any beekeepers in the house?

Good luck. The place I am getting my NUC from emailed me and let me know I may not receive mine till July. I'll probably have to feed heavy till the fall flow and hopefully they will build up enough to winter well....I hope to split next year and then go with 2 hives. I just hope I have success. I'm sure you are the same.
I did find an old keeper that has some things for me to buy......got lucky there.
BTW...I have watched so many videos....yes the fat bee man....that I have a hard time finding one I haven't seen....lol

Been working on the hive...like I said before it is a horizontal design...takes the standard deep frames...hopefully you will be able to see from the start to where I am now. I need to hinge the top, cover the top with white flashing, figure out the bottom (screen or solid bottom), design some entrance restriction, put some legs on it, and paint it. Need some kind of follower board and 30 frames.... It's getting there....

Geno wrote: LIKE!!

How do you get the bees in there?

Top comes off...right now it just sets on there. But I am going to hinge it. Then there will be 6 inch boards covering the frames (this is so I disturb only a small part of the hive at a time....). When I get the "NUC" I will set the 5 frames in the hive with some empty frames along with whatever bees I can easily get in the hive (the queen is a must). The rest will find the queen. A solid "follower" board will keep the bees limited to a certain area and I will move the solid board and add frames as the empty ones get filled. There are 3 entrances but to begin with I will only used 1 and when the hive gets bigger I will open the center so the workers can go straight to the honey frames and can avoid the brood frame and the nursery workers.
This is from my own research and I hope to have assistance from a mentor bee keeper.

GT 14 wrote: Interesting design, never seen one like it.

Does it makes sense to you GT??

I am hoping I can figure that out....I believe the idea is to be able to keep track of where she is and move the frames around to keep her at the one end....however....an excluder can be made from cutting one down and framing it up....I shouldn't have to worry with that for this year at least.....maybe even next....just keep giving her frames in between.....then keep full honey frames between the brood area and the empty honey frames....I'll learn as I go I suppose....now I came across a guy that may split his hive for me.....free bees....maybe....maybe not....