Norm's Bees, Naturally

I hate waste! I think the throwaway society is one of the modern curses. I have 12 of these now redundant Layens hives just sitting around. After thinking about putting a warre inside WBC lifts, thanks to Christofer in Sweden, I wondered could I somehow use these Layens for something similar. I can and here is the plan. These Layens are one piece hives with fixed floor and roofs. I had to take the floor off two and a roof off one.



The floor is simply two boards with a central ventilation grill stapled to them.



I fixed two stout pieces of wood reclaimed from redundant kenyan hives as support feet using 8 large screws. I routed an entrance into one side of the floor.




The warre sits on the floor set back a little.



The Layens with both the roof and floor removed is set over and around the warre boxes.



The layens with just the floor removed sits upon the other layens. I screwed some cuff pieces around where they join so that no sideslip can occur.



There is room inside for a stack of exactly 4 warre boxes. Another tier could be added to bring it up to six and so on ad infinitum. There is no room for a standard warre quilt but the extra insulation in the layens roof and a square of carpet may suffice in my climate. So it seems several of my objectives have been achieved without much expenditure. The only thing missing is the aesthetics that a WBC hive has. Oh well! You can't have everything and I may still do that one day anyway.