Metal Frame Runner Hack - Metal Can Frame Runner Protection - Beekeeping Hack

In this video, I'm going to show you a really quick, cheap hack to protect your plastic poly runners. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. I love a hack. I love a cheap hack to make beekeeping easier. I hate spending money unnecessarily, and if something can be fixed cheaply, I much prefer to fix it myself than to pay for a really premium option. However, time does come into it. I don't like long, time-consuming hacks. The hack I'm going to show you today though was shown to me by someone on YouTube. I think it's a really neat way that you can protect poly frame runners in your poly hives, in your poly nucs, and it doesn't cost you a penny. So this is just a nuc that I pulled out of storage. This one's due to get a really good clean. It's a little bit sloppy, but as you can see what we have here, that's That is a plastic poly runner. The frames just sit directly on that, and it's a little bit fragile, it's a little bit weak, and over time it can break and it can degrade. In the Abello poly nucs, these are plastic, and I just find— haven't used the Abello ones— they're so superior in terms of the integrated plastic runners. I wanted to come up with a really nice neat solution to protect the ones that I already had. Somebody showed me this method. I think it works great. And now I can share it all with you. So the method is so, so simple. All you need is a can, a used metal can, some glue, and some nails. Simple as that. You can get the can for free. You've probably got some glue knocking around. And if you haven't got nails knocking around your shed, then you need to go and buy some nails so that they're knocking around your shed. So simple though. All I'm going to do is I'm going to cut that can down, get it to the right size, bend it around that Poly frame runner, beat it into position, and then I've got really good metal protection strengthening the weak areas of the poly hive. So I've got my trusted Makita angle grinder here. Cordless angle grinder is my number one favorite tool because it tends to be the thing that you need out in the field the most. I really do like this one. What I'm going to do is I'm going to chop the can up, spread it out into a nice sheet, and then I'm just going to apply it to these frame runners To strengthen them up. Right, so we've got a sheet of metal. You can do that any size can you want. That Oust can's a little bit more difficult to cut into, so use my angle grinder. But if you're doing it with like a hairspray can or a paint can, any can you want, you just want this piece of flexible metal. That's what you need. Tin foil is just way too thin. Sheet metal is just way too thick. You want something that's going to bend like this. Then what you need to do is you take your piece of metal like that. And you just position it in like that. And as you can see, it's already starting to bend. It's pretty much as quick as that. All you want to do though is you want to get something just to beat you around here a bit, beat it into the space because you want to maintain that single B space underneath. So I find anything will work with that. Bit of pliers will work, anything that you can use, just beat it into position. Just want to get in and fold it like that. You can take your time on this if you want, or you can just do it as quick as you like. Then once you get it out like that, you just want to take it back out and fold it just to even out that profile. Difficult to do that in position, but as you can see, you're just trying to replicate the profile of that Frame Runner. Really easy to do. Do it on both sides like that. You can take your time, get it nice and right, and then all we're going to do is we're just going to glue it into position. If you've not got enough metal or the can's not long enough and you do need a long can, you can just take a second piece like that just to fill up the gap. Once you've got them into position like this, take them out. Little bit of Stix-like, doesn't matter that it's dirty in there, doesn't matter that it's wet, this stuff sticks to Anything, hence the name. Little bit on the runner like that, little bit on this face here as well, and then you just want to apply that back into position. This will set in position now. I like to stick a couple of little nails in there from the nail gun. And there we go. Job is complete. You might think that's not needed, and fair enough, you don't need to do that. I run loads of poly nucs without that little hack, but I do think that will increase the durability and the lifespan of that product by a significant amount of time. It is by far and away the weakest spot on these BS Honeybees and the Maysmoor extension boxes because there's not much poly there. And I find after winter is when you find that this sometimes pulls this away. And I also find as well, as soon as you start to pull a little bit of that poly away, the bees can gnaw on it on the inside as well. Makes it worse. And then it's quite difficult to fix it, and you have to go back and start molding things out or putting runners back in. It's a really easy protective hack, makes your poly nuc last for a lot longer. So this is what it looks like at the end. You can see, nice neat job, no-nonsense beekeeping as always. But what's really important here is we're maintaining that B space. So we're protecting that poly runner, but over here you've still got your frame space, so your B space underneath the lug of the frames. And then we're not interfering with any B space over here as well. That's what you need to make sure with this one— don't interfere with any B space whatsoever. Maintain the B space that's already in there, but protect it where it's needed. So you can see on there now the frame sits perfectly on it. And then if we scroll around to this side over here, you can see that we're maintaining that B space. We're still a bottom B space box and everything sits flush with the top of that runner. So it's worked really well. So there we go, that's it for the video. I love doing beekeeping hacks, I love simple little things like that. I do have to apologize, I forgot who told me that on YouTube. They showed me it though and I thought that's such a neat little technique, I'd definitely do a video on it because it will give you extra life on your poly nuc boxes without any detriment to the colony at all. I hope you enjoyed that one, I hope you give it a go. 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.