So, Jimbeekeeper and others, you've had 2 winters and 2 summers with the beehaus. Time enough to give us a full verdict methinks. Pros and cons.
QUOTE]
I ran a beehaus alongside 11 wooden Dartingtons, 6 Nationals and a WBC at HoneyWorks Bee Training Centre in Hitchin this year. It performed perfectly well, giving 3 full HoneyBoxes and 6 deep frames to be extracted.
Personally I do not find it better than the standard wooden Dartington and the sockets for the Division Board are a positive nuisance as they stop you sliding a bunch of frames together down the hive. You can easily make extra parts for the wooden hives - for example, I rear extra queens using the 6 shallow frames in a HoneyBox and need only to add a simple foor to form the queen-rearing nuc (frames and bees are simply obtained from occuoied supers). The wooden design also comes with two boxes for storing 6 deep frames - these make nucs for housing swarms in summer as well as storing deep frames in winter.
The ease of assembly and the ease of keeping the smooth plastic clean is obviously more attractive to beekeepers with particular needs rather than the typical grumpy 'I can't stand anything new' sort of person. It is a pity though that people who have no interest in trying that design have spent so much time decrying it from their armchairs. Having a hive or two for a few years can be a good experience and this well-designed and well-marketed product could have made a bigger beneficial effect on public awareness of bees and beekeeping if it had been more widely tested so that local new beekeepers could have been given good advice and not just blasted with prejudice.
Almost any hive will be accepted by bees. Hive choice is therefore only a matter of what tool you prefer for making your own beekeeping system work most easily. Many of the grumpies seem to have no idea that there can be different systems to suit different circumstances. The beehaus - and Dartington - reduce the weight of individual loads and that alone is a recomendation for many people who work at a desk all week, not only the elderly.
Robin
