Work continues on my AZ hive project. In an AZ hive the frame sit on steel rods as opposed to hanging by ears in the langstroth frame. The steel rods fit into grooves that I routed into the sides of the hive body. They are 3/8″ rods which provides the appropriate bee space between the stories in the hive. The rods were pretty easy to fit into the hive, I simply got 3/8″ steel stock from home depot and cut them to length and then slid them righ into the grooves in the hive. I am really interested to see how this system will work out!
The next step is to build the inner doors. In the AZ there are a set of inner doors, one at each section of the hive. These can be a very simple door- which is how I have made the doors for the middle and top sections. The doors for these sections are simply a frame of wood with screen and frame spacers attached to the inner facing side. I bought an inexpensive pocket hole jig from Amazon and this was very helpful in assembling these inner doors. The spacers help to keep the frames aligned while they are resting on the steel support bars. There are two spacers (one upper and one lower) on the front face of the hive body (see photo above) as well as on the inner door for each section in the hive.
I am looking to add a feeder in the inner door of the bottom section so the design will be more complex. Although if i can come up with something good it will be really convenient. This would allow you to change the feed for bees without opening the hive at all. The disturbance of feeding would be minimal to the hive. I’m hoping to come up with a good design that will allow me to feed syrup in jars or water bottles through a modified inner door. Working on this design and build as well as a screened varroa board to go under the bottom section of steel rods are the next steps in my project
I am really enjoying this project so far and I’m quite excited to see how this hive design works in action.