I'm close to building my hives, but have a few things to work out first:
1) In order to increase the flexibility of my supers, I'm thinking of building standard medium sized supers, and then installing some sort of "board" in the centre, to separate the hive into two even parts. This way, there will be less volume for the captured swarms to operate from, essentially allowing my medium sized supers to act as nucs. When the swarm becomes strong enough to "move" into a full super, I can then simply remove the board that's dividing them.
Has anyone does something like this before? I'm not sure if this is an effective idea, or terrible one.
2) I've come to learn that, in my area, there's two standards for plank sizes; 19mm, and 22mm. Can I use differing thickness for my hives? Will this cause some sort of stacking issue and expose my bees to the elements? Should I just stick to 19mm for everything?
3) I've been told that it's best to create detachable bases for my hives, though I'm too inexperienced to know exactly what benefits this brings. I might be spelling this incorrectly, but could I simply use Tex screws to screw on the bottom board to the brood chamber, and then, if I need to remove it, simply unscrew the Tex screws to detach it?
I've had some bad experiences with detachable bases, where they've moved at the bottom when working on the hive, causing angry bees to fly out from the brood chamber. If I am not to use screws to attach the bottom board, what can I do to prevent the bottom board from moving, when in use? What sort of bottom board design should I build?
4) Is it important to put a metal roof on the hive lid?
5) I'm confused about the usage of linseed oil, and gum turpentine. Should I coat all of my wood, before building, with a mixture of linseed oil and gum turpentine? How about the inside of the hive? Or, how about the outside of the hive, before painting it?