Why I am here

[sugarbush]

I know a few of you have noticed my sudden presence on the forum and the fact that I am from the US. I hope I am not the only "septic" beek on the forum

Anyway; a little background on me. I have been messing with honey bees for the last 18 or so years. I have gone from a hobbyist beek to a sidliner (person who makes part of their living from beekeeping) and back to hobbyist multiple times. I find the most enjoyment from my bees when I don't have to work them to pay the bills. I currently own no hives of my own, but rather manage hives for a few people who like having the bees, but get antsy about working them.

So here in the USA beekeeping is very geared towards the commercial guys with 1000s of hives... the management practices here, even for the little guys reflects a factory farm approach in general. Equipment wise we have langstroth hybrid type hives and nothing else. The general attitude is that Langstroth and Dadant created the perfect hive and therefor there is no need to have anything else. So I feel that in the US the knowledge one can gain on beecraft is sorta close minded.

I am looking to expand my horizons; I want to learn more about how bees are kept in other parts of the world, what management styles work and which do not. I am especially interested in the "National" and "Smith" hives. I am interested in peoples opinions on various hives, what they like and what they don't.

So Basically I am here doing a lot of reading, when I think I can contribute something I will. Perhaps we can each learn from each other.

Brad

 

[MrB]

Hi Brad and welcome!
only 3 hives myself and not been keeping bee's very long.
using nationals at present but thinking they might be a bit on the small side. time will tell i guess.

 

[dpearce4]

welcome aboard. we are a happy bunch most of the time. and i hope you will be able to forgive some members for their bluntness. they mean well but struggle with the words sometimes, i hope it doesnt cause an incident lol

 

[TJSnapper]

Hi Brad, welcome to the forum. I am in a similar boat to MrB, but have kept bees in Nationals and WBC hives. I have just ordered a 14x12 National today as an experiment, lots of the beekeepers in my local association seem to be using either Langstroth Jumbo or 14x12 but they seem to be keeping bees that have been bred for expansion so the standard national is too small....

 

[richardbees]

Hello Brad

Glad to see you, our usual exposure to US beekeeping involves trailer loads of hives capsizing en-route to Almond orchards in Ca (probably on Route 66)

I have no idea how they decided the size but I use the British National Hive because the the weight of the boxes is about all I can manage - every other hive type is heavier.

Richard

(non-military = septic tank rhyming slang!)

 

[beeatshellards]

welcome Brad I use nationals and wbc hives. We have not very nice winters so I find the wbc is best for my bees in the winter, due to insulation values.
personal preference I guess

 

[sugarbush]

Here in the US there is a major shift towards all "medium" box hives. This is mostly for weight reasons and also that all the frames would be interchangeable within any box.

The medium box is 6.25 inches deep and was the super for the Dadant hive, the Langstroth originally only had shallow supers. So many beeks here are shifting to a narrow version of the dadant hive and don't even realize it.

I personally am progressing towards a brood box that is deep and a half, (14 inches deep) we do not have what you call jumbo langstroth in the US. I want a deeper brood box to eliminate dead space the bees have to move through in the winter, I think that they do better on as much continuous comb as possible. Our winters here in Connecticut can be pretty bad, we had several major snow storms which dropped over 3 ft of snow each.

What size is a frame in a 12x14?

Thanks for the welcome

 

[MuswellMetro]

Hi Brad and welcome!
only 3 hives myself and not been keeping bee's very long.
using nationals at present but thinking they might be a bit on the small side. time will tell i guess.

In London my BKA has found standard national to small and by about the late thirtys most were on brood and an half cottager or national hives ( see Video, some on brood and a half in 1936

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5966&highlight=1936

 

[Mike a]

Hi Brad and welcome

I start with Nationals and found very quickly they were too small for the carniolain queens I have, so I upgrade to 14x12 (extra 90mm shim added for deeper frames) I also started a top bar hive as well. In 2010 I bought a poly langstroth deep + mediums and plastic frames/foundation and found these suited my queens as it gave them plenty of space to build up nicely.

If I had to start all over again and choose one type only I would opt for poly langstroth double deeps but this wouldn't suit all my colonies and it would cost a fortune.

As a rough guide you may find this helpful to help understand the various hives and sizes. I put it together a couple of years ago although I think there is one or two minor errors.

 

[ladyrose1956]

My Hives

Hi Brade

Nice to see somebody from the us i have two nationals and two Top Bar Hives i am at present converting my nationals into the same as top bar hives i belive in the natural way let the bees build natural comb

 

[Polyanwood]

I really liked your chart Mike

 

[viridens]

Welcome on board Brad.

I hope that your time here gives you some insight into our way of doing things.
Perhaps in turn you can tell us about the way that sidliners handle the usual beekeeping jobs like inspecting colonies, swarm prevention, and harvesting honey when there are so many hives to get through?

 

[Black Comb]

Hi Brad

Welcome. One of the reasons we use national hives in this country is that many years ago when the British Manufacturing Standard was introduced the largest hive manufacturer of the day produced these and had a big influence on the standard.

The jumbo langstroth only takes 10 frames so it holds less than a dadant but more than a deep national (14 x 12)

 

[sugarbush]

Thanks for that chart Mike, So are your hives measured in inches or cm?

Viri: Every sideliner manages things differently, I have never focused on honey sales. When ever I moved up into sidliner status my focus was on queen and nuc production. In the US the money is in queens and nucs, everybody sells honey and then we have to compete with Walmart prices.

So in nucs and queens I could sell all day long from early may until end of July and average about 500.00 USD a season per hive. The goal would be to build up fast in the spring, raise a batch of queens and split everything into nucs, sell off half of the nucs and keep half to build up and split a second time. Each overwintered full production hive could produce 5-6 nucs in a three month period. I also did cutouts on the side.

As far as management is concerned my major influence is a fellow by the name of Mike Bush. He has a very detailed website that is a really good read.http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm He is an advocate for smaller equipment which I disagree with, but most everything else I practice. I don't use foundation in my frames in the brood box, the bees draw which ever size they need, I allow my hives to requeen them selves, I only buy queens to bring in new genetics. I don't use queen excluders on my hives, but they have pretty much gone by the wayside in the US anyway.

 

[onriver]

have you looked at Tim Rowe's book on hive management - he uses one size boxes (the Rose in the above chart ) no excluders and a pragmatic approach to working with the bees rather than trying to control them?
I'd shift but it involves a heavy cost in terms of changing frames / foundation - the boxes aren't the problem. Anyone else tried them?

 

[milkermel]

Hi Brad

as you can see we are definately a friendly bunch! I am currently using national and WBC. Only have a few hives and still very much learning.

WBC is hard work with double the amount of stuff to move around when inspecting hives. the benifits of extra layers meens extra insulation isnt needed down here in cornwall. I look after this hive for someone else they are planning to have another hive and I am hoping to get them to choose a national instead. Personally I find them easy to handle and just about big enough for my girls.

The WBC is on double brood this year as it was overflowing on single last year.

 

[user 6228]

Hi , as you may know polystyrene hives are popular in Europe and have,a hold here in the UK . You said bee keeping is "closed minded" in the US ? How have taken to polystyrene hives?

 

[Mike a]

Thanks for that chart Mike, So are your hives measured in inches or cm?

Depends who you talk to, old timers talk in inches when they talk hive sizes, but the majority have no idea what size their hives or frames are unless you say 14x12 which most people know to be a deep national frame which fits inside a modified national hive, so we keep it simple and just say the name of the hive and leave it at that. Its a bit like foreign languages, we (British) expect every one else to speck English when we go abroad on holiday and complain bitterly about foreign call centres and refuse to make any effort to learn any of the local language. We expect them to understand us... If they don't we talk louder and slower as it must help with breaking the language barrier.

As far as management is concerned my major influence is a fellow by the name of Mike Bush. He has a very detailed website that is a really good read.http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm

Mike's site is excellent, a lot of what he has written makes a lot of sense imho. We lost an excellent bee keeper recently Dave Cushman who also has an excellent website which can be found here. When I first took up bee keeping I've spent many hours reading his website and learnt a great deal.

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Welcome Brad - just as a brief addendum to Mike's list, the double walled WBC can also have a deep 14x12 size brood box, still with one frame less than the National

 

[hedgerow pete]

greetings from the other side of the pond, and welcome to the forum,

everyone is friendly here and have totaly forgoten that you pushed all the tea into the harbour and kicked us out of our colony, not that we hold a grudge or any thing, lol

the biggest marked difference between the european bee keeping systems and the colonists is that in the uk the majority of beekeepers are hobbyist and as such the major suppliers are all set up to deal with there set up rather than the big boys who normaly set up to machine timber for them selves.

where as across the pond in the colonys we set up the (lol) the staff over there to do things the other way around and the big boys do most of the trading.

if you have the time i think you will find more information for outside box thinking over this side of the pond than on the other side.

now about those tea leafs