Despite being intrigued by the AZ hive for some time, it took me a long time to understand the ins and outs of a beehive enough to realistically attempt to deviate from the langstroth hive that i started with and that nearly everyone else around me also uses. I think it is really important to get a handle on how things work, before going out and changing a lot.
The AZ hive that is used in Slovenia uses frames that are slightly larger than the Langstroth deep frames. This may seem minor, but there are a lot of caveats that make it a much bigger consideration on deeper evaluation. It is easy to take for granted how convenient it is to have interchangable parts readily available from every beekeeping supply company you can find. This is certainly the biggest drawback to using an AZ hive. I was determined to work around this roadblock to a certain degree. I knew this would mean building my own equipment or paying dearly for it to have already assembled. SInce, I’ve really grown to enjoy woodworking this “inconvenience” actually was an exciting prospect. The one roadblock I was not willing to bear was having to get different extracting equipment and go way out of my way to interchange frames with my langstroth equipment – which still comprises the vast majority of my hives. Fortunately I found a great Facebook group called AZ hive creators. A place to design and build AZ hives. I was able to find plans for a AZ style hive that was configured to use langstroth sized frames.
This idea was a huge boost to my project because it meant I would be able to use the same extracting equipment and with slight temporary modifications to the AZ style frames I would be able to start my AZ hives in my existing langstroth equipment (making splits and nucs with that equipment). Another deviation that these plans took from the traditional slovenian hive was a third layer of frames. I found this to be pretty appealing for the conditions in Southwestern Illinois where May, June, and July nectar flows can be heavy and explosive. The extra room would certainly be something to be apprecriated in those conditions. Time will tell, but I could also see this being useful in overwintering two queens in one hive or using a two queen systems to capitalize on brief, yet desireable nectar flows. At any rate, I settled on the plans provided in this facebook group and I think they will foot the bill. As I’m going through the project, one modification I would probably make is recalculating the pieces that use 1 inch width (mainly surrounding the front “dead air space”) It would just be a lot simpler to have recalculated those to fit readily available milled lumber as opposed to making special cuts.
And so begins my project! After weeks of studying the plans I dove in. This first post is going to show the construction of the main hive body. I settled on making this with 3/4 inch plywood. I went to my local home depot and had them cut the sheet into pieces that reflected each of the faces of the hive- with the exception of the back, which will be a like a cabinet door made out of 1 x lumber. Many of the measurements from the plans were down to the 1/8 of an inch. The Home Depot employee was a little reluctant to cut with that accuracy, so I had him cut each side a little longer than the plan and then trimmed to precision with my table saw.
After trimming the pieces up, I began laying everything out and cutting dadoes to piece everything together and grooves for the steel rods that the frames sit as well as the bars that hold the inner screens. Another variation made away from the Facebook plans was to buy stamped frame spacers instead of cutting those intricate little shapes out twelve times. I found some stamped metal spacers at very reasonable price from a website called, of all things AZframespacers.com. I also cut some aluminum angle stock to support the queen excluder and slatted board. These are necessary in this design because, without them, the space between tiers of frames is too much and the bees would likely build burr comb in those larger spaces.
After all of that assembly was pretty straightforward, although the size of the pieces made it pretty cumbersome. I glued each of the joints with titebond 3 and then fastened them all together with 1 1/4 inch construction screws. As an added layer of weather protection I rubbed the entire exterior surface down with boiled linseed oil. I think this is an added layer of weather protection that you can utilize on top of whatever paint or stain you would choose to finish your hive with. All in all, I’m pretty pleased with how this project is progressing. The next steps are going to be building the inner screens and the back door. Stay tuned for more updates.
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