Ok review time!
These are my own photos of the product and my own thoughts. Don't kick me for spellings or bad English I have bashed this review up in 20 minuets and not proof read it.
Lets start at the bottom with the floor.
My first thought are the floor is a nice thick sold looking bit of kit. It has been made to be backward compatible with wooden hives, which sit inside the rebates made for backward compatibility. But I have to ask why would you want to put a wooden brood box on a poly floor? Never the less you can if you so wish.
Unlike Panes Poly nucs the wire mesh for the floor is not extruded into the product. This time the mesh has been screwed into the poly using plaster board screw. On the two floor I got, the mesh was cut a bit on the tight side and would not sit properly and left humps and bumps in it. I had to take the mesh off and trim a bit off both to make them fit proper.
The floor has a built in landing pad for the bees, this looks nice but it may be a problem if your trying to transport a load of these any place, due to the space it take up.
As the pictures show the brood box sitting in-between the rebates
Next part is the Brood box.
I only have the 14X12 brood box at hand. The brood box measures 500mm square on the outside and will take 12 Hoffman frames or 11 Hoffman frames and a Dummy board (Standard National size on the inside). There is a slot extruded into the Brood box to allow a rail (which is supplied) to be fitted for the frames to sit on. If the rail is used the Brood box with give bottom bee space, if you choose not to fit the rail you will have top bee space.
The Brood box will fit on the Poly floor either in the warm way or the cold way and it fits nicely into the rebates made for backward compatibility. But if you want to use this Brood box with any other type of floor it may prove difficult due to the brood box being shaped to fit into its own floor.
The walls of the Brood box measure 40mm on the walls that don't hold the frames and 65mm on the walls that do hold the frames. But where the walls have had a rebate taken out for handle holds the wall measures 50mm on the sides where the frames sit and only 25mm on the other sides. This is not so bad on the 14X12 as the handle holds are lower down but on a normal brood box this will mean most of the 2 walls that don't hold the frames are only 25mm thick.
The Super
The super is the same external and internal sizes of the brood box and comes with the same option of inserting a rail for the frames to sit on. It also allows you fit a pair castellated spacers. The super is the same thickness as the brood box on each of the walls.
The feeder
The feeder sits on top of the hive and is of an adaptation on the miller design. The two walls that stop the bees getting into the syrup are meant to sit flush with the top of the feeder, they don't in this model. They stick up 12mm, I am not sure what the line of thinking was here. Once the roof is placed on top of the feeder there is space for the bees to run along the top inside edge and get into the feeder and drown! Looking at the roof it may have been designed to fit over this but it doesn’t! and there is a clear 12mm gap left between the roof and the feeder walls, which is more evident when you strap the roof down and see it bend over these two walls that protrude over the top of the feeder.
The roof
The roof is a snug fit over the top of a Brood box or a super and it has a slot extruded along the top for the hive strap to run along.
Summery
Every single part that I had delivered had to be filled with a poly repair kit. This was due to either the holes that are stamped into the top of this hive wall during manufacture (See my pervious post) or dents in the side walls again due to sloppy manufacturing.
The poly is being described a s being a high density material, 100g/litre. If this is true its extramly soft and dents and scraches extramly easly. I have put a few dents in one of the supers just trying to get the frame rails out with my figers.
There are a few other design flaws but these are minor and cosmetic and don't detract from its usability.
Marks out of 10 would be: 6 out of 10