At a meeting of my local district a visitor from Grantham Beekeepers expressed her desire for a see-through quilt. This appealed to me. I often want a quick look to see if comb is being drawn or filled. Can I justify the expense when I already have reasonably new crown boards? Peak Hives (www.peak-hives.co.uk) do one for £17 + £10 postage, but that is for a national hive and I’m on Langstroths.

Then it occurred to me that I might be able to replace the wood in my existing crown boards with plastic. It proved to be the simpler then I thought. Most crown boards are stapled together. If you prise the staples out, the central piece of wood will slide out.

Standard Langstroth nuc crown board

Prise out the staples from one end.

 

Remove the end piece and slid out the board.

Now, I may have mentioned it before, but I can not saw straight. So I looked up “acrylic sheet cut to size uk” on Google and there are loads. I settled on simplyplastics.com because I liked the look of their web site. Select the type of plastic you want. I used Cast Acrylic otherwise known as Perspex. Measure the length, width and thickness of the wooden sheet removed from the crown board and enter these measurement into the website. If you want a hole in the sheet you will have to specify its diameter and its position. I also wanted a plug for the hole so bought two disks of the same material, one smaller than the hole and one larger. Paid for the goods and a week later they arrived.

Perspex sheet with fiddly film protection.

Now the difficult bit, removing the protective film. It’s really fiddly to get started. Try running your finger along the edge. That really is the most difficult part. Once you get it started it’s easy.

The large sheet simple slid into the frame. Screwed the frame back together. Stick the small disk to the large disk and job done. Apart from waiting for the glue to dry, the construction only took 20 minutes and another ten on the Internet.

Plastic sheet in place.

 

Staple or screw the ends back on.

Disks of plastic clamped to bench while glue drys.

It really is that simple.

The cost? With delivery just under £20. It will not be much more for the full size Langstroth or National box as it’s the work you mainly pay for.

Finished product