Will the Real WBC Hive Boxes Stack-up Please?

[AlanJ]

There seem to be two kinds of WBC hive boxes around, as shown in this picture, and I've been trying to find out which type is authentic
The boxes on the left, from Caddon Hives, have extra strips of wood at the bottom of the box (arrowed) that meet the lip of the hive box below.
Those on the right (probably National Bee Supplies or Thorne) do not have this feature, so it is apparently all too easy to expose a gap over the lugs unless the boxes are exactly positioned.
Caddon Hives regard this strip as essential, even though its slender size makes it tricky to provide, but it is clearly shown in the diagram on the Scottish BKA website.
The BBKA were unable to shed any light on this puzzle and the British Standards Institute wanted to charge me over £100 for a photocopy of what is now an obsolete standard!
Does anyone know the answer?

 

[Ian123]

I’m not sure you’ll find an authentic version, there are many manufacturers and over time and there will be differences. WBC inner boxes are notoriously weak and normally missing a few bars

 

[ericbeaumont]

two kinds of WBC hive boxes

Only one is correct to BS, Alan, the one without the strips, but Caddon's addition has practical value and is pretty much essential. Without them, the gap between boxes is propolised and can even leak bees if boxes shrink or are lined up unevenly.

I've added strips to most of my WBC boxes; none are fitted as standard by suppliers (except by the intellligent Caddon) because most would rather save the expenditure of a useful mod. and prefer to stick to a BS Standard from the middle of the last century.

 

[Newbeeneil]

Only one is correct to BS, Alan, the one without the strips, but Caddon's addition has practical value and is pretty much essential. Without them, the gap between boxes is propolised and can even leak bees if boxes shrink or are lined up unevenly.

I've added strips to most of my WBC boxes; none are fitted as standard by suppliers (except by the intellligent Caddon) because most would rather save the expenditure of a useful mod. and prefer to stick to a BS Standard from the middle of the last century.

I'm with Eric on this. All the ones that my clients have have no strip so I added them to every boxs as it makes assembly much easier as you just put corner on corner.
TBH if I set a client up with WBC hives now I put national boxes in.

 

[plain_hunt]

I'm with Eric on this. All the ones that my clients have have no strip so I added them to every boxs as it makes assembly much easier as you just put corner on corner.
TBH if I set a client up with WBC hives now I put national boxes in.

And I. I also added strips to those boxes which didn’t have them, most of them. Makes life so much easier!

 

[elainemary]

There seem to be two kinds of WBC hive boxes around, as shown in this picture, and I've been trying to find out which type is authentic
The boxes on the left, from Caddon Hives, have extra strips of wood at the bottom of the box (arrowed) that meet the lip of the hive box below.
Those on the right (probably National Bee Supplies or Thorne) do not have this feature, so it is apparently all too easy to expose a gap over the lugs unless the boxes are exactly positioned.
Caddon Hives regard this strip as essential, even though its slender size makes it tricky to provide, but it is clearly shown in the diagram on the Scottish BKA website.
The BBKA were unable to shed any light on this puzzle and the British Standards Institute wanted to charge me over £100 for a photocopy of what is now an obsolete standard!
Does anyone know the answer?
View attachment 31517

Me too, re added strips & to some supers as well. Thornes boxes do not fit very well without, really don’t understand why they haven’t fixed (presume to save money).

 

[Jules59]

The WBC is a bottom bee space hive. Frame top bars should be near flush with the top of the box (be it brood or super) and there wil be a bee sapce at hte bottom of the box above the frames below. But if you don't create a bee space between the bottom of the side board and the top of the frame below the lugs and the side board will get propolysed together. This can them cause the frames below to get pulled out by the box above during inspections.
When I built some boxes from scratch using the dimensions attached, I realised that some of my older boxes didn't have this beespace. So I knocked them apart and altered them to include a beespace above the lugs of the frames below. No problems with proplysed lugs now.

PS - Ive got plans for the whole WBC hive (imperial and metric) ifd anybody wants them.

PPS - there was an excellent article on the importance of beespace in hive design - Sept 2019 in BBKA News by Malcolm Blake

 

[Beedogg]

I too have added strips to the outside of all of my supers. At first I couldn't work out if I was: a) being thick; or b) had something on the wrong way round, as I found it very difficult to line up the supers such that there was no gaps. The strips work a treat, 'though.

 

[Poly Hive]

In my very early days, I bought three colonies in "WBC" and not one lift was interchangeable. Why? They were all home made. Buyer beware.

PH

 

[Pembroke]

Dave Cushman's website gives some of the history of the hive type WBC Bee Hive from that page you can see that there were many different types before the final design was implemented. There's also a very similar design called a cottager hive this also has lifts but is generally straight sided rather than the tiered (telescoped as Cushman calls it) shape.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

There's also a very similar design called a cottager hive

I think the Cottage hive was another single walled hive although according to cushman the WBC had straight sided lifts originally