Plywood Inner Covers:Cutting Costs

With todays soaring prices for woodenware it seems reasonable for thost that are trying to be profitable to cut costs as much as possible. Here I will describe how I do cheap inner covers although the idea isn't mine. These inner covers are as the tile here says...........made of plywood. They don't particularly maintain good bee space, but are economical and can help the beekeeper to grow in numbers without shucking out losts of cash for what??? A lid! I don't really think the bees care one bit about bee space in this case and its not as detrimental as frame spacing and box spacing. To make the covers you will need a sheet of 4x8 1/2" CDX plywood (or whatever). The sheet is then cut into lids to fit the dimensions of a hive nice and flush. If one cuts the inner covers out properly you should be able to get 11 inner covers per sheet of plywood. If you can't figure it out you should be able to get 10 at any rate. Whats a sheet of 1/2" CDX plywood cost? Here its about $13 bucks. 13 divided by 11 = $1.18 or $1.30 if by 10. Compare this to 6.99 per inner cover for a certain supplier (no names) at 5 cover rate. Hmmm....you get about 6 inner covers for the price of one and no shipping either. You want a feeder hole in the top, cut a round hole. Want a porter escape hole by all means cut one. The next question is how to put a top entrance in the inner cover? Well its rather simple. You simply cut a small V- notch in the front. I haven't done this yet but if you want to provide dead air space you could use strips of 1/4" luan plywood and staple two across the top of the inner cover to provide a space between inner cover and outer cover but this is optional. I figure that one should get at least 8 years out of a cover if you don't care for them to well and many more if you do. But mostly try not to leave them out in the rain or in wet conditions if possible. Look at the picture below its rather self explanitory.