so hello this is frederick dunn and i'm going to share with you some of my ideas my in process
ideas working this out this is the insulated b smart designs inner cover which came out
in 2021. it adapts to eight or ten frame boxes it's plastic and it has these little tabs on it
that will align if you're gonna put this on a flow hive you're gonna have to chip these taps off and
i just take a wood chisel and knock them right off on one side and let the other side anchor it also
it has a central riser here and a hole so you can have vented or unvented but what i'm going to do
is i'm going to mess this one up that's right i'm going to try out my own ideas on it i'm going to
do my own modifications and there's the hole for those who want an upper entrance or an upper vent
and now the new ones of course don't even have that hole directly under that mouse looking
entrance it's very small be smart designs of course this is the key to it an insulated
insert that's an r10 with the channel so you can have that upper entrance which you all may know
i don't use upper entrances anymore so we use the option where we flip this channel in the opposite
direction and then i'm going to also show you how i'm going to add insulation to this inner cover
by putting a medium super on it but i want to look i want to share with you
these divots here are for the be smart design products so things like mouse guards the clips so
that you can have a vent through the top a storage space a place for the cap it also has a place
for the beat smart designs robbing screen right there so you can have an all-in-one uh location
to keep all these tools and resources for your beehive but i'm about to ruin that on this one
this is what the clips look like for people that want an upper entrance you pull these clips out
they're stored here in this little divot they clip on the edges and they create a tiny vent
space for those of you who are in high humid high heat areas and you just have to have upper venting
i don't i'm in the northeastern united states and it's cold here and i don't have problems
with venting through a normal entrance this is the cap that comes with it a little reservoir there to
store it when not in use and then that little cap goes right on top of the central opening here and
there you have it inch and a half diameter hole so a lot of questions come my way and one of them is
is this really contoured so that condensation if it forms on the underside of this insulated inner
cover would it actually drip out to the edges well yeah so let's get a straight edge here
and i'm going to get a deep frame we're going to use the back of that as our reference bridge
that across there and it does dome so it goes to about 3 16 i'm thinking just a little over that
so now condensation if it formed underneath but the whole purpose of this
is to prevent condensation from forming so it's domed if condensation formed it would then trickle
along to the outside edges and not down on the b cluster so that's a good design the other thing is
when you flip this thing over and you put a box on it there's gaps around the edges that's what i'm
going to show you today look at this so we have a medium super on it and now we have open air flow
here now i get it the designer um says that if air flowed through there it wouldn't really matter
because it's above that insulated insert but i don't like the air to flow through this freely
because i'm putting a rapid round feeder on there and i don't want that feeder to
be cold i don't want to have condensation form inside the feeder so i'm going to show you what
we're doing we're switching this around and we're not going to have the upper entrance
so we're going to put the insert in here and of course i'm going to do this craft work on the
kitchen table because my wife's not home and i need the light from this big window right here
so now you can see this is well designed i mean i understand we want to put all the parts in here
if you had a be smart designs bottom board and you had the mouse guards and the vent controls
and all that entrance guards it would be handy to have it all up here but i'm about to ruin
all of that here's a wrap around feeder which is my favorite design because i can do
dry feed in winter and i can do liquid feed in spring on colonies that need it
and then of course there's the inner cover that we use when we put the syrup in
take that off and of course the apis uh company rocket hardware used to sell these it has a domed
cover there but this is the configuration we would have in winter there would be dry feed in there
and condensation can come up hit the interior surface of that and of course that condensation
drips down onto the dry sugar you have in there and that makes a sugar block
but i was thinking maybe warm air would rise up through there and we could insulate that shim
so we could insulate that i need to make a mold release and i'm going to use cling wrap for that
this is a great stuff big gap filler up to three inches it says that's what i'm going to use to put
inside and make my own modification here that's what i'm sharing with you a work in progress by
the way so if you jump on this right now and you start doing things like this the jury's out i'm
just fooling around and of course i'm going to have insulated inner covers as designed on
the apiary and i'm also going to have this new insulated version and i'm even going to modify
this because i learned some things doing this test so i'm just sharing with you my process so we put
that on there center it up cover the hole because i'm going to use great stuff expansion foam
we want to also use that expansion foam to make a space around this rapid round feeder
so get it all centered too because you're not going to be able to move this around
once it gets started and this is the point of no return by the way so we're going to put a 5 pound
weight on here that's right i can bench press five pounds this comes from my own bench press
kit i gotta preserve this barn wood table because i mean my wife could come home at any time and ask
me what i'm doing and i want to definitely have made strides and protecting the table
and that's newsprint the same stuff we use when combining honeybee colonies so i have it handy
let's get this all set up here i think she's out shopping so she won't care it's for youtube
so we are plates in place that alignment's critical and now of course follow all the rules
60 to 90 degrees fahrenheit where it's 69 roughly 70 degrees in this room so we're good also you're
going to want to wear plastic gloves protect your eyes all that good stuff i have to say it
and because some people say you didn't warn us about that i got it all over my clothes don't
wear your best outfit wear gloves and protective eyewear so i said it look at this came through
shipping all bent up like that still works i shook this for over 60 seconds i think 60 seconds
is what they recommend so i'm going to start off filling these gaps like i said point and
a return we're ruining the functionality of the insert in other words now you can't put all your
robbing screens your entrance guards your mouse reducers and things like that
can't put those in here anymore but i'm going to get more than an r10 now
and we're going to fill all that even the hand holds because the hand holds on the ends were used
so that we could pull that insert out so after this process is done
we won't be able to pull the insert out at all in fact we're about to marry the medium super box to
the be smart designs insulated inner cover and i'm also going to build it up here on the side
walls the other thing i should have done see i'm learning as i go i should spritz this lightly
with water because the water speeds the cure and also makes it adhere better to surfaces like wood
and of course we have the cling wrap around the rabbit around feeders so that's our mold release
and the other thing i would do is i think i would spray bigger beads in here like i'm running these
a little one inch three quarter inch i should slow it down in the future and put bigger beads
so we're just creating the space and i'm going to take it right up to the edges and i'm going
to let the foam expand above the side walls of the medium cover look almost like time lapse there now
we're several hours in i'm going to stack you know you can touch it it doesn't stick but it's still
foamy and still still has give to it so we're going to wait now the manufacturer recommends
eight hours now i have this hot wire foam factory foam cutter thing that i got when my daughter was
getting married nine years ago and i had to make a water feature for her wedding cake of course
which i made out of styrofoam and made it look like a mountain with a bridge and all that stuff
and that's just been laying around but look now we are eight hours in
look how hard it is so that stuff's pretty good and look the wrap it around didn't move so we're
in business here and see how it expanded up across above these edges now i'm just going
to take this hot wire now you don't need a hot wire i just had it so i decided to use
it why not but you can take a serrated edge knife which is what they recommend on the package here
uh you could use other hot wires there's hot knives and all these other things available
for making these cuts but this is kind of like a free-form sculpture tool
let the wire heat up and let it do the work so you don't force it through the foam
and then we'll just pull these pieces off like how cool that works how easy is that and the more
air that's locked in the form of course that becomes the insulating properties of the foam
so that's not terrible i like it we're going to do all of the corners of course
now the lesson learned what is it with the phone well first of all eight hours is not long enough
and i'm going to show you that in a few minutes here because what happens is sure the foam expands
during the set period but then after more than a day the foam starts to contract again which works
in our favor for the structural rigidity of our insulated feeder shim now because what that did is
it actually expanded and pushed away at the bottom there so the insulated piecemart designs insulated
inner cover there actually got pushed away from the bottom of the box here because i didn't weight
the box but it contracted again over the next couple of days and drew the wooden box down snug
against the plastic frame of the insulated inner cover so it actually was a benefit if you're just
patient so if you're doing something like this don't think you're gonna let it cure for eight
hours then jump right in and go to work and put this thing in service the other thing is you don't
want to put this expansion foam in direct contact with your bees the bees will chew it my chickens
even eat this stuff it's not good for them so the rapid round feeder provides that barrier
so that's a good thing so we got a nice clean cut here now we're equal with the surface in
fact i contoured it down just a little bit in the future i probably would cut it flush
more insulation is better i also have some low spots there so there are some uninsulated areas
so we just get this cut off now this is better by the way than putting pine
shavings or something like that in there because it won't take on moisture the way those things can
so here we go and it added rigidity to the box now there is 72 hours after curing look
how it contracted again so you can see where i cut it where it was nice and smooth before
now it's concave the other thing that strikes me is why on earth that i use a medium super in
here when i could have used a shallow super so i highly recommend getting a shallow super or
cut down your medium supers and look also it expanded and deformed the wrap it around feeder
for a day there but then it contracted again as i said and now the wrap it around feeder fits
easily and doesn't have any of that foam pressing up against it but it does serve as a placeholder
the areas underneath the foam needed to be cut away a little bit underneath and wrap it around
so it would sit snug we don't want a big gap under there either so now we've got an insulated bottom
around the rapid round feeder we've got insulated sidewalls we've got no airflow going through there
we've got the domed cover to handle condensation if it does come in through there but we're also
going to see if this helps to maybe provide them more access to the dry sugar during winter
if this area can be warmed by the bees so we know that before with free air flow that feed
would be the same temperature as the outside temperature and we've also look how it drew up
nice and snug against that the foam did not expand beyond the edges which was interesting to me
and we've got a really rigid uh insulated inner cover now and i would probably need to close up
this hole a little bit i don't know what i would use maybe i could use hot glue put a piece of wood
over that we don't need bees trying to get through there some people have reported that some of their
bees chewed parts of the insulation insert on these insulated inner covers so i would cover
those holes if you're not if you know for sure you're never going to use that top venting so then
we put a b-max insulated outer cover on it now we've got a close-up space with no airflow in it
and the potential for the bees to warm what's in that rapid round and have access to that in
wintertime so use a shallow super instead of a medium or cut your mediums down if they're old
thanks for watching let me know what your ideas are we're going to see how this works
and we're going to compare it those with this insulated portion and those that just
have the insulated be smart designs inner covers on them alone thanks for watching