# Making beehives with green wood?



## MrGreenThumb (Apr 22, 2007)

Hello

Is it possible to make beehives with green wood? Has anyone tried? If so, any pointers? Would it be worth the effort? I enjoy making hives but never used green wood before.

thx


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## bigeddie (Feb 19, 2008)

Green wood is going to shrink,crack and warp. I wouldn't use green if I had a choice.


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## Kieck (Dec 2, 2005)

What do you mean by "green wood?" Wood that hasn't dried fully? Or wood that has been treated with a chemical to delay rotting that leaves the wood "green" in color?


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## T-Bone 369 (Jan 29, 2008)

bigeddie said:


> Green wood is going to shrink,crack and warp. I wouldn't use green if I had a choice.


Exactly. When it shrinks up the joints will loosen, frames will not fit and bee space will be all messed up. Will turn into a burr comb/propolis nightmare.


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## Daniel Bailey (Dec 8, 2007)

I built 20 medium boxes out of wringing wet cypress in the fall, left them stacked in the sun room all winter and they look fine. 

Remember wood shrinks mainly perpendicularly to the direction of the grain, not so much in length, so allow an extra 3/8's to 1/2 inch for width. cut the length as normal. Also use a dimensionally stable wood like cypress and stack/restrain the boxes when drying.

The lumber I used was not planed, full1" thick so I had to change my box dimensions - standard tops won't fit the boxes I made so I just finished making a bunch of new tops and bottoms today. No big deal since I am basically starting from scratch anyway.

One more thing that might make a difference. I used rabbetted corners, not box joints, I am pretty sure that box joints WILL NOT work in green lumber.


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## danwyns (Nov 11, 2007)

*Don't use green wood*

Got 2 packets (~900 meters) of pine from a usually reliable source last year. Cut one packet into sides and the next into ends. ripped all to 245 mm, machined and assembled boxes. Turns out one packet wasn't properly dried-- many of the sides shrunk 4-10mm, leaving substantial gaps in between hive bodies. After they spent a season out and finished shrinking I ended up cutting over 100 of them into shallows (145mm) for top feeders. Lot of wastage. Some timber may be less prone to shrinking, but modern fast growing pine sure is. 

dw


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## standman (Mar 14, 2008)

From my sawmill operating days, the rule of thumb is one inch/one year. It takes 365 days to air dry a one inch thick board if sheltered from the elements. The width of the board has a negligible effect on the speed of drying. Of course, I would expect species and time of year the timber was harvested would have some impact.


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

I highly recommend Bruce Hoadley's book "Understanding Wood"

http://books.google.com/books?id=zj...oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail

This book is in the library of many serious woodworkers and is full of charts that allow shrinkage calculations for different species.

I wouldn't work with green wood nor will I assume the wood is dry when it arrives on a pallet ready to assemble. 
I got a whole pallet of deeps from a supplier and like a fool assumed the lumber was stable. After a month or so in my garage, I had to go through the whole stack and find mating pieces before assembly. The remaining pieces were rank ordered by size and adjusted to width by soaking in water. This was a necessary evil considering that the box joints wouldn't have gone together otherwise. Of course the wood will move again, but I got the joints glued (not my prefered solution).


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## Cold Bees (May 18, 2007)

*Green wood aging*

My local mill suggests 6 months to almost a year of stacking before using their wood, which is all local ponderosa pine, it sells too quickly for his yard to store it, and so you have to have your own inventory of dried boards. They suggest stacking 1 inch boards on thin firring strips, either in your garage or covered somewhere. Make sure the firring strips are close enough together so no warping develops. You'll still get cracked boards, so you need an oversupply.

Some guys who know wood and torque, can tell you if a box you build will hold together nicely as the wood dries, but I have no idea that way...


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Id let that wood sit for a year or two stacked in a shed, to dry

Youd loose that initial shrink, and when you build, build a bit over sized to compensate for further shinkage. 

Nothing more annoying than a shrunken box. Cant move frames as easy, and thier too short.


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## MapMan (May 24, 2007)

Cold Bees said:


> My local mill suggests 6 months to almost a year of stacking before using their wood, which is all local ponderosa pine, it sells too quickly for his yard to store it, and so you have to have your own inventory of dried boards. They suggest stacking 1 inch boards on thin firring strips, either in your garage or covered somewhere. Make sure the firring strips are close enough together so no warping develops. You'll still get cracked boards, so you need an oversupply.
> 
> Some guys who know wood and torque, can tell you if a box you build will hold together nicely as the wood dries, but I have no idea that way...


Pine will dry _much_ faster than 6 months to a year. Softwoods don't have the same cell structure as hardwoods. Gymnosperms (conifers) have only tracheids for water transport, while angiosperms (hardwoods) have tracheids _and_ vessels, which are closed, hence take longer to remove "bound" moisture. 

I've dried pine under cover in summer months in as little as two months, and in the winter months in an unheated area in four months. In a heated basement, it was ready to go in under six weeks. I'm talking about 4/4 stock, fresh from the log. If I want to be certain that all lumber in the stack is uniformly dry, I run a box fan (or two) through the stack for a couple of weeks.

Of course, climate will determine the drying time, location - sheltered or outdoors, etc. Folks in the Southwest can dry pine in weeks, rather than months... 

For more info: www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr117.pdf

MM


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