Strange that I’ve been looking at the same plans. He has a lot of great stuff on his site. After seeing this video I think I’ll start building my horizontal hives soon!
I watched a video yesterday about the layens hive and also with frames like yours with a wood piece halfway up and across the frames. The bees built comb only to the center stick on all frames and as they tryed to go beyond it the comb was built on an angle to go around the wood stick. Personally i will leave the frame open but wire it horizontally and that will allow being able to use the top bar slot for a starter strip or foundation rather than wiring the frame vertically.
Very nice build! I have made several 14 frame Layens hives --- Ply/insulation/ply and one from 2X10 material. Also have a couple of insulated 24 frame hives for myself and a partner for this coming season. In MN I think the insulated model is preferable but will see how the 2X one does as well if we can catch some swarms!
Nice build and like the innovations. My question is why not just put 3/8 plywood on the inside and the outside of the hive and maybe increase the foam thickness?
You could do that. I wanted to try the coarse textured wood to see how much propolis the bees would build as I've been reading that the "propolis envelope" is critical to the overall health of the hive and requires a rough surface (like the inside of a tree trunk) to encourage the bees to build it. The outside of my hive is 1/4" ACX plywood. You will find that the hive gets heavy very quickly so I would recommend thinner plywood and more insulation. 1/4" plywood inside and out with 2" foam insulation would work really well
Just came upon this (thanks to RUclips random suggestions). What a great tweak! I've been looking for a way to set-up a tweaked version of a 2-colonie hive (look up Nat Hive: 2-colonies sharing honey supers), and was thinking of adding insulation inside somehow, because we have the same winter issues as you do. You've just given me a solution to that! I'll just have to tweak the cover to open each side separately. Thanks again form Quebec!
My layens hives are two colonies per box with a center divider. If you check out my "update" video you can see where I've placed a piece of painters cloth across the top to keep bees from crossing over from one colony to the other. ruclips.net/video/5X8M2N5WYFQ/видео.html The single lid works just fine for me. One recommendation I would make is not to leave any of the polystyrene foam exposed when you cut your entrance. On mine, the bees have been excavating the foam for some reason and I'll need to cover that up somehow this year. I didn't actually use the beetle trap as the beetle counts were super low around here this year so I wasn't real motivated to put the oil in. However, I made them based off of the recommendation from another guy that said they worked well for him.
Would you have plans for this hive as you built it with the foam insulated sides etc? I’ve been looking at these layens hives/horizontal hives and being in NW Iowa I’ve always thought they a design like this would be a great way to go. Love how you modified his hive.
I did not document plans but I’m from Omaha if you ever wanted to drive down to see in person and take measurements. I’m considering selling one of my layers hives (with two colonies of bees inside)
Wow! Absolutely BEAUTIFUL! I’m building hives right now and, MAN, that is GORGEOUS! What size is the screen for that hive beetle trap? It looks small, almost too small for hive beetles. But impossible to tell via video.
Do you have a set of drawings for the modifications you made? I love the A roof and the battle trap and would like to add those ideals into my hives. Dr. Leo is a brilliant bee keeper/apiarist. After I read his two books I was sold on the horizontal hive with the extra deep frames.
Harvey Rouse JR. sorry, no plans for the roof. I just winged it for the most part. For the beetle trap, just use a hole saw to cut a hole the same size as a piece of 1.5” pvc then epoxy it in place
Beautiful bee hive Brad! We're working on our second Dr Leo plans for the Layens. Love your roof! We've struggled finding what the aluminum trim coil he calls for so am very interested in your roof (which I like better). How much roofing skills do you need? Have you had any problems with moisture or leaking into the hive?
I just bought the roofing materials at menards. It is a little challenging to cut straight and to figure out the right pieces to buy. A good service rep there should be able to help you if you show them a picture
@@TheBradtri thanks, am in the Western Slope of Colorado- no Menards but will try the big orange box store- after this winter, have you had any problems with leaking?
@@donnamarie9593 no leaks!! The ridge cap provides good coverage over the seam where the two sides meet. However, I think it would be much cheaper to find a roll of 2’ wide flashing. Overlap at the top by a few inches.
2020 winter I put 3/4 Rmax foam sheets on top of my 6 top bar hives. This spring I found carpenter ants had made nests in all of them and my bees were not doing well. They don’t eat the foam just burrow and nest. Have you encountered ot noticed ants in your hives?
Wow..beautiful! I’m going to try to use Dr Sharashkin’s methods here in Utah..I’ve ordered a swarm trap from him, and a really nice hive from Josh Petit. I may try to further insulate it even though it will be 1.5 inch cedar, as our winters are so cold. I know there are wild bees, I went hiking years ago above the Brighton ski resort, around 8500 feet, and I found a very scary sounding bee tree. How many tools are necessary (big, electric type) for making these? Like, a saw of some sort, or a joiner, and regular things like drills? You did a beautiful job!
Nice box but I half to winter inside here in Canada and too carry one of those is impossible for me now at my age but looks great for those we can winter outside cheers
Yes, these are not hives that you would want to move. Although one could make a wheeled cart that would help a lot. With the 1.5" insulation I have built in I would wager you would be able to winter outside in Canada. Where I live we often get down to -10F to -20F during the winter.
Too early to tell on that. They are more focused on building comb so far. I do see a lot more bees on the walls of this hive than on my other hives with smooth walls, so it could be that there is a very fine layer of propolis there that I haven't seen yet.
Really good ideas here! I was planning to put a hive together with insulation and I was really happy I came across your video. Thank you for sharing! Any chance of posting a couple of videos with how the bees are progressing in the Hive?
I need to make a video some day. The bees have built out several frames and are looking good. I am finding the frames take a certain amount of technique to handle as compared to a langstroth deep frame.
Keep an eye on how far down they build their comb-I’ve noticed with some other beekeepers who have layens frames with the bar across the middle that the bees have a tendency to stop building comb once they get down to that bar. One possible experiment might be to take one of your frames and remove that cross bar and perhaps put some wire across to support the comb. The idea being to encourage them to build the comb further down the frame without stopping-I know a big benefit to having the deeper frames would be that the colony won’t have to break their cluster in the winter months to obtain more honey-they can just continue upward for a longer time period.
Hey good to see your video again. Tell me how have your Layen’s hives been doing and how Are they holding up against the weather ? Are there any problems? Again thank you for posting your video
Working very well for the bees. Big, strong colonies in all four of my layens hives (two duplexes). It is a bit of a chore to handle the big frames and is a little hard to go through the whole hive to find the queen. I went through and dog-eared all of the top bars on the frames which made it much easier to slide them.
I’m thinking about selling the one in this video. I’ve just got too many hives to manage. And it would include two colonies of bees!! I’m in Nebraska. Someone would have to drive here to pick it up
@@TheBradtri nice but thats a little too far for me thanks for responding to my comments I'm look for one that someone could ship to me I live in Kentucky
Good ideas. I just make one out of 2x. Going to use foam on my next one. How do you keep the foam from showing on top of the box? Did you put a strip of wood on top of the foam to hide it? I don't mean on the lid... I'm talking about the top of the box where the foam is sandwiched.
Yes, I put a piece of 1/4” plywood on the top edge. Also you need to have a wooden insert for the bee entrance. They will chew away and excavate the foam.
The metal roofing was by far the most expensive part of the hive. Maybe $100 for the roof and $100 or so for the rest. I did not keep close track of expenses.
Thanks for the info but I don’t think I’ll harvest honey from my layens hives. They are more of a “fun” project for me and I’d like to see what bees do when I don’t steal their honey.
I'm not sure there is a "standard" Layens frame size. I think mine are a tad larger than Dr. Leo's plans. I definitely sized mine so that I could do the conversions.
I’d love to come up with an insulated design like this that would be the correct width to accommodate a standard Langstroth frame-and then experiment on creating a frame that might fit into a normal extractor (perhaps something that could be broken down into two langstroth sections). Would involve cutting some comb but would also make extraction more efficient...maybe.
TheBradtri exciting I am theorizing from all the Layens information that I’ve seen that bees in these hives will have a 100% survival rate and I know that 100% is high, but I view this as a wild no work hive only harvesting twice a year.
@@timothymitchell9956 I would not consider this a "no work" hive nor would I expect 100% survival. Bee colonies in the wild die all the time, that is the way we have survival of the fittest. Most importantly, it will still be important to manage varroa in some way. In the wild, when healthy hives swarm, they introduce a brood break which will drop the mite levels. If swarming is prevented, any hive style will soon succumb to varroa.
TheBradtri Do you hundred percent survival rate is just wishful thinking he he he. But I appreciate your videos and all of your input. I like your thoughts
You might think about putting predatory nematodes around your hives, as they eat the larvae of the hive beetle when they go underground during that faze of their development. It's another way of reducing the potential hive beetle population. Just a thought.
I've read about but have never tried the nematodes. The hive beetles have actually reduced quite a bit around here from the hard winters. The few that we have are not enough to cause any problems to strong hives. I didn't even bother with beetle traps this year. We had a huge invasion of them a few years ago when all of the nucs we bought from the south were heavily infested.
Thanks. Yes, the beetle trap is a piece of 1 1/2” pvc and a cap underneath. The cap is just dry fit and can easily be removed or filled with a little oil. I didn’t actually use it as the beetle populations were quite low this year. The colonies were just put n this last summer and did fine. They are currently settled in for the winter so we’ll see how they look come spring
Last time I quoted for someone it got rather pricey even before shipping. You can email me at atasteofnaplespizza@gmail.com if you wish to correspond further
remember dr leos title the biggest mistakes american bee keepers make. 1feral swarm per hive each hive separated by the greatest distance possible. also why double the size of frame. and with local feral bees no need to insulate. mistakes continue.
Distance between colonies is good, but not always practical. Frames in my hive are still smaller than natural comb that you might see in many feral colonies that have the space to build. With regard to insulation, the mistake is trying to keep bees in a 3/4" pine box that has an R-value of approximately 1 whereas a typical large tree housing a feral colony would have an R-value of anwhere from 5-10 depending on the size of the tree. My insulation is simply giving the bees the same approximate insulation they would have in a tree. I even communicated directly with Dr. Leo and he was very supportive of the insulating method that I used.
Beautiful hive! Love your art work!
Bee Boy Bill has a good series of videos on building Layens hives and frames. Thanks for sharing your build, looks really nice.
Yep, I watched some of Bee Boy Bill's videos. I stole the "cross dowel" support on the frames from him.
Really nice work!
Strange that I’ve been looking at the same plans. He has a lot of great stuff on his site. After seeing this video I think I’ll start building my horizontal hives soon!
see my reply above
I watched a video yesterday about the layens hive and also with frames like yours with a wood piece halfway up and across the frames. The bees built comb only to the center stick on all frames and as they tryed to go beyond it the comb was built on an angle to go around the wood stick. Personally i will leave the frame open but wire it horizontally and that will allow being able to use the top bar slot for a starter strip or foundation rather than wiring the frame vertically.
I waxed up the dowel across the center and the bees built down through it just fine.
You can see an example in my follow up video
ruclips.net/video/5X8M2N5WYFQ/видео.htmlsi=Y2ZUOsk97WuvFpJU
Very nice build! I have made several 14 frame Layens hives --- Ply/insulation/ply and one from 2X10 material. Also have a couple of insulated 24 frame hives for myself and a partner for this coming season. In MN I think the insulated model is preferable but will see how the 2X one does as well if we can catch some swarms!
Thanks. I think insulation is always a good thing!
such a great video. You have even me some great ideas. Thank you
Good suggestions, thanks!
Nice build and like the innovations. My question is why not just put 3/8 plywood on the inside and the outside of the hive and maybe increase the foam thickness?
You could do that. I wanted to try the coarse textured wood to see how much propolis the bees would build as I've been reading that the "propolis envelope" is critical to the overall health of the hive and requires a rough surface (like the inside of a tree trunk) to encourage the bees to build it. The outside of my hive is 1/4" ACX plywood. You will find that the hive gets heavy very quickly so I would recommend thinner plywood and more insulation. 1/4" plywood inside and out with 2" foam insulation would work really well
Just came upon this (thanks to RUclips random suggestions). What a great tweak! I've been looking for a way to set-up a tweaked version of a 2-colonie hive (look up Nat Hive: 2-colonies sharing honey supers), and was thinking of adding insulation inside somehow, because we have the same winter issues as you do. You've just given me a solution to that! I'll just have to tweak the cover to open each side separately. Thanks again form Quebec!
My layens hives are two colonies per box with a center divider. If you check out my "update" video you can see where I've placed a piece of painters cloth across the top to keep bees from crossing over from one colony to the other. ruclips.net/video/5X8M2N5WYFQ/видео.html The single lid works just fine for me. One recommendation I would make is not to leave any of the polystyrene foam exposed when you cut your entrance. On mine, the bees have been excavating the foam for some reason and I'll need to cover that up somehow this year. I didn't actually use the beetle trap as the beetle counts were super low around here this year so I wasn't real motivated to put the oil in. However, I made them based off of the recommendation from another guy that said they worked well for him.
Would you have plans for this hive as you built it with the foam insulated sides etc? I’ve been looking at these layens hives/horizontal hives and being in NW Iowa I’ve always thought they a design like this would be a great way to go. Love how you modified his hive.
I did not document plans but I’m from Omaha if you ever wanted to drive down to see in person and take measurements. I’m considering selling one of my layers hives (with two colonies of bees inside)
TheBradtri I have friends in Omaha and if this virus ever clears up I’ll be visiting. Live just down I-80 in Des Moines.
I took over 20 boxes to my local school art class each one is different. They did a great job on each one cheers
That’s a good idea. I have a project coming up next year that will have about 25 new boxes. I think I’ll touch base with a local school.
@@TheBradtri I live in a small town i also when to this school
Wow! Absolutely BEAUTIFUL! I’m building hives right now and, MAN, that is GORGEOUS!
What size is the screen for that hive beetle trap? It looks small, almost too small for hive beetles. But impossible to tell via video.
I sold it a couple years ago and the dude painted white over it!!
1/8” screen
@@TheBradtri What?! Wow. What a shame! Some people just don’t get it. Oh well.
Great. Thank you!
Do you have a set of drawings for the modifications you made? I love the A roof and the battle trap and would like to add those ideals into my hives. Dr. Leo is a brilliant bee keeper/apiarist. After I read his two books I was sold on the horizontal hive with the extra deep frames.
Harvey Rouse JR. sorry, no plans for the roof. I just winged it for the most part. For the beetle trap, just use a hole saw to cut a hole the same size as a piece of 1.5” pvc then epoxy it in place
Beautiful bee hive Brad! We're working on our second Dr Leo plans for the Layens. Love your roof! We've struggled finding what the aluminum trim coil he calls for so am very interested in your roof (which I like better). How much roofing skills do you need? Have you had any problems with moisture or leaking into the hive?
I just bought the roofing materials at menards. It is a little challenging to cut straight and to figure out the right pieces to buy. A good service rep there should be able to help you if you show them a picture
@@TheBradtri thanks, am in the Western Slope of Colorado- no Menards but will try the big orange box store- after this winter, have you had any problems with leaking?
@@donnamarie9593 no leaks!! The ridge cap provides good coverage over the seam where the two sides meet. However, I think it would be much cheaper to find a roll of 2’ wide flashing. Overlap at the top by a few inches.
AMERIMAX HOME PRODUCTS 70524 24-Inch x 25-Feet Galvanized Flashing www.amazon.com/dp/B000BPF4G4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_KW5AC82JVFBDFDHC60EZ
2020 winter I put 3/4 Rmax foam sheets on top of my 6 top bar hives. This spring I found carpenter ants had made nests in all of them and my bees were not doing well. They don’t eat the foam just burrow and nest. Have you encountered ot noticed ants in your hives?
No problems with ants on mine
Wow..beautiful! I’m going to try to use Dr Sharashkin’s methods here in Utah..I’ve ordered a swarm trap from him, and a really nice hive from Josh Petit. I may try to further insulate it even though it will be 1.5 inch cedar, as our winters are so cold. I know there are wild bees, I went hiking years ago above the Brighton ski resort, around 8500 feet, and I found a very scary sounding bee tree. How many tools are necessary (big, electric type) for making these? Like, a saw of some sort, or a joiner, and regular things like drills? You did a beautiful job!
Check out Dr. Leo's website there are step by step instructions.
Thanks! Mostly just regular tools. A tablesaw, miter saw and circular saw will cover about everything for you.
Bee Boy Bill has a few videos that show different processes. Very informative.
Nice box but I half to winter inside here in Canada and too carry one of those is impossible for me now at my age but looks great for those we can winter outside cheers
Yes, these are not hives that you would want to move. Although one could make a wheeled cart that would help a lot.
With the 1.5" insulation I have built in I would wager you would be able to winter outside in Canada. Where I live we often get down to -10F to -20F during the winter.
How did the rough walled sides and propolis experiment workout ? Did it in fact cause the bees to build up more propolis ?
Too early to tell on that. They are more focused on building comb so far. I do see a lot more bees on the walls of this hive than on my other hives with smooth walls, so it could be that there is a very fine layer of propolis there that I haven't seen yet.
hi, the orientation of your langstroth needs to be the same i think otherwise the angle the cells are at is incorrect
The bees do just fine with it.
Really good ideas here! I was planning to put a hive together with insulation and I was really happy I came across your video. Thank you for sharing! Any chance of posting a couple of videos with how the bees are progressing in the Hive?
I need to make a video some day. The bees have built out several frames and are looking good. I am finding the frames take a certain amount of technique to handle as compared to a langstroth deep frame.
Keep an eye on how far down they build their comb-I’ve noticed with some other beekeepers who have layens frames with the bar across the middle that the bees have a tendency to stop building comb once they get down to that bar. One possible experiment might be to take one of your frames and remove that cross bar and perhaps put some wire across to support the comb. The idea being to encourage them to build the comb further down the frame without stopping-I know a big benefit to having the deeper frames would be that the colony won’t have to break their cluster in the winter months to obtain more honey-they can just continue upward for a longer time period.
How wide is your hive?
Hey good to see your video again. Tell me how have your Layen’s hives been doing and how Are they holding up against the weather ? Are there any problems? Again thank you for posting your video
Working very well for the bees. Big, strong colonies in all four of my layens hives (two duplexes). It is a bit of a chore to handle the big frames and is a little hard to go through the whole hive to find the queen. I went through and dog-eared all of the top bars on the frames which made it much easier to slide them.
I would love to buy one of these
I’m thinking about selling the one in this video. I’ve just got too many hives to manage. And it would include two colonies of bees!! I’m in Nebraska. Someone would have to drive here to pick it up
@@TheBradtri nice but thats a little too far for me thanks for responding to my comments I'm look for one that someone could ship to me I live in Kentucky
Good ideas. I just make one out of 2x. Going to use foam on my next one. How do you keep the foam from showing on top of the box? Did you put a strip of wood on top of the foam to hide it? I don't mean on the lid... I'm talking about the top of the box where the foam is sandwiched.
Yes, I put a piece of 1/4” plywood on the top edge. Also you need to have a wooden insert for the bee entrance. They will chew away and excavate the foam.
good hive! subscribed!
Very informative. Thank you. -Kirsten.
Glad you liked it
Looks awesome!! What was the total cost on the materials for this?
The metal roofing was by far the most expensive part of the hive. Maybe $100 for the roof and $100 or so for the rest. I did not keep close track of expenses.
There is an extractor in which these frames fir..electric and manual...on Dr Leo’ s (horizontalhive.com).
Thanks for the info but I don’t think I’ll harvest honey from my layens hives. They are more of a “fun” project for me and I’d like to see what bees do when I don’t steal their honey.
Looks like a top bar hive
Not really
Your conversion frames with a deep and a medium are larger than a standard layens frame correct? So did you make all your layens frames larger?
I'd like to know this also.
I'm not sure there is a "standard" Layens frame size. I think mine are a tad larger than Dr. Leo's plans. I definitely sized mine so that I could do the conversions.
I’d love to come up with an insulated design like this that would be the correct width to accommodate a standard Langstroth frame-and then experiment on creating a frame that might fit into a normal extractor (perhaps something that could be broken down into two langstroth sections). Would involve cutting some comb but would also make extraction more efficient...maybe.
Did you make or buy the side pieces for your frames? I have seen them trimmed with a joiner, but I don't have one. Looking for safe recommendations.
Cut the profile in a 2x4 with band saw. Then turned and used band saw again to cut 3/8” thick pieces.
I love the concept of the insulation and not having to stack boxes. My question is, how do you winter feed?
On the one I fed I put sugar cake into an empty frame with mesh on the outside. The other two colonies had plenty of honey
Well done!
thanks!
Just watched your vid again!
Do all your Layen’s hives survive the winter each year ?
This is their first winter and all three layens colonies were alive as of last weekend. My langstroth hives are 14/16 alive as of last weekend.
TheBradtri exciting I am theorizing from all the Layens information that I’ve seen that bees in these hives will have a 100% survival rate and I know that 100% is high, but I view this as a wild no work hive only harvesting twice a year.
@@timothymitchell9956 I would not consider this a "no work" hive nor would I expect 100% survival. Bee colonies in the wild die all the time, that is the way we have survival of the fittest. Most importantly, it will still be important to manage varroa in some way. In the wild, when healthy hives swarm, they introduce a brood break which will drop the mite levels. If swarming is prevented, any hive style will soon succumb to varroa.
TheBradtri Do you hundred percent survival rate is just wishful thinking he he he. But I appreciate your videos and all of your input. I like your thoughts
How well did your beetle trap work?
I never had a need to deploy the trap with oil as the beetle populations have been very low
Forgot to say: Love the beetle trap idea. How well did it work?
I've never even stocked it with oil. The number of beetles has really gone down around here.
@@TheBradtri nice idea for the build, anyway! Better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it!
You might think about putting predatory nematodes around your hives, as they eat the larvae of the hive beetle when they go underground during that faze of their development. It's another way of reducing the potential hive beetle population. Just a thought.
I've read about but have never tried the nematodes. The hive beetles have actually reduced quite a bit around here from the hard winters. The few that we have are not enough to cause any problems to strong hives. I didn't even bother with beetle traps this year. We had a huge invasion of them a few years ago when all of the nucs we bought from the south were heavily infested.
Nice vid!!! Your beetle trap, is it accessible from outside? I am looking forward to more about this hive. How was their summer and winter?
Thanks. Yes, the beetle trap is a piece of 1 1/2” pvc and a cap underneath. The cap is just dry fit and can easily be removed or filled with a little oil. I didn’t actually use it as the beetle populations were quite low this year. The colonies were just put n this last summer and did fine. They are currently settled in for the winter so we’ll see how they look come spring
So excited for you! Please keep them coming?
I added one follow up video on a second hive that I built.
Layens Hive Update 20190918 ruclips.net/video/5X8M2N5WYFQ/видео.html
I would like to buy one please....
Last time I quoted for someone it got rather pricey even before shipping. You can email me at atasteofnaplespizza@gmail.com if you wish to correspond further
Oh, and you mention on the video to reach out to you via Facebook. What is your Facebook nick?
The only Facebook I have is for my wood-fired pizza catering business. @ATasteofNaplesPizza
9:54 Bee Boy Bill?
youtuber that makes vids on layens construction. good info.
Mine i did same dowel the frames
remember dr leos title the biggest mistakes american bee keepers make. 1feral swarm per hive each hive separated by the greatest distance possible. also why double the size of frame. and with local feral bees no need to insulate. mistakes continue.
Distance between colonies is good, but not always practical. Frames in my hive are still smaller than natural comb that you might see in many feral colonies that have the space to build. With regard to insulation, the mistake is trying to keep bees in a 3/4" pine box that has an R-value of approximately 1 whereas a typical large tree housing a feral colony would have an R-value of anwhere from 5-10 depending on the size of the tree. My insulation is simply giving the bees the same approximate insulation they would have in a tree. I even communicated directly with Dr. Leo and he was very supportive of the insulating method that I used.