Plastic Spacers

[victor meldrew]

Not so easy peasy when you have to change either supers or castellation spacings in order the reduce frame numbers from 11 to 9 ??.
My extractor takes 9 shallow frames ,call me finicky but I like to extract one full super for each loading of the extractor . An over thick frame is much easier to uncap than an extra thin one (ie too thin to uncap without having to dig below the side rails ).Any thin ones I find ,I use an uncapping fork and give the frame back to the bees as they're not worth extracting.
John

 

[Poly Hive]

I was astonished to be told that a certain west country bee farm uses castellations as they found Hoffmans to be too much trouble. ????

I wouldn't go past Manleys.

I have some Hoffmans for the sups to get the Manleys drawn and then that is it.


For cut comb Manleys are the business. For extracted honey they are the business, to keep wax workers busy after extraction they are the business. And so on.

PH

 

[Hivemaker.]

I also use a few manleys in supers,but much prefer castellated,like to use 8 frames to the super,so hoffmans are not much cop for this,and ten for cut comb.I find the the bee's tend to use a lot of propolis,and gum the manley frames up badly.Also use a lot of brood box's as supers,and am slowly converting to mostly brood box's.