Best Budget Beehive – Thorne Bees on a Budget Kit Review – Wooden National Beehive Explained

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to review the Bees on a Budget beehive set from Thorns Beekeeping. So thank you to Thorns, they've sent me this set free of charge for me to review and give you my thoughts. So as always, we're going to go from top to bottom, talk about the roof, crown board, supers, brood box, queen excluder, floor, Varroa tray, how I put it together, and what the fit and finish is like. And I'm going to give you my review and recommendations at the end. So this hive costs around £160-£170, and it comes as either a fully assembled hive or you can get this as a flat pack unit as well. Now I got this as a flat pack unit and I've put it together, and I've done a separate video for each of the components. So I've done a separate video for putting together the roof, the supers, the brood box and the floor. So I'll pop those video links up there, and if you want to see how any of these are assembled, just a quick 2-minute video, just pictures, just showing you how it all goes together. Really, really simple design though. It doesn't take too long to put these together at all. The difference between the assembled price and the flat pack price, in my view, I'd always go for the flat pack just because it doesn't take me too long to personally put it together. If you're the kind of person that's not interested in doing woodwork though, I've seen the finished products of these. Thorns do a really, really good job of putting these together. So either way, entirely up to you which way you go, whether it's flat pack or pre-assembled. Now this Bees on a Budget hive package that they put together, you can get it with other stuff as well. So you can get it with manual extractors and beekeeping suits and all of the other stuff that comes with it. This version that I've got here is just the beehive only. So it's every single thing you need in order to put together a beehive. And I really, really like that. It's very simple. It means everything is contained in a single package, and the way they've packaged it up together, the way they give you the instructions and tell you how to put everything together— they've even linked their own separate YouTube videos to give you the instructions on how to do it. There's a lot of thought that's gone into this package, and they've literally thought of every single eventuality to give you a hive that is ready to accept Now, I remember when I got my first beehive, it was so difficult. I didn't know how many supers I needed. I didn't know what queen excluder to get. I didn't know how many frames to get. I didn't know what type of foundation— wired, non-wired, drone comb, brood comb. Thorns take all of those questions away and give you everything ready to go. It's invaluable for a beginner having all of that information from a well-respected company like Thorns to give you a package that that's completely fit and ready to go. So I really do like that, and I think it's pretty good value for money as well. They call this a budget beehive, but the wood is definitely not budget. Like, you can see from the wood here, this is English-grown cedar, and the only reason it's called seconds is because it's not shipped over from Canada. And what that means is you get, you get a few knots up here, but they're solid knots. They're not going to fall out on you. In the roof there, you can see there's 4 knots, but on the rest of the boxes, I've not found Any defects at all. Maybe 6 really small, really solid knots, and the rest of the wood is absolutely perfect. So when you're looking and kind of weighing up the pros and cons between a first-quality pine hive and a second-quality cedar hive like they have in this range here from Thorns, there is no competition for me whatsoever. Always go with the cedar hive. It's such a premium quality wood, and it's just going to last much, much longer. Right, so we'll get into it then and we'll talk you through all of the components that come with this Bees on a Budget beehive from Thorns. So first thing I say is you get a plastic bag, and whenever I see plastic bags coming in the post, I think, did you really have to put that in a plastic bag? And Thorns just shut my mouth straight away because it's 100% degradable. So you can put that in with your food recycling and it breaks down in with your food recycling. So I love that when companies look to do things a little bit better, look to be a little bit greener. Really nice touch, and it doesn't surprise me at all. They have thought of every single thing on this little setup here. So you get a fully degradable bag, you get some glue. So if you're just doing one beehive, you don't have to go and spend £8 or £9 buying some PVA glue. You get that in a little container ready to go. Really nice touch. And then I won't get these out now, but you get various bits and bobs to put these together. drawing pins, pins, and then big nails. But they're really nicely labeled as well. So it says National Brood, Super Nails, National Roof. It tells you all of the different components and where they should go on. Then to accompany all of that, you open up the box and you get instructions. So you get paper instructions for the budget open mesh floor there, you get instructions for the hive assembly, and then you get like detailed assembly instructions for all of it. And then what you also get on here is you get links to YouTube videos And again, Thorns, they've thought of it. They put a nice QR code on there. So instead of having to type in a long YouTube video address, scan it with your phone, takes you straight to the video. Like, they've made this foolproof. Really, really nice touch. But it's designed for the beginner. So this is perfect for absolutely anyone who wants a good quality hive with everything all included. But for the beginner who's not sure what to get, not sure the different frame sizes, foundation types, wiring, non-wiring, wood or pine, and all that stuff. They've thought of everything. Right, so let's get on with the review then. It's a standard wooden National hive made of cedar that's grown in the UK. It's a seconds-grade cedar, so you will get a few knots. So the roof, completely standard wooden National design roof. It's the shallower version, not the deeper version. You've got your integrated vents here, whether you want to use them or not. Don't have to use them. And then you've got a nice solid galvanized roof that goes on top. I'll stick the link up, I'll show you how I put this together, but this is rock solid. Can stick loads of glue on all of the joints. Got a nice flat roof so you can put supers in it upturned, or you can put supers directly on the top here. Solid galvanized, really nice solid galvanized piece of metal there. You can find you get some really poor quality versions of this, uh, and they're a bit snaggy and they're just a bit kind of prone to, to denting. This one absolutely fine, really nice solid metal. And it fits as well. I've had it so many times, you put together a roof and then you go to put the metal on and you just can't get it on and you have to like bend it up to get it on. This one slots perfectly on, perfect size, few little pins to hold it in place. Really nice standard National roof. So like I said, they thought of everything. You get a crown board on here as well, standard National crown board. Porter escapes do come with it, so if you want to do some clearing. I, I'm personally not a massive fan of Porter escapes. But you can adapt this crown board here with a rhombus style escape really, really easily. Going to cost you about £1.50 to buy a rhombus escape, and then you just block that one up, put something in to seal it, maybe a bit of silicone, single rhombus escape on there, and then you've got a really good rhombus clearing board. It's made of 6mm ply, and then it's got pine battens on either edge, so really nice solid crown board. Again, if you're not sure what kind of crown board to get, this is absolutely fine. As long as you've got some sort of central hole in the middle, one on the side's good as well, so you can feed fondant directly on top of the frames like that. Really good crown board. So then we move on to the supers. When I was putting these together, like, I'll do a few close-ups of these, but these are such good quality supers. Like, they're very nearly first grade. There's no defects on them at all. No splits, no cracks, one or two absolutely tiny little knots. The workmanship on the joints, was exceptional. Everything fits together really, really nice and tight. You tap it together, it fits, it lines up square, pushes out a nice little seal of glue, and these are rock solid. So really happy with the quality of these second supers here. Like I said before, I'll stick up a little link just showing you how to put these together. It's only a 2-minute video just showing you how it all slots together, getting the correct size bars in the correct place, making sure that the frames sit flush with the top of the box As per a bottom bee space hive. Now what I love about this setup here is again they've just taken everything out of your hands. So they're giving you an SN1 frame and it comes with thorns foundation as well, wired as well using a brood pattern on the wax. So they've taken all the guesswork out of it for you. Comes with castellations as well. So you, you can run that system if you chamfer down one of the sidebars and turn it into a wooden runner system. But I wouldn't recommend that if you're starting out. I would just go with this. You've got 10-frame castellations in there. The bees should draw that out just about fine. It's a really, really good quality super. Handhelds on both sides, but that's the wooden national design, so you don't have your handhelds there. Bottom bee spacer, everything's flush on the top. Castellations in there, really good quality product. So then, queen excluders. I'll stick a link up there talking to you about the numerous queen excluders that are on the UK market. This is what I'm working with going forward. Standard plastic molded queen excluder. Really, really good. The cheapest ones that you can possibly get in terms of versus steel or versus punched zinc or anything like that. And it comes with the package. I do like that. It's a bit of a frustration when you buy a hive and it doesn't come with a queen excluder, especially if it doesn't say it doesn't come with the queen excluder, because it is quite an important piece of kit. Obviously fits perfectly on like that. Fits completely flush on the frame, so you've got bottom bee space frames that sit flush with the top, and then you've got your queen excluder that sits on top like that. Really nice, good quality queen excluder though, like it's thick, it's heavy, that is going to last for years and years. So then onto the Brood Box, and in the Brood Box you get your DN4 frame, so you get a self-spacing frame in the Brood Box, and the box comes with metal runners instead of castellations, and that gives you the ability to slide things around a little bit, You even get a dummy board that comes with it. Dummy boards are so invaluable for beginners because if you can imagine, you're going to pick up your nuc, you're going to take out your 5 or 6 frames, you're going to pop your nuc in, and then what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to dummy that down a bit. You don't want to put a 5 or 6 frame nuc into the middle of a hive and then just fill it with foundation, especially early on in the year. You want to dummy it down, let them build out a frame like that, keep on moving it back, keep on expanding that colony to the volume of the box. Nice to see that the dummy board comes with it, and it's a good quality dummy board as well. It's made with OSB. Um, what I would say with this, if you're getting this, is I just put a bit of sealant on there. Put some PVA glue, maybe some melted wax, maybe some Vaseline, just something to seal that up a little bit. These will last for years, but you can get a little bit of moisture ingress in there eventually, so I just give that a little seal. Taught you a little bit about the frames. Not had a single defect on any of the 31 frames that they send you, and And again, this is key. They send you 10 frames for each of the supers, and then they send you 11 DN4 brood frames for the brood box. So when you're buying sets of 10, it's so annoying. You buy a brood box, you buy 10 frames, and you realize you're one short, so you've got to go and buy another 10. In this kit, everything comes and it's got the correct number. So you get 11 DN4 frames plus a dummy board, which is what you really want in a wooden national setup. You get galvanized metal runners. I'll show you the link there. It shows you how to put this up, how to get the spacing right. Just remember what you're looking for is everything should be flush. So these 2 bits here need to be flush. All of that needs to be flush. And that's called a bottom B-space setup. As you can see with the super, no defects. This is top quality English grown cedar from sustainable forests. Really, really good quality wood. I'm very, very impressed with this kit. So then we move on to the floor. And you get your standard Cedar entrance reducer. So you can have your entrance open like that, let the bees flow in and out, and then if you want to, you can close it right down to about 7 or 8 bee spaces. Some of the other entrance reducers have a single slot there, and they are quite handy, but you could easily adapt that if you wanted to. You could just drill a couple of holes like that, bee space size holes, so maybe with an 8 or 9 millimeter drill bit, just 1 or 2. And then if you've got a real issue with wasps, you can just turn that around that way And you've just literally got 2 or 3 single bee spaces to protect. In terms of the floor, this is just a standard wooden national floor. One thing I would say is on the instructions it doesn't say to glue it. It doesn't explicitly say to glue it. It may be inferred. I would always glue these as well. I know it's only a very simple butt joint, but for the sake of just sticking a little bit of PVA on there, popping the nail in, I would do that. It gives it a little bit more strength. And then you've got 2 runners on the inside and you've got a simple monitoring board like that. And anybody who knows me and watches my videos, you know that I get really frustrated with, with monitoring boards because they sometimes don't leave enough space between the Varroa mesh or where it gets pulled out. And safe to say, this one is no issue at all. There's loads of space so you can really accurately monitor any detritus that's falling on that board. More importantly, you can accurately analyze the number of Varroa that are dropping down once you've done your treatments. So there you go, that's it for the review. I've reviewed everything about this Bees on a Budget hive setup: the roof, the crown board, the super, the queen excluder, the brood box on the floor. And safe to say, absolutely spot on. There is nothing I could improve about the whole of this setup, and there is nothing I could improve about the quality of any of these components. They really are a very, very good setup. And what I just love is, is the way that the package is put together. It comes in either one or two boxes depending on how your courier sends it. And you open it up and you just know what's going on. Everything's spoon-fed the whole way. It's just little pots, little pots of glue. The instructions that they give you, the YouTube links, the QR codes, they make the process so easy for you. And I just love that they put so much thought into that package because they understand that when beekeepers buy things, and beekeeping is an expensive hobby, you don't want to be buying your kit and then realizing you're missing something, or you realize you bought the wrong queen. It's Or you've done something wrong and you have to go back into the market and buy something new. So I'm very, very happy to recommend this product. If you're looking for your first beehive and you're looking specifically for a wooden cedar hive, take a look at the Thorns beehive sets. They come with absolutely everything that you need. You definitely won't be disappointed. So that's it for the review. I hope you've enjoyed this one. 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. Bye.