i cant write from personal experiance but you might look
into top bar hives. they look like a viable home use alt-
ernative to store bought equipment.

I have good luck with used equipment, though it's always been from a beekeeper who can tell me the history of it. Even then buying used equipment is always more of a risk. Used equipment without bees can contain American Foul Brood (AFB), and equipment with bees could contain anything and should be inspected by someone who knows what to look for before you buy.

Scorching the inside of the hive can destroy AFB spores and there are treatments for the frames, but I'd just replace them.

Building your own hives is pretty easy, and the measurements need not be exact. The bees can cause problems even with perfect equipment. Add to that, equipment from different manufactures isn't consistent, sometimes even with their own equipment.

I build most of my own equipment. Bottom boards, and tops from scrap wood from pallets or crates and the boxes from purchased wood (because the scrap wood simply isn't wide enough). There is little need to do the fancy finger joints for the boxes, rabbet joints are much simpler and hold up for the life of the box. There are plans on beesource.

Frames can be hand made as well, but are more complicated and generally not worth the labor in my opinion. I have made several hundred, but now I just purchase the frames.

Here is a link that might be useful: Beehive Plans

In this state, used equipment has to be inspected at the time of sale. I'd concur about used equipment, and have had some success using some.

If you know the beekeeper and he's had no foulbrood problems, it may simply be because he's dosed the bees regularly with terramycin. That doesn't kill foulbrood as much as supress it. If you got equipment from a guy like that, I expect you'd need to continue dosing with terramycin.

Thanks for all of your ideas/suggestion. I expected there'd be plenty to look into.
The link on building your own hives- it's great. I am thinking of just trying this. It would be cheaper than storebought too, and cleaner than used equipment with unsure histories.