Abelo Underfloor Stand Entrance - How to Make an Underfloor Stand - Prevent Wasp Attacks

Today I'm going to show you how to amend the Abello stand to turn it into a set of underfloor entrances. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mancin' Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. I am really excited about this video because as I was putting together my Abello stand the other day, I realized that with very small modifications, I can turn the Abello stand into one big long underfloor entrance. That is going to provide me with so many benefits throughout the season, and I'm going to cover this in lots of detail next year on how I use this modified Abello stand. In this video though, I'm just going to show you how I put it together. I'll talk about some of the features, some of the functionality, why I'm going to move over to these stands fully if I can afford it, because they're not the cheapest stands in the world, but in terms of quality, they are by far and away the best on the market. And with this very small modification, hopefully I think this is going to be a market-leading product. So let's jump straight into it then. First of all, I'm going to put the stands together, then I'm going to talk you through the modifications. Now what I love about these stands is they are so easy to put together. You just need to get yourself 2 lengths of timber, CLS studwork, 38 by 63mm, coming in a 2.4m length. You can use it up to a 3, even a 3.6m length if you want super long ones. I find the 2.4-meter ones work really well though. I love the way they go together though. It's so quick, really, really easy. I've purposely put myself on a really big slope here just to show you how perfectly level you can get things. Just going to quickly get it together in its normal configuration and then I'll talk to you about how I'm going to amend it into an underfloor entrance. Right. So I spent quite a lot of time just getting that level. Getting the dimensions right. The way that I do it, I use a 2.4-meter CLS studwork, 38mm by 63mm. I'm very precise with that because it is the only piece of timber that works in the Abello stand. Widely available though, you should have no issue finding that. And it's the 2.4-meter variant is the one that I use, and that's wide enough to have 4 hives on the stand. Now you can do this with longer bits of timber. If you were to do this with a 3-meter length of timber, You'd definitely have enough for 5. And if you were to go up 3.6-meter length of timber, you'd probably have enough for 7 hives on one stand. Little bit too heavy for me, that one. I'm quite happy with 4. I know that 4 works well, and I know that it can manage the weight. So the way that I've got this set up is each of these ends here are protruding out 47 centimeters. The National Hive dimensions are 46 by 46, so you want at least 47 centimeters there to give you enough space to put a hive on that end, One on that end, and then we'll have two in the middle. So on this leg of it here, we're talking 47 centimeters, and I've got that on all four legs. 47 centimeters protruding out. Then the next thing you need to do is you need to cap off the ends. Really, really simple. Just get any piece of timber. Doesn't matter if it's not flush underneath. Really important that it's flush on the top. So I'm just going to get two bits of timber now, chop them up. You know, no-nonsense beekeeping, I'm going to do it with a really rough saw and I'm just going to screw them in on the edges. Now we're going to drill the end pieces in, keeping the tops flush. So this is what it should look like at this point. No connections in the middle, that's going to be plenty stable there. And both of the ends are joined up and screwed in. No need to glue them, screwing them's fine. Couple of screws in there, just make sure everything's nice and tight. That's what it should look like. Now the next thing you need to do is you need to put varroa mesh all the way from one end to the other. Don't worry about the little lips, just go over the lips. You want a nice soft mesh like this. You can beat it in with a hammer. You're not going to go over the lips in terms of putting boxes on there, so it doesn't matter that it's a little bit bumpy there. You just need it smooth in the places that you're going to put the hives. So we're just going to roll out this mesh. I got this from eBay, purposely designed for Varroa. If you Google Varroa mesh roll, 10 meters on eBay, this was about £55. They do a Langstroth version and a National version, and if you're doing this, you don't need the National version, which is an extra fiver. In fact, the Langstroth version is actually a little bit big as well, so you need to trim it down. I just use metal snips to trim it down though, really, really easy. And then just nail it down with some little U-nails. So you see, it just comes apart really easy like that. You just want to take that down, put that on one end, let it roll off like that. And then when you're pinning it down, just set it back a little bit. I've learned this the hard way. I always thought, oh, I'll go right up to the edge, and then it just gets a little bit snaggy. If you set it in 5mm in all directions and then cut it off, it means that you're never snagging yourself on it, which is a lot better. So this is what I mean in terms of the corners. You don't want it overlapping anywhere. Set it back 5mm in both directions, and then we're going to start pinning it down. And to pin it down, we're just using these little U-nails, big hammer. You're just going to knock it all in. Do plenty of them all the way along, and then we'll clip it down to size at the end. So with these U-nails, just work from one end to the other. Start on that side, work all the way along, get to that side, trim it all down, And then we're pretty much finished. So it takes a little bit of time, that hammering, but once you've hammered it down, it should look something like this. Just make sure you're working from one side all the way to the other so you don't get any pinch points and you don't get any creases in the mesh. So this is what it should look like now. You can see that's all nicely pinned down. This detail here, you see, you just pin it in as best as you possibly can. Over that junction point. Doesn't make a difference because you're not going to stack any boxes on there. Pinned it all the way across, and then obviously the roll just continues there. So all you need to do now is go and trim any excess. Trim it off from this long side here, trim it off from the edges. You can use a little angle grinder here, use some tin snips. Pretty easy to get through this with tin snips, so that's what I'm going to use. So there we go. That's that part complete. I would definitely recommend, for the sake of cutting your fingers, pre-cut that mesh unless you've got really, really good snips. If you get little frayed edges like this, just go along, tap them down with a hammer, stick a few more U nails in. You want that completely sealed, that mesh. Get it down, staple it down, do whatever you need to do. You want it nice and flush. Right, so that's everything pinned down. Tapped down and nice and level. So this is what it should look like now. Really simple. If you just want to pre-cut that there, I'll give you the measurements on that as well, just to make it a little bit easier than it was for me. You'll notice on that side closest to me it's a little bit jaggedy, but I've nailed it all down, kept it nice and flat. A few more nails in there, it's going to work really, really nicely. I'm sure all of you at home, if you're making this, you'll do a much better job than me. I do no-nonsense carpentry, no-nonsense joinery, as you can probably tell. So I bet you're all thinking at this point, what's going on here? This does not look like an underfloor entrance. But all we're going to do now is we're just going to pin another piece of timber on the front, but we're also going to pin another piece on the back, maintaining an 8mm space between the 2 struts that are already there and the piece on the front and the piece on the back. I'm not going to have a landing board, but you can easily modify this design if you want to do it with a landing board. But the beauty for me of this design here is that it's so defendable for the bees because it doesn't have a landing board. So my design, I'm definitely not doing it with a landing board. You can just use the same piece of timber here, doesn't need to be bigger or smaller. I'm just using what I've got available here. So the fact that it's going to be a little bit bigger doesn't make a difference to the bees either. If you want to do it a little bit smaller and add a landing board, you can do that as well. You'll be able to see just how easy it is to modify it. The important dimension though, which I'll show you in the next part of this video, is the 8mm gap between the struts that you've got on there now and then the next piece of wood that's going to give you that underfloor entrance. So all I'm doing, just taking another piece of timber, I'm just going to lay that on the front. Need to make some cuts because I can't get one piece of timber to run all the way along. So I'm going to have a piece of timber here, another piece of timber here, another one there, same along the back as well. So I'm going to have 6 pieces of timber. I'm just going to get those cut now roughly with a saw. Right, so once you've got all your bits of wood cut to size, remember we've got 1, 2, 3 bits of wood, and then the same on the back, we've got 6 bits of wood. Then I'm cutting myself some shims, some 8mm shims. It needs to be 8mm. That's really, really important. Like 9 or 10 millimeters is not gonna be the end of the world, but it needs to be a minimum of a single bee space. A, so the bees can get through, and B, to make it easily defendable for the bees. Can be anything this can, can be plastic, can be metal. I'm just using a little bit of plywood here. Probably delaminate over time, but it's all I've got at the moment that's exactly 8 millimeters. So I'm just gonna trim that down into some shims, and then I'm gonna screw it all together. Right, finally got round to it. So I've done all of the shims, I've cut all the pieces of wood up, cut my fingers up on the snaggy mesh that I should have pre-cut at the beginning. But now I can put it all together, and it's as simple as that. Like, this really is the most simple underfloor stand I think you can build. So I'm just going to whip it all together now, and I'll show you what the end product looks like. But all we're doing each end, you want to take your final bit of baton. that you're going to pin to the front. Take your 2 shims. Everything needs to be flush at the top. That's the only prerequisite with all of this. Doesn't matter if they're sticking out at the bottom, just doesn't make a difference. Everything flush with the top like that, and then just screw through and pin it all together. And finally, we have finished. It's taken me a little bit longer. A few tips that I should have definitely done on this one. Pre-cut the mesh, that saves you so much time. Had to go back around tapping it all back in, snaggy edges. Pre-glue your shims onto the back of the front batons, that makes it so much easier assembling it. Pre-drill your holes with a drill, makes it a lot easier, means you don't split the wood. And use the right size screws. I use 6mm screws and it's just a nightmare because you're kind of doing everything and you can't pin it down. They're just too big for the job. I'd recommend going for about 4.5, 5 millimeter width screw. But this is it, this is the end result. And as you can see there, I've got a double entrance. I've got an entrance at the front and I've got an entrance at the back, and that runs all the way along. And you might be thinking, why have you got an entrance at the front and an entrance at the back? Surely that's going to make it really difficult for them to defend the entrances. And don't worry, I will come on to that in the end, and I'll show you exactly how it all works. If you look down these gaps here though, you've got your screws, you've got your shims, and then you can see all the way down through there. So I've not got any landing boards on that front at all. You look at it from this point of view, and all you see is no landing board, just a piece of wood. Now, you've done really well to persevere with this video to get through to this point. You do have to excuse the shoddy woodwork here. I'm no carpenter, I'm no joiner, I just slap it together. This is no-nonsense beekeeping. We're not looking for perfectly mitered joints, just showing you the principles. And I know that some people will have a go at this and you'll show me how to do it properly in terms of the actual woodwork, 'cause mine is a bit of a mess. But it is functional though, and it will work. And what I'm going to show you now is just why this is such a good design, if I do say so myself. But I'm going to show you some of the function and the features that you can use when you're using a solid underfloss stand Right, so the main benefit of building an underfloor stand like this is that you don't need to use a floor. So you can just get your brood box, imagine that's full of bees, and you can just put that directly on like that. The floor has been completely eliminated. Now I will go and say, obviously this isn't for migratory beekeeping, this isn't for people who are going to move their bees around, because without a floor you're not going to lift all of this up in one go. This is for static beekeeping, if you're keeping it just in one apiary in the back of your garden. So we're looking at the back of the hive here now, and as you can see, we're looking at that back entrance, and you're thinking, well, the back entrance isn't actually leading to anywhere. And that is the whole design with this floor, is that only one entrance can be used at a time. So on this one here, you've got your blue brood box, you're looking down inside, and that is where the underfloor entrance is. Exactly the same as my normal design underfloor entrances. You've got your mesh there, 8mm slot, and then I've not got a landing board. But you can imagine how easy it would be just to pin a landing board underneath that batten if you wanted one there. Moving on to the next one, you can see the shims in place. They're maintaining that 8mm distance. And then again, the back entrance is not in use. Same again with the pink brood box. Underfloor entrance there, and then the same again with the green brood box. Now you might be thinking, what was the point in that back entrance? Now if you're not interested in using a back entrance, you can just design that just with the front entrance. That will work fine. And like I said, if you want to put a landing board on there, that front bit of timber that you pin on, just reduce the size down by say 40mm and then put a perpendicular piece underneath, and you've got yourself a landing board. It'd be a really simple mod. But that The back entrance there is designed for one reason, and that reason is swarm control. So let me talk you through a potential manipulation. You've got a colony here, it's doing really well, it's building up. Hopefully it's nice and tall, full of honey, full of brood, and they're trying to swarm. Now you want to do some form of split. Now normally you would do a split, Pagden, do whatever you like. You put another box there and you're going to have to start moving things around or turning entrances around. This floor gives you the ability to just lift up that brood box, move it a couple of inches back, and you've effectively blocked off that entrance at the front. You've then introduced an entrance at the back, and you can bleed bees in that fashion. So then what you would do is once you've blocked off that entrance there, you'd make your split and you'd put that next to it with the entrance at the front. So this box here has got a front entrance now, And this box here has got a back entrance now. Now there are a million and one different swarm manipulation methods, but being able to move the entrances around like that is a really, really neat feature. And for the sake of one piece of extra timber on the back that just doesn't get in the way, I think that's a worthwhile feature to have on this underfloor stand. Another really, really nice feature of this as well is that if you're having problems with wasp attacks, which you shouldn't get too bad on this because of the nature of it and the underfloor entrance, Say on this one here, if you move it back to the front again, you've got that as a front entrance. Having issues with wasps, you can just move it back to the back entrance like that. The bees will eventually work that out because they're just going to come underneath. They're going to be like, where, where is this entrance? They'll walk underneath the mesh and they'll find the entrance on this side a lot quicker than the wasps will find the entrance. So it's just giving you that additional flexibility to move things around when you're doing swarm manipulations. And to give you a little bit of additional benefit when it comes to preventing wasp attacks. So just to show you that from my perspective, you could have the green box here with a front entrance, and then you can move it over and make a split, and then that front entrance becomes completely blocked off, and then you get a back entrance there. It's a really nifty way of moving things around and doing manipulations when you get into the swarm season. What I love about these underfloor entrances is just how Well concealed that underfloor entrance is. You just can't see it from the front there. And I do recommend, if you're going to have these, don't have them with a landing board. Imagine if you're a bee, you're flying in here. That's what the entrance looks like from the top. And then if you're a bee, you're just flying in, you're thinking, where's that entrance? You're going to come underneath here and you're going to spin round, and then you're going to go straight up into that entrance there. You can see the light, that's where the underfloor entrance is. But you look at it from the front and it's just impossible to see it. So good at deterring wasps. So there you go, that's it for the video. Sorry it took me so long to do that one. I've got a couple of these underfloor stands now. I really, really like the look of them. Definitely worthwhile if you're setting up a static apiary. You want something you can get nice and high off the ground on unlevel ground, and you want to do away with any of the flaws that come with normal poly hives or normal wooden hives. This is a really interesting method in terms of keeping the cost down by removing the floor and giving you added functionality and added benefits of having it nice and high and level. I do hope a few of you have a go at this. I do think it's a really, really nice floor, and I know that you will do such a better job than I will. Hope you enjoyed that video though. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.