Grin, I built my own deeps with rabbeted ends. A professional may have been able to square things a bit better than me with big box store 1x12's using hand tools. So mine were never super tight to start, but the boards have started cupping and the gaps are now larger.
I think i'd suggest tight boxes and possibly adding cleats to help pry. The bees are probably going to put more propolis on a gap than they would on a tight joint.
I've started buying finger jointed boxes and assembling them myself. For me it's cheaper and I get a better box. Time will tell but I think the tighter boxes will outlast the loose ones.
Fabian

 

A couple of mine have a gap that bees can just squeeze through and they seem to love it. They will seal it if they want to.

 

The bees will seal surprisingly large gaps. That said, bee size gaps alow robbing until sealed off and again after working the hive somewhat. Smaller gaps can protect families of SHB, though they can also imprison them. Tight boxes can end up as broken boxes if too stuck. I aI'm for tight and accept gaps up to about SHB hight. The SHB can be managed a bit better than robbing in my region.

 

A couple of my new boxes have finger joints that are ever so slightly misaligned so there is a very small gap.

How small a gap can a SHB fit throught/in?

 

A couple of my new boxes have finger joints that are ever so slightly misaligned so there is a very small gap.

How small a gap can a SHB fit thought/in?

Small hive beetles will fly straight into your hive along with the bees.

 

Boxes, whether tight or not will still get propolized. In Montana I would want the best fitting boxes I could provide to avoid chilly drafts.

If you have the woodworking skills to make them perfectly fitting, flat, and square, then treat your lucky bees to the best houses money can't buy.

There is no benefit to be had from leaky, poor-quality boxes.

Enj.

 

I appreciate everyone's thoughts, thanks! A gap a bee could squeeze through is way beyond any gap I'd leave in place but bees are adaptive and industrious builders so they would work with just about anything we throw at them.

 

A saving grace in this part of the world is that I don't even know what a hive Beatle is. Okay I've hear of them but never seen a single one.

 

I didn't make these. If I had, I would not have used those pieces and would have adjusted my jig.

 

Grins; Do you happen to be using an especially blunt hive tool? Some are crudely blunt and hard to drive into the kerf. The longer the taper the greater the parting power. You can paint the box edges with petroleum jelly but not if you are regularly moving whole hives.:no: Some bees seem the be able to make a penatrating glue almost like CA! others not so much.

 

My hive tool is quite new, heck, all my stuff is. I did fit my first round of boxes too tightly because it was really hard to work the tool into the nearly nonexistent gap. The corners are now beat up enough to get the tool in fairly easily and this latest round of boxes will not fit as tightly. As to your rolling eyes, I find it much easier to inspect a lower brood box with the one above removed, those x-ray glasses never worked for me.

 

When I assembled mine I had to plane some areas to get a tight fit. I primed and painted them with 2 coats of good quality paint. By the end of the season, I had some large gaps. As you know as a furniture maker, its hard to prevent pine and fur from shrinking and expanding. Especially the new growth wood we have to deal with now. The gaps weren't large enough for a bee to fit through, but I noticed a lot of bees hanging out there which I believe were robbers. I taped the gaps with painter's tape to disinterest them and to keep the drafts out.
I plan on getting a thinner hive tool as Crofter suggests because some of mine are really tight. I think the next time I get boxes I will cut out a small amount of wood 1/8" deep the width of my hive tool so I can get the tool started without gouging up the box.

 

Grins,
I know this may go against your nature as a furniture maker and make you cringe, but take a hammer and gently tap on all 4 upper corner edges of the boxes at a 45 deg angle. Or shave them down a little with a file. With a downward depression in the wood on the upper corners, water will run off but it opens up enough of an area to insert the hive tool to separate the boxes.

The bees are going to propolize the boxes together, gap or not. This gives you a bit of an opening on the corner to insert the hive tool and have a little leverage with the tool.. then the boxes will snap apart more easily.

 

I think denting the corners is a really good idea, my boxes in use are all dented now from the pressure of the hive tool but I may just give the new boxes a whack before the bees get them. Thanks.

 

Mine were built from store-bought parts, and many of them wound up with gaps as large as 1/8", large enough that I've been tempted to caulk the worst gaps.

If I had a really big planer, I'd be inclined to pass new boxes thru to make no gap. But I have found that planed edges of fresh supers are as slick as if you'd used Vaseline, when first stacked.

The bees eventually fix either problem with an application of prophylis.