Manley Frames.

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Poly Hive

Queen Bee
Joined
Dec 4, 2008
Messages
14,093
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393
Location
Scottish Borders
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
12 and 18 Nucs
R.O.B. Manlyy wrote in Honey Farming P's 67 + 68:

"All our super frames, also, have their top and bottom bars of the same width 1 1/8", which is a great assistance in rapid uncapping, the knife passing under the cappings in contact with both top and bottom bars. why extracting frames are ever made with narrow bottoms, I cannot ever guess."

The side bars are 46mm wide giving 8 in a Langstroth and 9 in a National super.

One down side to using Manley frames is a serious amount of honey is removed in the uncapping process which requires some thought to separate from the wax.

The upside is returning extracted Manley frames gives the wax workers some serious work to do and keeps their minds on building honey comb not queen cells.

The "wall" that Manley frames provides in a super gives an extra air gap on two sides of the super to help the bees maintain warmth.

The same "wall" effect minimises the movement of the super frames and consequent casualties whilst moving hives.

Every bee-keeper should have a few if for just this reason and no other. They are ideal for producing cut comb, and interspersed between your "normal" frames whether on blossom or heather will help you in presenting a lovely present to your loved ones or give you the chance to try for that show bench place, whether with the entire comb, or as cut comb. I used to mark mine with "CC" in permanent marker to identify them easily.

Getting them drawn out can be a bit of a pain but with a mix of some Hoffmans, and the Manleys it is by no means that difficult. The bees seem to like them too.

I recommend them to you.

PH
 
Yes used some this year and they are good.
Standard seems to be 1 and 5/8" side bars (42mm) - not yet tried the 1 and 3/4", but for both sizes get 8 per l/s super so may as well use the 1 and 3/4" in future.
 
They are a pain if you got a scrub queen laying in your supers and are in the process of prizing them apart to find her.

The double wall effect is not necessarily a good one if you like the idea of the sun warming up the hives.

Make sure your extractor will take them.
 
Well MB any queen laying in the supers is a pain and whose fault is that? Ours of course.

It is perfectly possible to extract Manley frames in Tangential extractors with some thought. Of course they work very well in radial for blossom but heather will NEED tangential.

Last time I looked a hive has four sides.

LOL

PH
 
Last time I looked a hive has four sides.

LOL
PH

Interesting concept - inside, outside, topside and bottomside perhaps - LOL

I've decided to have mine with two sides, left and right and two ends, front and back, but am not quite sure where each should be relative to the other, other than the sides and ends are both opposites.

Meanwhile back to the thread :)
 

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