Cut Comb frame.

[Into the lions den]

Without wishing to derail this thread this is an opportunity to ask about the spacing you use on your bs frames not that I imagine it would have much bearing on the weight but I *think* I remember, some years ago, you writing here (in agreement to a comment by Pete Little) that you'd prefer to use inch and one half spacing - hope I'm not misrepresenting what you wrote. I presume you'd need to keep standard langstroth spacing in those hives so it might make economic sense to have everything milled at the same but this is a question which I've been meaning to ask for a while.

Its actually approx 37mm....1 7/16. A little wider than the standard frames you get in the trade these days. Its the OLD standard spacing and we prefer it...so its 11 to the box rather than 12 with the slimmer frames of today. We long ago dispensed with the < on the sidebars......just going for plain flat edges as its makes no difference and is rare outside UK anyway...so to allow for wax/propolis in small amounts the frames are thus a shade under the 1 1/2. The Langstroth are 35mm...so marginally slimmer.

The spacing is nothing to do with the cut comb however...it was our historic size...my father started the unit in 1950 and there was only the wider spacing then....but having used both we find the modern spacing a shade too tight and you get more bald patches in the combs are not properly flat. That in itself is a now obsolete reason as you get virtually no sagging and bending when using prewired frames with unwired foundation rather than tradition grooved frames with wired foundation. Pic below illustrates the above...no <, and when new, as these were last season, there is a little free space....so they dont get all tight when there is a bit of wax or propolis on the sidebars.