Langstroth frame spacing in brood

[Onge]

Hi all

Just sorted myself out some frames for a spare Langstroth brood box i have.

Looking at the 10 frames there is a half frame gap. is it usual to use a dummy board on this type of hive. I dont remember seeing one in any other pics or vids ive seen.

Its a thorns box and frames so its not like they shouldn't go together ?

All you Langstroth users (i thought they were supposed to be a tight fit)

Help me out

Thanks

 

[Poly Hive]

Sounds about right yes.

When the frames are propolised up a tad the excess space will disappear.

PH

 

[Finman]

.
It is difficult to lift frames if there is no extra space to move frames apart.

 

[Onge]

So do i push them all to one end and get a phat combe at the end ?

or do i space them in the middle with a third of a frame gap either side ?

 

[Poly Hive]

Push them to one side. Next year the "fat" comb will vanish. This is nothing unusual or odd.

Ph

 

[Onge]

ok nice one thanks

 

[Poly Hive]

Modified Dadant?

Same deal.

PH

 

[RoofTops]

I always use a dummy board with my Langstroths. I take it out first with a J tool and then all you have to do with the rest of the frames is crack them off with the spade/knife end of the hive tool and lift the frame with the fingers. If there was no gap which allowed you to give the first proper frame room to be removed there would be a danger of squashing bees as they don't always make perfectly flat comb. It is not uncommon for one face to be convex and the opposite face on the next frame concave. You can't easily remove frames like this without parting them first.

I've made several designs of dummy board and am still not sure which is best. The easiest to remove have a top bar slightly thinner than the gap and a sheet of thin ply down the centre of the top bar. I've also made them with top bars which completely filled the gap but these are much harder to get out as the bees stick them down on both sides. The thinner top bar can be shifted sideways if you do weekly inspections but left for much longer the bees fill the gap with wax. (I have to make an excuse for them about this as they haven't read the book which says they fill all gaps thinner than a bee space with propolis.)

If you don't use a dummy board the bees fill the gap with extra comb in my experience and stick the outer frame to the wall. I have a couple of nucs doing this at the moment as I ran out of dummy boards to put in them. The nucs with dummy boards are doing fine. This is in poly hives/nucs so may not happen in wooden hives with colder walls. I have no experience of wooden hives except one cheap wooden National which I gave away.

 

[Onge]

Ok just when i thought i had the definitive answer RoofTops comes along (ok ill give it a go without dummy board, as less mucking about the better).

Oh and my Dadents have been getting a phat comb too. Though they are a lot more prone to bowing foundation

 

[Hombre]

My experience of Poly Langstroths is:
to equally space the two ends with the hivetool, 4 to 5mm equidistant. I have seen them pushed to one end but it annoys me and got me an ear wigging when I did it. Good enough for me! To inspect, the second frame is normally cracked from both the first and third to make space and removed for the duration of the inspection.