Homestead Essentials Ultimate Bottom Board (10 Frame) for Beekeepers from Farmstand Supply (2)

I plan to use these bottom boards for my spring splits so [to be fair] I have not actually used this product yet. I doubt the bees will care but I have some concerns.Upon inspecting the bottoms I noticed the screen mesh on them is rather bowed. The pack comes with two bottoms and they both have this issue. One is slightly worse than the other. I slapped on an old deep box and added a frame in the middle. Sure enough the bowed screen touches the bottom of the frame. If I press the screen down, it creates a belly that barely touches the inspection board and will likely catch and drag debris off of it. The screen belly also creates too much bee space under the middle frames, likely creating an issue with burr comb between the frames and screen. This may have happened during shipping or during the manufacturing process.I was also not aware [my fault if it was in the description somewhere and I missed it] that the entrance reducers have so much of an intentional gap between them and bottom board. It looks like the reducers will be able to keep SHBs out of the hive (barely) but deffinetly not able to keep those small "sugar ants" out. The bees will probably propalize them closed but who knows.Like I said before, I have not actually used these boards yet. I'll let the bees tell me how they like them. I will edit my review if anything changes over the next year.

These bottoms should be better when well supported on a surface or stand that has good flat surface contact with the bottom. I would not place these directly on stands like landscape logs, pipes etc. Might be fine on 4x4 if set up for them. Remember- these bottoms could be supporting several hundred pounds if the supers are stacked up and full of honey. The IPM board is a little tricky to insert, but not bad. I think I am going to keep using the wooded bottoms I get from my supply store, but I needed 2 new bottoms quickly, and Amazon had these in the "used" sale for a discounted price. And I did not need to paint them. The two I got had a pretty beat up box and showed some pounding during shipments.

Nice, heavy duty bottom board. It's very easy to install and holds the hive more securely that a traditional wooden bottom board. I will work on converting all of my hives to this product. Speaking of which...any sales sometime soon? :)****update****When requeening, there is not enough room to slide the queen cage into the hive entrance. Also, it is difficult to close in the entrance completely in the case of hive relocation or installing a new hive.

These were well made and probably would work better if used with the supers from the same company, but if you use standard wooden Langstroth boxes you may want to stick with the standard wooden bases. I had to remove the entrance reducers to get my boxes to seat, and when I tried to snug them with straps to move or protect against high windes (I live in the Gulf South) the bases crushed under very little tension. Nice that they won't rot but I won't be buying any more of htem.

When using the mouse guard, Langstroth boxes will not fit properly. you have to cut away tabs in order for the box to fit on the bottom board.Customer service was poor in that I was talked down to about this problem when I called them about it.Bottom line, it is an ok product. the plus side is it wont rot. the down side is it is a bit pricey for what it clams to do compared to what it actually does.

Seem like they will last a long time ,well built but not great design. The plastic board that slides in the bottom will not even come close to sealing off the bottom. Am planning on leaving mine open this winter but I would say if you want to seal your hive up for winter then this wont work well.

The are the best IPM bottom boards you can buy in my opinion. They work great and are a great addition for any bee keeper. When I want to move my hives I just flip the mouse guards to closed and off we go!. Add to it the service provided by the seller Farmstand Supply and you cant go wrong. Reviews that say mouse guards are not fitting their hive boxes are not properly installing them. They are installing the mouse guards backwards and if they simply added them after the hive box was in position it would be obvious. 5 star product!

Easy to setup. It'll fit all 10 frame boxes. If you put the door guards on backwards (like I did first), you're box won't fit. Change the door guards around and the box WILL fit! I had a spare bottom panel and cut a whole in the center to install an Oxalic Acid Vaporizer! When applying I just take the original panel out, slide the modified panel in, blocked the entrance and fired the vaporizer! Easy, simple and clean.