Dartington Hive

[Hedgehog]

Hi all,

I've recently got hold of a Dartington from my friend's fella; a guy was keeing bees on his farm but nobody had seen him for a year and is believed to have moved to France! His last parting shot to Chris was along the line of 'do what you want with the hive', so I rescued it. He'd had a lot of trouble with jaspers (wasps), and I was greeted with the sad sight of a large colony of dead bees - with a few stripy yellow-and-black bodies in the mix - and the combs completely robbed out. The hive parts are in good nick, though, and are very well made.

So...... anyone using them? (I believe that Omlet copied the design for their 'Beehaus'.)

 

[Luminos]

090 uses it/them if you can wait awhile for his advice

 

[Skyhook]

A beek of my aquaintance uses/has used one. Reckons it's quite good for nucleus production, but not much good for honey.

 

[Hedgehog]

A beek of my aquaintance uses/has used one. Reckons it's quite good for nucleus production, but not much good for honey.

Ta for the info. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out; I've got a TBH which was successful in the respect of increase - too successful unless you want to be footling around in there a couple of times a week! The Dartington at least gives you the expansion potential of a TBH, but with much easier honey-gathering potential. Just got to give it a good blitz, scorch the frames, replace the foundation and hope for a nice late-season (what season?) swarm!

 

[hedgerow pete]

i built and ran one for about ten years, main plus points, dead easy to use due to its hiieght and lengh for swarm control and for ease of access to user, smaller super boxes make it thee best choice ever for bad back people or for disabled acess , wheel chair users its fantastic, it is very long and large but thats a good thing for splits, uniting and general controll. prolific queens like the fact it can be 22 frames of brood

the down side, its not practical to shift them to heather etc as they get to large and heavy, smaller supers means double the work to empty /use them.

22 frames of brood is blooming long look through.

apart from that i think they are certain a fantastic hive that is vastly under rated

 

[John M]

I am really interested but have no idea how to build one. Any ideas on instructions for either using or building?

 

[Anduril]

New Beekeeping Construction Information for Dartington Hives (New Deep Hives) (Paperback) Robin Dartington from Amazon about £22

 

[John M]

Wow, that was fast. Thanks