Do-it-yourself Long Langstroth hive

I was intrigued by an article In the April, 2018 issue of the American Bee Journal by Caroline Abbot about Long Lang hives and I decided I wanted to build one.  This is a link not to the article, but her description of it on her website.  As with many of my projects, it took a while to get started.  But this winter, I committed to doing it.
First I needed plans.  I wrote to Caroline and she graciously sent me her plans.  Of course, I had to make one change;  I wanted to make a screen bottom.  I found plans for that here.  This had to be made longer, naturally.
I am not a carpenter, nor do I play one on TV, so I needed to find someone who had knowledge and tools.  Maidi had met Collette at spin, and she is a builder.  She expressed interest in building the hive with me.
I attached my old Yakima racks to my Volt and went shopping at San Lorenzo Lumber for 12- foot planks of pine 1x12 and 1x6 as well as a couple sheets of plywood.  Then I set a date with Collette, expecting it to be a 3 to 4 hour project.
At first it went quite well, building a long box.  Unfortunately, one end was not flush and when I tried to even it (using Collette's planer), I had difficulty setting the depth of cut and ended up making the box 1/4" too shallow.  I went back to the lumber yard and then to Collette's and built a second box.
We used her router table to build the side bars of the screen bottom board, and even though I did a kind of sloppy job, it worked okay.

The box sitting on the screen bottom.  Still needs to be painted

The to make the roof.  The original plans called for a peaked roof, but Collette suggested making it flat, and since that would be easier, I acquiesced.  A mistake.  There needs to be some space above the inner covers and the roof for feeding.  I had already cut the roof board so I decided to make a canted roof.

The roof on top of the hive box

Inside view of the roof showing communication and vent holes

I covered the roof with roofing paper left over from building the garden shed.  Then I had to figure out how to attach it with hinges.  Collette had suggested a piano hinge, which sounded great.  Unfortunately, I had not realized that the roof sat on and exposed the sides of the inner covers and the hinge I had was not wide enough.  Nor did any local hardware stores a wide enough hinge.  An online search found what I needed, and a few days later I had my hinge.  Of course, it was too long, but I new that in advance and sawed it (with some difficulty) in half.

I was able to attach the roof and put on chains to limit the opening, and all set!  Or so I thought.

Problem #1- I had used 3/4" plywood for the roof and it was so heavy that when the roof was opened it would tip the hive over.

Problem #2- The hive components did fit flush in several places.  Bees will fill small cracks with propolis, but these were not small gaps.

Solution #1-  Dismantle the roof and rebuild it with 1/2" plywood.  Fortunately I had an old (<40 yrs.) sheet to use.  Re-assembling the roof was quite difficult.

Solution #2-  fill all the gaps with white, 100% silicon caulk.  Cut narrow strips of wood and glue them to the edge of the roof to make a better fit.

Now, done!

Ready for bees.  It just so happened that a couple of days before finishing the hive, I caught a small swarm in my pulp pot swarm trap.  I put them in a nuc on the the hive stand (so they would orient to the right place) while finishing the hive.  So, when the hive was ready, I moved the frames from the nuc into the long lang.  There are only 6 frames in the box with a following board.
The swarm is very small and I have been watching it closely for the past two weeks.  If it wasn't doing well today, I was ready to make a split from #1 (which is very strong).  However, there was capped brood.  This colony is so small that they cover a patch about 4 inches in diameter on three sides of frame.  I decided to give them more of a chance and transplanted a frame of brood and nurse bees from #1.  We'll see in another week.  I can always make a split or capture another swarm.
Thanks for reading this.  Stay safe and stay well.