Week 21 - design and label the roof and build it

This week I am starting to design the roof of the hive and I will also label it. The roof is basically what it sounds like, it is the roof of the hive that helps protect it from all weathers throughout the year. It sits at the top and can be sloped, or flat with aluminium or roof felt to help it last longer and be protected longer. The roof can also overhang over the sides of the hive, or can sit flush with it, and also some rooves can have insulation inside them to help the bees keep the hive warm quicker and longer in the winter.

My early designs of the roof of the hive are illustrated below and labelled:

Below are the pictures of me building the roof of the hive at the different stages:

First I need to cut the wood down to the correct size for the roof, because the roof sits on top of the hive, there is no specific measurement; and it can be any height I want it to be.

I decided to cut it at 100mm, which is half of the plank, this is to save me from using to much wood and wastage.

Now that I have the wood cut down, I need to drill the holes in the planks, I have decided to drill 6 holes in each plank, 3 at each end. I did this because the wood is too big for just 2 holes and the roof could be heavy once done.

This is a picture of all the wood cut down to the right size, ready to use for the frame. Also the wood is longer than the rest of the wood used in the frames, this is because I am making the roof overhang the sides of the hive, the wood is only about two inch longer on all the planks of wood.

I followed the same procedure as for the rest of the frames I built, I used wood glue and screws to fix it all into position. And now the frame of the roof is also complete.

I need to get a board to act as the roof of the hive, it will be thicker than the one used for the crown board. So I found a spare board laying around and fortunately, it was the big enough to be used.

So I cut the board down to the right size, so that it can fit on the top perfectly. I checked that it did fit perfectly and that it was not too small or too big before I fixed it in position.

Now I have decided to drill the board to the frame instead of nails like I did before, this is because I believed that nails would be to weak and not as strong as screws would be for holding the board in position.

I have placed a screw in, to hold the board in position, and I have also drilled and screwed nails into the other corners to permanently fix it into this position. I did not use wood glue while making the frame, as it would be too messy and there was no need for it.

I have also drilled holes and screws in-between the corners along the edge, to provide more strength to the board once attached to the frame.

I then put the roof on top of the hive to check that it fitted perfectly, but while I did this I noticed that the crown board was getting stuck in the hive and also the roof would not sit level on top and this could cause many issues. This is mainly because the roof overhangs and fully covers the crown board, making it harder to remove the roof as the crown board is stuck inside it.

To remedy this, I have put two offcuts from the previous frames into the roof so that it raises the roof about 2 inches. I put 4 boards into the hive, two at each end, and then I screwed them to the frame and board of the roof.

I used 3 screws to hold them in place, two on the inside screwing into the board from below, and another on top of the board, screwing into the board form the outside into the roof. This can be see in the picture where there is two screws screwed in and a third hole pre-drilled.

You can see in this picture the third screw is drilled in from the top of the board and goes into the roof into those two boards. This also strengthens the frame and board even further.

This is it completed after the extra pieces of wood have been added, you can see that the roof sits on the hive just above the super box and  a little of the crown board is shown. This is good, as it means it will be easier to remove the roof of the hive - without the crown board coming off as well. 

The roof also sits level on top of the hive, which is also good as it provides strength to the hive and it is less likely to fall if it is level. A negative to the extra wood added though is that the weight of the roof is increased and makes it harder to take off and puts more strain on the floor with more weight. 

Now I just need to add felt on top of the roof to add more protection to the hive, which help it repel all weathers more easily. I am not using any aluminium or other metal sheet is because I could not find any, and there is no need to purchase any when I have some felt already. Also Adding a metal sheet would again add further weight to an already heavy roof.

I then cut the felt down to the right size, so that it fits over the roof, I also made sure that is 50mm bigger that the actual roof so it can go over the sides.

You can see in this picture why I had it cut bigger so that it can overhang over the sides. I am also stapling the felt to the roof instead of nails because it will be too time consuming, and more likely to tear the felt. I already had a staple gun at home, so I did not need to purchase one.

For the edges, I cut into the felt about 50mm on the diagonal from the corner, so that it can bend over the corners.

Now all I did was staple the felt to the roof, I only put staples along the edge on the top and along the side to fix the felt properly to the frame. The roof is now completed and is now ready to be used in the hive.

While building the roof I encountered several problems, I had to overcome these problems while building roof to make it perfect, these were:

1) The first problem is that the roof overhangs too far over the side of the hive and that the         crown board was getting stuck in the roof and is very hard to remove.

• The solution was to add two wood offcuts in the roof to increase the height that the roof sits at, so it wouldn't fully overhang over the crown board.