Bee Hive Construction Part One

This is my first bee hive.  It looks different than one might think. That's because I have to actually build it.  We worked on building one in "bee class", so apparently that "experience" made me think I was an expert in bee hive building. What I forgot was, I had the assistance of 3 men in my group, 2 instructors for the class and a number of fellow students who were also building the hives. The other thing I forgot is that I didn't actually build an entire hive, just the little inserts where the honey is made.

Oh. And I lost my instructions.

This is the bee hive lid, filled with 40+ pieces of wood.

More pieces to put together.

All of these wood pieces were quite interesting to my "helper" (aka Russell)

In this photo Russell is chewing on a stick from a tree not from the hive. But I had to chase him away several times to keep him from gnawing on all the small pieces of wood. He was kind of obsessed. He did finally get a piece of wood, while my attention was focused elsewhere (like trying to figure out which nails I was supposed to be using and the fact that there seemed to be a lot fewer pieces when we did this in class). Luckily, I caught him before he totally destroyed the wood. I won't know for sure how much damage was done until I put that part of the hive together.

Here's another shot of Russell's "helpfulness". I was starting to feel a little stressed about this project, so I decided for the health and well being of our relationship, he needed to spend a little quiet time in his kennel. He was ok with that, he was more comfortable in the kennel than in this hive box lid anyway!

After a couple of hours, one smashed thumb, (I'm proud to say that I didn't even cuss and I could have. The kids were at school and no one would've heard, but I suffered the pain in silence), several nails and a few ounces of wood glue later, this is what I had finished....

And these are the pieces I have yet to put together:

I was expecting I would be able to accomplish more than I did. Maybe I need to fire my helper and find someone who knows a thing or two about building? Stay tuned for hive building part 2. Hopefully, I'll actually be able to finish it!