Choice of hive

[dpearce4]

I'm looking at expanding from my 20 hives over the next couple of years to 40 next year and then hopefully 60-100 in the next year or two after that.

What I'm trying to decide is what way to go before I spend out on kit.

What type of hive do you use and why have each of you chosen that type of hive?

Also how many of you run just 1 size box be it brood or honey super? I can understand why this could be useful at keeping costs down as its totally interchangeable, but how difficult is it to get bees to draw out the larger frames for honey use.

I run a bit of a mess of hives at the moment 2 nationals, 6 commercial and the rest 14x12 and I have 10 spare home made commercial BB ready for next year, with more to be made between now and spring.

 

[Chrisfnvs]

Hi Doug, i am using Nationals purely because i was taught my beekeeping on them and they suit me, i am switching from 14x12 bb`s over to standard National deeps for everything, the main reason is transporting spare gear to my out apiaries, with some of them being up to 25 miles away from base it is easy to get caught out with several different size frames and boxes, one size for everything opens up a lot more options during inspections etc and give me a good supply of drawn comb, no problems with them drawing it out when they need to, and no problem extracting deeps either with my extractor, for me it makes sense to simplify things both in terms of efficiency and cost, although a know a local bee farmer who successfully works Nationals and Langs simultaneously, i guess it is what works for you Chris

 

[Chris B]

Hi Doug,
Whatever you do go with 1 hive type. Time and efficiency become ever more important as you grow the numbers and little inefficiencies get magnified. I started with Nationals but then picked up some bees in Langstroths at an auction, and then switched to poly Langstroth about a year later. With other "bargains" acquired along the way I ended up at one point with about 60 National, 10 Commercial, 2 wood Jumbo Langstroth, 12 wood Langstroth, and about 250 poly Langstroth. As it was such a pain I've gradually whittled it down to only poly Langstroth and mini-hives for queen rearing, or at least that was the case until I picked up 2 swarms in decommissioned Nationals.
With the polys I did originally intend to keep only the deep boxes for everything, but I have compromised there for the sake of my back and honey is now in mediums.
I chose the polys on cost of ownership. Cheaper to buy and less labour in preparing for use.

 

[Norton]

Hello,
I use langstroth. Single deep for brood, excluder and medium depth supers. Everyone here uses langstroth.

 

[fiftyjon]

I use national deep, national shallow and commercial shallow.
Colonies are normally over double national deeps, OSR crop in national deeps, gives me drawn comb if I extract quickly, other honey crops in the other shallows. A full national deep is quite heavy but a full commercial shallow is a good weight.
I started on national boxes and I'll probably stick with them unless a good offer for a large quantity of a different size comes along.

14 x 12 to me is a bit of a faff but probably just right for the hobbyist (or the EAB!)

 

[beebreeder]

I use national predominantly standard deep double brood and shallow but as 14x12 is popular hobbyist around here I run some for nuc sales, as the boxes die I will not replace them, I am using pxxxxs poly on cost and better wintering, they also transport well on dedicated pallets

 

[dpearce4]

I use national predominantly standard deep double brood and shallow but as 14x12 is popular hobbyist around here I run some for nuc sales, as the boxes die I will not replace them, I am using pxxxxs poly on cost and better wintering, they also transport well on dedicated pallets

This is part of my problem, I want to produce honey but also a few nucs to supplement the income from the honey and also when I reach the number of hives I want I can then sell the splits also. Now the problem is very few hobbiest beeks use lang or commercial so that sort of rules out those, 14x12 is used a lot round here as are the national but I always feel he national is a bit small for the amount of brood produced and can cause the bees to want to swarm earlier. Last year a ran a couple of my 14x12s as double brood and they were my best honey producers, even thought I didn't make them double brood until after the OSR finished.

National as a double brood might work well and for use as supers to and I don't have a problem with extracting any size frames as I have an electric 20 frame dadant extractor which will extract 36 national supers in one go but only 16 14x12. It would then be quite expensive as I have only 2 national brood boxes and have missed most of the sales.

Im still not convinced on the use of Poly, yes I know they are good for insulation but not convinced on the green credentials of them as produced with the use of oil which is dwindling and im really not happy about the use of fracking to get at it.