The hive bodies are pretty much finished so I started work on the top bars. I’m going to run a little experiment and use bars with a saw kerf filled with wax in one hive, and small triangular pieces of wood attached to the bar in the other just to see which hold better and/or are drawn straighter. The purpose of each is to give the bees a guide to drawn the comb where I want it, along the bar. I’ve seen both designs on the web and thought I’d test them out for myself. I made a batch of both tonight. Enough for two hives for now. I’ll finish the rest later.

Here is my crude double boiler/wax melter. I used my backpacking stove and an aluminum can. I was able to take the can out and hold it without burning myself and work with the wax for about 5 bars before reheating the can and adding more wax. Thanks to Dave W for the wax!

I first attempted to pour the wax from the can with a little spout, this didn’t work very well. The wax was uncontrollable and came out too fast. So I switched to using a spoon and ladling it out. I still made a mess, just not as big.  I took a small block of wood and scraped off the excess, leaving a nice line of wax. I left about 3” of unwaxed kerf at the ends to help discourage comb attachment to the box sides.

For the other set of bars, I cut down the scrap wood triangles (thanks to Dave W for these also!) to a foot. I applied a little glue and used the air nailer to put in three small brads at cross angles. This is what they look like.

And here is the whole mess to this point, about 20 of each type.