Modified Langsthroth Hives

With bees coming soon, I quickly realized that I wasn't going to have the time I needed to build a full fledged horizontal hive yet.  Looking at my Layens frames, though, I quickly realized that I could re-purpose my old hive boxes and make them work with the new frames, providing at least a temporary home for my enroute bees.

Here's what I did:

This is a full sized box on the bottom with a honey super attached on top and resting on a standard bottom board.

Here you can see that I attached two uprights inside the boxes at the correct spacing to hold the Layens frames.  I then stapled a cut piece of hardboard across the uprights.

Three frames in place.

Different views.

Here's a feeder frame--the basic Layens frame but with full width bottom bar and hardboard front and back glued and stapled.  I also made a "bee raft" for these by cutting a 1" H  x 1/8" W x 12" L board with several holes drilled in it.  I filled these feeders with a 2 parts slightly liquified honey to 1 part warm water.  The raft floats on the mix quite well.

With gabled roof in place, we are ready for the bees to arrive!