A National-Dadant beehive ?

[chrisb]

Before he said the above, he said;
My own experiences with 14 x 12 frames is that although totally suitable for the highly prolific boom and bust hybrids, they are too big and heavy to handle for elderly or frail beekeepers....

That was the only thing that he mentioned lifting. I didn't assume that!

Or was what you quoted all you wanted to see ? Twice now.


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YES I can read English woop woop

 

[Little John]

Before he said the above, he said;
My own experiences with 14 x 12 frames is that although totally suitable for the highly prolific boom and bust hybrids, they are too big and heavy to handle for elderly or frail beekeepers....

That was the only thing that he mentioned lifting. I didn't assume that!

Or was what you quoted all you wanted to see ? Twice now.


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I replied to what he had just said - including the 'gunnels' reference (which I note you are ignoring in your attempt to 'spin' this in a direction which suits you) - not to anything relating to frames he may have said earlier.

In case you missed it - let me repeat the line here:
" who can struggle with a 11 frame standard brood box packed to the gunnells with bees as it is!"

Here, he was very clearly referring to a whole BOX of frames. Jeez - he even counts the number of frames the box holds as well as using the word 'box' itself !

But - why make any reference at all to frail and elderly beekeepers ?

I am conducting an experiment - with one colony, in one hive, for Myself, in My location, with the bees that I am keeping here - and I thought that this experiment might possibly be of interest to other people - expecially those who find themselves in a similar situation.

At no time have I said that every beekeeper (including the elderly and frail) should adopt 14"x14" frames. I am not some kind of latter-day Pied-Piper wishing others to blindly follow me. If others see this in my posts - well, I can only be responsible for what I write, and can't be held responsible for how others interpret those words to suit their own particular agendas - for "people see what people see" - their perceptions are a window into what is contained within their own minds.

I couldn't give a tinker's cuss whether another single person builds a National-Dadant beehive - it's something I want to experiment with, and I'm cautiously confident that it will be a success. Whether I then make more, remains to be seen. There's always the chance that it might fail, and that 14"x12" will then be selected as the answer - for me. What others choose to do is up to them.

Including the old and frail. For I have no designs whatsoever to produce a beehive for other people - only to give other people information upon which they may make their own choices.

For reasons known only to themselves it would appear that some people would prefer I didn't. Perhaps they are the Pied-Pipers of the beekeeping world ?

And - seeing as you like to nit-pick the posts which people write - you may care to explain the reference which was made to Aldous Huxley's comment, "Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean" ?
AH wrote those words in the Forward to 'Brave New World', in the context of someone experiencing remorse (guilt) following bad behaviour - and whether such remorse was useful. His view was that immersing oneself in remorse will not 'wipe the slate clean' - hence the quote.

So - while you are nit-picking your way through this particular post, and using your claimed skills at interpreting what someone else had intended to say - perhaps you might kindly explain what relevance this quotation has to the subject in hand ?

LJ

 

[Cussword]

I didn't bother reading your full reply, you clearly choose to understand what you want. By all means continue to do so.

It's not that important to me.


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[Gilberdyke John]

or stupid, childish ...

But par for the course.

I took JBM s comment in the view why are you trying to invent another type of beehive as yet another variant on the already overloaded market. By all means play about with your own colonies to your hearts content but don't fondly expect everyone to follow your lead. Now if you had trialled and proven a real benefit it would be interesting but probably only gain a niche toehold in the marketplace. Probably akin to the Sun hive (whatever happened to that? )
However I wish you well, come back when you've finished development and are ready to market the concept

 

[mbc]

Bees like tall stacks, not so much long horizontal formations.

 

[Little John]

I didn't bother reading your full reply, you clearly choose to understand what you want. By all means continue to do so.

It's not that important to me.

I really don't understand why you've been poking your oar in, anyway.
LJ

 

[Little John]

I took JBM s comment in the view why are you trying to invent another type of beehive as yet another variant on the already overloaded market.

As far as I am concerned there is no 'market'. Anyone who thinks so is making an assumption based on their own view of beekeeping.

By all means play about with your own colonies to your hearts content but don't fondly expect everyone to follow your lead.

A pity you used the words '"play about", for that does sound a bit dismissive, but you've put your finger very nicely on the key issue of why the usual (for this forum) acrimonious exchanges have developed.

I have absolutely no wish for anyone to copy me - why would I ? I couldn't care less if not a single person made a similar hive - but - if anyone should choose to copy this idea, then I would be more than happy to pass-on whatever knowledge and experience I may have.

Now if you had trialled and proven a real benefit it would be interesting but probably only gain a niche toehold in the marketplace.

Again - there is no market place - I'm not selling anything, not even an idea.

However I wish you well, come back when you've finished development and are ready to market the concept

You cannot seriously expect me to return ? I find it interesting that the only constructive comments made (before your own) were from female members. I suspect there might well be some male one-upmanship involved here.

I'm actually extremely annoyed - not with anyone here - but with myself. I had stopped posting here because of the behaviour of a small cohort of individuals, and had forgotten just how unpleasant people here can be.

So, no - I won't be returning. I can always be contacted via Beemaster or Beesource, where different, less negative attitudes prevail.
LJ

 

[Little John]

Bees like tall stacks, not so much long horizontal formations.

For the benefit of those who appear to erroneously believe this 'National-Dadant' hive to be a Long Hive:

And a shot of the hive earlier today, when I swapped yet more 14"x14" frames for National Deeps. The frames can be seen in the foregound.

That's all. Bye.
LJ

 

[pargyle]

Bees like tall stacks, not so much long horizontal formations.

Whilst I hate to disagree with you ..in my experience (bearing in mind that I have a 14 x 12 Long deep hive with 25 frames in it - although it is heavily insulated) bees do very well in these type of hives. They may not produce the volumes of honey that you would get in a vertical hive but in terms of colony development they produce huge colonies - I've always seen more frames of brood in my LDH (compared in the same time frame) than in the standard 14 x 12's I run.

However, there are some issues with Long Deep Hives (principally they can really only be considered as static hives) but bees 'not liking them' is not one of them. Perhaps the fact that hollow tree cavities tend to be vertical has led to this assumption - but if trees cavities were horizontal and of a size that reflected 20 or so frames we could see a preference from the bees ?

I saw photos of a cut out, last year, where the bees had settled (and had been living for some years) in a void above a porch - they had no chance to build vertically and they had built out and virtually filled the whole width of the void (nearly 5' wide) with comb that was over 18" deep in places ... It was a huge colony and threw out two or three swarms every year, but the property was being renovated and they had to go ... the beekeeper who did the cut out had standard nationals and had to immediately put them into double brood.

I think the vertical format of our hives is there for the benefit of the beekeeper not because bees like it - and I'm certainly NOT suggesting that everyone should move to LDH - but it is interesting to see what bees do in them.

 

[Fusion_power]

I think the vertical format of our hives is there for the benefit of the beekeeper not because bees like it - and I'm certainly NOT suggesting that everyone should move to LDH - but it is interesting to see what bees do in them.

The vertical structure of modern hives is to accommodate the natural tendency of bees to work upward and to accommodate the human proclivity for taking honey from bees with the ease of removing a box from the top. That vertical structure is responsible for one of the weaknesses of Langstroth and BN hives in that all of the supers have to be removed before brood nest manipulations can be made.

The stated form and structure LJ has proposed for his hive will give it a few distinctive advantages. He will have fewer combs to inspect. Swarm management will be a tad easier. He can use shallow frames on it with the ease of adding an appropriately sized box. From a cost perspective, it will be cheaper than the BN's for a given volume of interior space.

This is not relevant to his hive design, but answers the question I posed earlier. The singular weakness of most long hives is that they are not designed from the start with ability to add honey storage as needed. With Langstroth or Nationals, just add another box on top when needed. Most of the benefit of a long hive comes from having ready access to the brood next. Stacking supers on a long hive removes that advantage. This puts most long hive designs such as Layens, TBH, and others at a disadvantage as compared with stackable super designs.

Little John posted about doing something for his own edification and was met with varying levels of ridicule and derision. I met similar levels of sniping when I posted here, and to some extent on beesource, about converting to square Dadant depth "Brother Adam" hives. Have we lost the wonder and joy that comes from doing something different, especially when it comes to the bees we enjoy managing so much?

 

[Cussword]

As far as I am concerned there is no 'market'. Anyone who thinks so is making an assumption based on their own view of beekeeping.



A pity you used the words '"play about", for that does sound a bit dismissive, but you've put your finger very nicely on the key issue of why the usual (for this forum) acrimonious exchanges have developed.

I have absolutely no wish for anyone to copy me - why would I ? I couldn't care less if not a single person made a similar hive - but - if anyone should choose to copy this idea, then I would be more than happy to pass-on whatever knowledge and experience I may have.



Again - there is no market place - I'm not selling anything, not even an idea.



You cannot seriously expect me to return ? I find it interesting that the only constructive comments made (before your own) were from female members. I suspect there might well be some male one-upmanship involved here.

I'm actually extremely annoyed - not with anyone here - but with myself. I had stopped posting here because of the behaviour of a small cohort of individuals, and had forgotten just how unpleasant people here can be.

So, no - I won't be returning. I can always be contacted via Beemaster or Beesource, where different, less negative attitudes prevail.
LJ

Knock yourself out.



I bet you have to answer this. Last word and all that.


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[wessexmario]

It's true that bees natural habitat is often a hollow tree,

but it's also true that very often they'll establish a colony in a hollow tree that has fallen.

 

[Hivemaker.]

A pity you used the words '"play about", for that does sound a bit dismissive

ROB Manley

There is no pain to some people like the pain of taking in a new idea.
Such people cannot bear the thought that what they have accustomed themselves to believe is best can possibly be improved upon. This state of mind gives rise to a sort of bigoted intolerance that amounts to utter stagnation and a successful business, certainly a bee-farming business in this country requires the exercise of an active, progressive, and open mind. Try to cultivate the habit of looking for good ideas, and of then bringing them to the acid test of experiment

 

[Finman]

Yeah, and those idea inventors does not understand, that those ideas has been used somewhere 50 - 100 years.

Like Finnish beekeepers, lots of people have traveled in different countries to see, how others nurse their bees. There are no secrets in beekeeping.

Dadant has been uses decades in many countries. Longhives have been noticed impossible in modern beekeeping.

Beekeeping tools and furnitures are very expencive. Makes no sense that you just renew you property without a heavy reason.

When you live with beekeeping along decades, you see, what rubbish people invent, which gives no added value.

I invest nowadays into searching good pastures. Different frame types do not give more honey kilos. IT takes enough time when I keep my recent furnitures in condition. Life must have something else too than kill all time with couple of hives. You have only one life.
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[Finman]

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This morning I phoned to my professional friend to ask one guy's special hive nursing method, which I have difficulties to understand.

Yes. Problem is not in his hives. It is between his ears.
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[Fusion_power]

I haven't seen an example here of anyone documenting how to manage a large broodchamber hive. I had read and re-read Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey in hopes of figuring it out, but was still approaching the problem just like I would have managed a Langstroth hive. It is the wrong way to manage a large brood chamber!

Management of a large brood chamber hive revolves around using a queen excluder and removing all extra frames above what the cluster covers. These should be removed in mid-winter which is sometime in February or March as weather permits. As the cluster expands, return frames until the queen is laying in all the frames she can fill. If she fills 5 frames, that is fine, if she fills 7 frames, that too works, just don't give more frames than she can fill. Leave the empty space at the side of the brood nest with a follower board beside the last frame of brood. That empty space acts as a buffer area for clustering room and as a direct path to the supers above for foragers to travel without entering the brood nest. The empty space is also key to swarm prevention! Add supers above the brood chamber as early as they can possibly be needed. Keep adding supers as the bees fill them. The natural tendency of bees is to work above the brood nest, not beside it so they will avoid building comb in the empty space at the side of the brood chamber, but if supers are not added as needed, they will build comb which has to be removed.


We all are encumbered with something between our ears, even finman. Whether we use it to think or as a hat rack is a personal choice.

 

[Finman]

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My queen's can lay as much as they want. I do not use excluder.

I do not understand, what is a large brood chamber?

And if I do not learn to nurse those honey bee bugs in 54 years, what I have missed then, that I should learn something more. I hardly learn anything during my last 10 years.

 

[Finman]

. The natural tendency of bees is to work above the brood nest, not beside it so they will avoid building comb in the empty space at the side of the brood chamber,.

In nature bees work downwards. They cannot go up, because the nest cavity has the ceiling.

But if you ventilate the hive too much, bees move the broodnest uppermost to the place where bees can maintain the brood heat 36C .

 

[Finman]

.
When I situate my hives now on rape fields, the hives will have 3 langstroths and 5-6 mediums. Most of space is needed for nectar.

Quite tall hives, and not pleasant to nurse or inspect, but those have enough space to store all stuff what bees get daily from pastures.

 

[Fusion_power]

In nature, bees situate the brood nest near the entrance and honey storage away from the entrance. In winter, the bees work their way back into the stored honey until fresh nectar starts to be harvested in excess of daily needs. Then they reverse course and backfill the now empty combs from winter feeding.

This was the subject of a lot of work by Quinby 150 years ago. He understood the natural cycle and designed his hive to take advantage of it. He made his hive small at 2000 cubic inches which tended to force most colonies to throw one or more swarms. This was desirable in beekeeping of his day since it provided plenty of new colonies. He made it long so the bees would focus the brood nest near the entrance and winter stores in the back of the hive. This style hive was state of the art when box beekeeping was practiced. Quinby used his hives to produce honey by the ton and flooded the New York market in the 1860's.

To state that bees work downward does not do justice to the actual sequence. Honey storage is above and/or behind the brood nest and the brood nest is situated between the honey storage and the entrance. Therefore it is correct to state that honey is preferentially stored above the brood nest in large brood chamber hives because the brood nest will be between the entrance and the honey. Guess what happens when you put the entrance at the top of a hive?