when it rains your bees have access
to at least sugar syrup I do not recommend that you put dry pollen
protein in there also this shows that the position allows you to put that
telesco and cover on it it does not cover that
upper entrance that we just made now I'm showing these ultrabeat patties these
are high-protein patties again I just looked at a study that was done that Ted
these actually were very good for the bees and they did cause a stronger brood
buildup in spring so we're gonna experiment with them but I'm showing you
that even with these thick patties on top of the frames there we put this
feeder Shin remember we have a 3/8 inch B space underneath of it so it doesn't
smash down on these patties and you don't have to push the patties down
there they are plenty of space for the bees to be on top of and under the
patties while they feed on it and we've got the rapid round in there going
through that center hole and that's why we spaced the patties out so that feeder
can be accessed also so if the bees need the protein patties they can get to them
and if they need to get up in there and get sugar syrup they can get to that as
well you only want to put sugar syrup on when
they can fly out on weather whether it's warm enough which it is now it just
happens to be rainy so we're putting these men lake patties out there we have
that dry pollen substitute available out there west of the bee yard this year and
then let's say your beads start to build up as they do in spring you want to be
ready to expand that colony right away and expand the hive dimension so now we
have a medium suit on top now when I put on a medium super like this I'm just
gonna let the bees fill that with honey so I don't put a queen excluder in there
I'm not gonna draw this off and then we're gonna put the feeder xem up above
that there again because once they start building brood and once they kick in and
they commit to that if it starts raining and you could a couple weeks of rain
you're gonna be happy to have a feeder shim like this on top so you can at
least keep that sugar syrup coming now if I took that rapid round out I would
have to put an inner cover on there now what are the bees gonna do with that
space now well they're gonna get up in there and they're gonna create lots of
bird comb and that's gonna be chunk honey for me I'm gonna carve that out
later and put it right in jars I don't know pour honey around it and I'm gonna
use this box to harvest that so there you have the whole thing bottom board
slided rack deep box medium super and then your feeder shim I hope I answered
all your questions if you have more questions about it
put them down in the comments section I'll be more than happy to answer those
and look for another frequently asked questions video next week thank you so
much for watching and I hope your bees are making it this spring
you