# ISOT II - or,...Intheswamp's Simple Oil Tray mod v2 ;)



## Intheswamp (Jul 5, 2011)

Ok, this is after I got some paint on them and about ready to deploy for the late summer wave of beetles coming in. A coat of Zinsser primer and then some Valspar Premium (supposed to have primer in it, too?). The Valspar puts a thick coat on.

Following are several shots to give anybody interested some details of the ISOT mod. In case you weren't aware...if you right click on the image and hit "View" you can see a higher resolution image. Wink

Here are the four I have ready to go. Well, almost. The yellow-front one is too tight...I used a wedge from a frame as the spacer and it was a bit too tight. I will need to file or sand the gap open a bit more...the tray slides but it is tight. Using a 1/4" piece of flat molding worked *much* better:









Front end view showing a tray slid in place. You can see the simple stops so that when you slide the tray in it stops at the correct position...I used some scrap quarter-round but most any piece of wood would work:









Rear view with the tray slid into position:









Rear view with the tray pulled out a bit:


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## Intheswamp (Jul 5, 2011)

Close-up of the left rear corner:









Bottom view with the tray slid all the way forward against the stops:









Bottom view with the tray pulled back a bit showing the flashing with the 5/32" holes drilled in it. It's not necessary to add the flashing but I wanted to try it. 









Bottom close-up showing a corner of the tray slid up tight against the stop:









And finally, a bottom shot of the rear of the tray when it is slid completely forward against the stops on the other end. It needs to be slid completely beneath the bottomboard as you see it so that it helps keep rainwater from entering the tray:


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## Intheswamp (Jul 5, 2011)

Moving on along....

Ok, on one of the two ISOTs that I have under hives I get rain water in the tray and it appears to be the better built one. On the other one very little rain gets inside. They both look about the same... :scratch:

Here are some thoughts put into action regarding stopping rain. I don't know whether I like it or not. The more things added the less simple it gets to be. Anyhow, the trick is to get the oil tray pulled back a little bit to keep water from running in during heavy rains. If there is a small gap between the wooden porch and the oil tray then rain will simply fall to the ground through the screen. My problem is that I haven't found any good cheap trays that fits the needed specs. The baking trays are a bit too long, but are a good width. I'm still looking but in the meantime, here's some shots of what I've done to work with the trays that I have. Undecided

Forward part of flashing has many small holes, too small for shb but hopefully the rain will fall through this when it's blown into the entrance...


A shot showing the holes with the tray slid forward to where it stops against a nail...









Bottom view with tray slid completely forward against the nail. The #8 screen will let the rain fall through and keep bees out...shb are welcome to enter through that lower #8.









Bottom view with tray pulled back a bit to show all of the #8 screen...









Rear view showing the cover over where the tray extends out the back of the bottom board...









A side angle shot of the rear cover for the tray...









And lastly, a bottom view of the rear of the bottom board with rear cover installed...


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## Intheswamp (Jul 5, 2011)

I installed ISOT II bottom boards beneath three beehives Saturday. It worked out well, no major issues in swapping out the bottom boards, though one colony I opened just to freshen up the Beetle Jails seemed to be pretty hot...I'm not sure what all that is about. I had taken off the top box of partially filled honeycomb and started to pull a frame from the next box down when the bees suddenly decided they didn't like me. The top box had seemed a little ornery so I had a single glove on (doing the Michael Jackson thing, I guess rolleyes ) but after removing that box decided to pull the second glove on. When I went for that frame they attacked the gloves and I even had some attack a couple of spots on my bluejeans. I've never had bees act like this before. Very different. Later on I was right in their faces doing some hand clipping of grass/weeds around the hive and they paid me little attention.

Anyhow, here are some shots of those three ISOT II bottom boards installed. You can see my shade frames that I've had on for the last month. When I pulled honey a week ago I found one hive beetle (and it was crawling on a Beetle Jail Baitable. Wink The beetle numbers have been very low this year *so far*. I believe in being proactive against them rather than reactive so all Beetle Jails are freshened up and now four of my eight hives have oil trays beneath them...hopefully I can get oil trays beneath them before too long...the ones without oil trays (whether due to solid bottoms or open screens) all have at least two of the Beetle Jail Baitables or Juniors in them.

The three ISOT II's have the painted front trim. The hive on the right with the blue trimmed bottom board was the original ISOT hive. It had problems with water infiltration into the oil tray so it got a new ISOT. It already had the small canopy on it which I left installed...I'll see if the canopy makes any difference or not...









The small covers on the rear are made out of flashing material. Sliding the trays back a bit to create a gap at the front for rain water to fall to the ground through caused the trays to be too long and extend out from beneath the bottom boards at the rear. The covers seal well against the tray and hopefully will keep water out...naturally some trays of the correct length would work better but for $5 a piece for a heavy duty tray I'm willing to tinker a bit.



























"Hive Row". The shade clothes have worked out well and I've seen no increase in SHB from using it. It basically only shades a small amount of ground at the base of the hives but gives the sides some good protection from solar gain. It is simply some cheap week-barrier fabric (no chemicals) stapled to a "tic-tac-toe" frame. I put them on and place my bricks on top of the material. If I can get 2-3 years out of them I'll be happy.









While swapping out the bottom boards and doing some general cleaning in the beeyard I ran up on a couple of different critters...I'll post about'em in a separate post. 

Well, maybe this will give somebody some ideas...

FWIW,
Ed


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## Scpossum (May 4, 2014)

Very nice post with great pics.


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## Intheswamp (Jul 5, 2011)

Thanks Scpossum. If you don't worry with the metal flashing at the entrance it is a fairly simple mod. For me, the flashing adds the most complexity to it as you've got to add in a cross-piece, cut existing screen, etc.,. Leaving it all #8 screen will work well, then it would only require four pieces of wood, a small strip of #8, a small piece of flashing, and a single nail (for a stop). And, of course, the tray. 

Fairly simple.

Ed


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## Intheswamp (Jul 5, 2011)

Ok, last Saturday we had a *very* heavy rainstorm...receiving almost 3" of rain in about as many hours. It was a hard and blowing rain, the kind that shuts down visibility and walks across the fields in sheets...NOAA issued flood warnings for my area. The trays collected a small amount of rainwater and did not overflow. Considering the intensity of this rainstorm and the fact that the entrances faced the wind/rain I am pleased with the water exclusion of this version of ISOT II.

Ed


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