10-Frames Complete Beehive Kit, 100% Beeswax Coated Bee Hive Includes Beehive Frames and Beeswax Coated Foundation Sheet (2 Layer)

The IMPROVED model is WORTH EVERY penny and includes EVERYTHING needed for a bee home. If you are looking for the perfect gift anyone would love, look no further. You can easily be a hero with this. HIGH QUALITY. SMELLS amazing! I had bees inspecting it before I got finished putting it together. Your bees will LOVE their home! EASY assembly. The pre-drilled holes make it easy to attach screws by hand. AND it makes it simple to know where to put them, even if you have never built a bee hive. They even included easy to understand instructions. Doubt you will need them. Dovetail ends fit each other perfectly. This hive would be a dream come true for ANY beekeeper for Christmas or Special gift. And YES, you can get the body together in minutes. Slap a red bow and slide under the tree. You WILL be a hero. If I got this as a gift, it's so beautiful that I would put it on display on porch while I waited for bees to arrive in Spring! I originally bought the previous model in 2020, and I was not impressed. Scathing review. Nails cracked wood. You look at the pics and you can see what I mean. The prior model was a flop out of the box. I didn't know what I was doing and put nails in wrong spot, splitting wood. The old model didnt have instructions. But this NEW improved model they are selling... it's PERFECT for even a new keeper. Wax coating thicker. It's like a completely different hive. I will give the old model credit. The wax smelled great to bees. I put it on a ladder under a tree, facing driveway, and it lured a HUGE feral swarm in April 2022. The wax coating smells perfect to bees. You can watch the video of the swarm on youtube. (search for #JustBees). I will be uploading a full video of me assembling this. It takes time to edit and upload, and I didn't want a bad review sitting on the most PERFECT hive. This is DEFINITELY on the top of my wish list for my #1 ultimate gift. I want my bee yard full of these beautiful hives. Flowers is bloom, butterflies, bees, and these beautiful hives. Thank You BeeCastle for putting together something that works as good as it looks. Note: the frames inside require a hammer and the instructions recommend you glue before hammering. If this is a gift, just let the beekeeper put them together. The plastic foundation is WELL coated with beeswax. They may or may not chose to use it. They are easy and fast to assemble. 4 nails per frame. Holes are not pre-drilled but might help on frames too. Minor issue. All parts of this hive kit were interchangeable with a 10 frame standard langstroth hive. You absolutely cannot go wrong buying this. 5 stars.

My 13-year-old son has started beekeeping as a hobby, and we couldn't have asked for a better experience with his first beehive. The assembly was straightforward, and the quality of the materials is impressive. Despite the heavy rains and extreme heat we've experienced, this hive has withstood the various environmental conditions. It still looks brand new, as if we just took it out of the shipping box. This hive offers great value and quality. Plus, it has a wonderful smell!

For what you get - two boxes, medium and deep frames, queen excluder, entrance reducer, inner & outer top, and bottom board - you can't really beat it. The wood is good quality overall. The boxes and exteriors are waxed, the frames are not. One frame side slat had a broken piece that I just glued back in place. Otherwise, everything in the shipping box checked out. I noticed that there was only one size of screws in the screws bag - unlike what some other reviewers mentioned about longer and shorter screws. Didn't seem to matter, as they all went into place without incident. I even had a honey bee flying around the deep box as I was assembling the super. ("Not yet," I told her.) This thing is not a complicated build. Putting together all the frames was tedious, but not difficult. Also, the parts only fit one way, so if something looks like it doesn't line up or fit correctly, you've got it positioned wrong. I would also recommend using glue in the frame parts connecting the top bar to the side slats, as you only get a bag of small nails for the frames. Point of emphasis here for novice nailers: Don't be "tap-tap" tentative when nailing the frames together. Be deliberate with your nail whacking and you'll get better results. To put the walls of the boxes together, I used a board and a rubber mallet to evenly knock them in place. (Don't bother with glue for the boxes, as they are waxed.) I used a power drill for the screws, here, but you could hand screw these in place. Now, the long wait for spring...

Easy to assemble and overall a great product. I purchased six of these and sm very happy with the boxes.

Well made good value

This seems like a decent hive. Everything fit together as it should and seems well constructed. The dovetail joints were smooth and tight. The outer boards are waxed and well made. Despite my complaints below, it did actually go together perfectly.... But please keep reading... The directions are a joke, and not a good or funny joke, but a joke that falls flat and makes everyone feel awkward and uncomfortable... 1. Poor use of space (in the direction booklet): (to be clear, the "booklet" is a single 8.5" x 11" piece of high quality glossy paper folded to create a four page pamphlet.) A: The first page tells me in large font that no-one else is allowed to sell their products. Other than their logo (BeeCastle {Registered Trademark}) and the odd "THE UNITED STATES TRUSTWORTHY BRAND" there is nothing else on the entire page. Four inches of white space above, 3 inches of white space below. B. The last page is empty except for about two inches (of 8 inches) that pretends to show me how to assemble the actual hive. These pictures are even smaller and less helpful than the others (see below) and end up being useless since you can not see any details. C. Instead of printing better, larger assembly photos they instead used an entire page of this booklet to show me 16 slightly larger pictures of other items they sell. Yes, they spent more effort and space encouraging me to spend more money with them than helping me correctly build the hive. 2. Tiny photos - Each of the 16 photos included in the assembly portion of the instruction "booklet" are smaller than my thumb. At that size, details, variations, subtleties are impossible to discern. 3. Undescriptive. Or perhaps "Under-descriptive would be more accurate. Especially considering the unhelpful photos mentioned above. For example: STEP 1: "Put the front like this shown bellow" (sic). First of all (besides the spelling error) the photo referenced is not below but above these words. And did I mention the useless, tiny photos? Regardless of whether the photo is above or below... it is useless. STEP 2 is essentially the same as STEP 3 which is essentially the same as STEP 4. Quote "STEP 2: Put the side with front together by assembling the dovetail joints." (Probably a terrific picture showing the dovetail joints but... as mentioned: Tiny=Useless.) "STEP 3: Assemble the side 1." (Picture showing that indeed Side 1 is standing with the front laying flat.) "STEP 4: Assemble the side 2." I'll just go ahead and give you step 5 here. Unless you want to guess? "STEP 5: Assemble the front". Thanks Bee people! This continues through step 8 which states: "STEP 8: Beehive box done". OK the assembler says, I guess I should move on to the next section? ? Why do I have all these pieces of wood that look nearly identical to the ones I just constructed? Oh, these fabulous directions do not mention that you need to do this twice so you have two "beehive boxes". Do that and move on. (Before I do, STEP 7 deserves an honorable mention: "Do X like the frist (sic) picture, until it looks like the second picture." As if one tiny picture wasn't unhelpful enough, they put two in the same space. 4. Assembling the frames: So as not to repeat myself I will say here that most of the issues above are duplicated in this section, including the misspelling and their failure to indicate that you must do each step twice. However, the pictures are so much less helpful. LESS HELPFUL!! "Put the top bar like this" with a tiny picture of like a pale stick. I'll just find something longish and move to... "STEP 2: Assemble the side bar 1". Oh this picture shows like another stick next to the first stick. Or maybe the first stick is just broken... Etc. etc. 5. In the section indicating what is in the package, they show a (tiny) picture of the inner cover, incorrectly identified as the "Bottom and Entrance Reducer", which are actually shown in the next picture hiding under the Outer Cover and identified as "inner cover". As if the person who did the instructions did not actually know the difference between the bottom and the inner cover. 6. There are exactly enough screws (which the directions call nails) to do what you need to do, BUT there are two different sizes of screws. Which the directions DO NOT MENTION AT ALL. So you can assume it doesn't matter (hint: It does). 7. There are about 30 extra nails (which they also call nails). You need forty nails (for the 10 frame version) but they sent like 80. I'm still not sure if I was supposed to use more nails on the frames or they just didn't care to count nails, unlike the screws which they were very precise with. TIP: They do mention somewhere that you "may" apply glue to the corners of the frames before nailing. This should not really be considered optional. They will fall apart eventually without glue. 8. You have now reached the point where you just need to stack these beauties, ah yes, refer to the back page for these directions... (See point 1B above for additional perspective.) The pictures 4, 5, & 6 are basically identical (at the tiny proportions shown) and keeping in mind that as mentioned in point number 5 above, they previously incorrectly identified the "bottom board" and "inner cover", at least here they have them correctly, though unhelpfully, shown in the right order (I assume. Hard to tell with the tiny, tiny pictures). Let it never be said that I am not a problem solver: I hereby offer my services to the Bee Castle people to write better (significantly better) instructions with better and more helpful pictures. I only ask for two 10 frame hives to be sent to me so that I may assemble and photograph for the better directions. That is a bargain. Contact me, or just send me the hives and a contract and I will provide awesome directions in 21 days or less.

This is a standard 10 frame langstroth hive. I tried some equipment I have from other manufacturers and it was all compatible. I would rate the lumber as commercial grade or better. Some knots but none loose, no knots in hand holds. The joinery for the deep in medium are *DOVETAILS* instead of the standard box joint and they went together easily and are nice and tight, very impressive. Just a note that these are waxed so you wont be able to paint them or finish in another way. The frames were excellent, perfectly clear lumber, good fit. The foundation has a good coating of beeswax, I would use as is without adding more as is a common practice with plastic foundation. The only thing that could possibly be considered a negative that I saw was that there are no pilot holes for the nails for assembling the boxes but I use a pneumatic crown staples for that anyways, same with the frames. The cover and bottom board are fully assembled. For the beginner this is an awesome setup. The only other items you would need are a feeder, protective gear, tools and a mite treatment method. I like it!

This is my first hive. It requires assembly but that is straight forward. The boxes are dovetailed and fit tightly. The frames came with plastic inserts with with wax foundation to give the bees a head start. The entire hive is sealed with wax it will help protect it in the weather. I ordered an additional brood box. I am very happy with the quality and the fact it came with frames. (You also have to assemble the frames). Also has the queen excluder and entrance reducer. If I expand my apiary I will get another one of these hives. Note: you may go on ebay and find cheaper hives but I have found many of them are just the box and don't include frames. This hive is everything you need.