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Hoffman Beekeeping Frame Adaptors

This is a simple and inexpensive item, the one I have drawn is of black plastic, but I have also come across blue ones.

The drawing is larger than life to enable the detail to be shown. Three things should be noted...
The legs at first sight appear to be different in thickness, however shrinkage of the centre portion of the rectangular limb during the moulding process, causes a dip to occur on the face that mates with the adjacent frame, so the effective thickness of this limb is the same as the 'V' shaped one at about 5.75 mm.

There is also a small stud amongst the wording, which reduces contact to a very small area in cases of bad spacing.

Each limb has two partial blind holes that will accept a gimp pin.

The obvious use for these adaptors is in converting straight sided frames to Hoffman spacing so that they may be used in a 'mix and match' fashion, as the blue ones depicted at left.

There are other subtle uses for these plastic mouldings.

A sharp chisel easily cuts through the soft plastic to remove the bridle. The parts that remain can be applied individually to various items so that they line up with the edges of normal Hoffman frames.

I add the individual pieces to the inside face of the ends of brood boxes and supers, as right, so that they butt up to the adjacent side bars of frames. This maintains an adequate gap at each end of the block of frames. On some occasions I have drilled and countersunk these parts and used small screws to apply them instead of using gimp pins.

These small slips of plastic can be added to one side of dummy frames and division boards to help maintain correct spacing.

There are similar adaptor pieces manufactured in beech wood they are identical in shape to the separated parts of the plastic version. I have not used any personally, I believe they are available in Sweden and Denmark.

This other type of plastic adaptor is made of harder plastic and does the same job, but is applied to the inside or outside of a 22 mm side bar, depending on whether you can afford to disrupt the bee space that occurs between the frame end and inside wall of the hive. If they are fitted inside the frame it avoids this problem, but renders the fitting of foundation difficult.

Care should be taken, with this type, to ensure that the triangular edged side is always to the right when looking at the frame from the lug end. Otherwise they will not mate correctly with wooden frames.

Written... 28 May, 03 June 2002, Revised... 11 November 2002