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Bee Hive building & a place to share howto's on equipment
 #12389  by AdamD
 17 Jan 2022, 20:14
I haven't seen one of these in the flesh but Thornes are now selling a wooden Leyens hive. It is a mix between a top bar hive and a framed one, with frames that are just over 14" across and about 16" deep. The idea is that you have to expand horizontally as the frames have top bars that touch each other; I guess they get propolised together soon enough. (The design is from the 19th century - it's not new).
Has anyone seen one?
 #12390  by Spike
 19 Jan 2022, 11:24
I am not sure that I see the point as bees tend to work vertically if they can. How does a frame fit in an extractor?
 #12392  by Alfred
 20 Jan 2022, 15:35
A reasonably large sized extractor will normally take any size/type frame.
But I'm guessing horizontal hives, in this country at least, are often favoured by folk who think it's krewell to take off honey so it would largely not apply.
Each to their own.
Where's my sandals.
 #12393  by JoJo36
 20 Jan 2022, 18:23
I didn't realise you were a yogurt knitter Alfred!! :)
 #12396  by Patrick
 21 Jan 2022, 10:42
Not seen a Leyen's being used, but sure bees do just fine in them.

From a 1800's French perspective, his claim seems to be that the large size compared with contemporary alternatives, allowed just two visits a year to simply add empty frames and a second to take them away laden with honey at the end of the season. Whilst any large modern hive could similarly only be visited only twice a year, is that really such a good thing? Large hives do not prevent swarming and we no longer live in landscapes like 1800's rural France, our forage availability and population density are very different. I have been asked to look at many hives that were either abandoned or very rarely visited and I can't say they were an advert for the idea.

I am sure you can keep bees very happily in them, but not at all convinced on the two visits a year bit.
 #12397  by Patrick
 21 Jan 2022, 10:59
Alfred wrote: But I'm guessing horizontal hives, in this country at least, are often favoured by folk who think it's krewell to take off honey so it would largely not apply.
:) I do remember Monty Don (who seems otherwise generally a sound bloke) extolling the virtues of his new top bar hive " if you want to keep bee's but not have to manage them" in 2015/16. By 2018 they had died out. Nuff said.
 #14256  by Little John
 25 Jan 2024, 14:02
Layens Hives are fine. Sure, they've become a little bit 'trendy' of late, but you can't blame the hive for that. 1800's ? Well, 1880 onwards - well into the post-Langstroth period - following which nothing much of significance has changed within the world of beekeeping.

Is it a large volume hive ? No, it's a variable-volume hive achieved by courtesy of a pair of movable partition (divider, follower) boards - so the volume can be as small as you need, or varied according to requirements.
BTW, despite what you may read on the Internet, Georges de Layens did NOT invent the hive which carries his name. He simply chose an existing hive which met his requirements, then wrote a book about it - insodoing popularising that hive - but he wasn't obsessed with it's frame dimensions, and is on record (in his book on Economical Hive Construction) as commending the 14x14 inch frame. I have several horizontal hives with similar 14x12 inch frames which are perfectly satisfactory.

When compared with the Root-Langstroth Hive, the Layens Hive is favoured by many beekeepers within southern Spain, and a somewhat similar hive design is highly popular throughout the Ukraine.
Indeed, I'm finding the Ukrainian Hive to be a joy to work, and as a bonus it's 17-inch deep frames can very easily be supplemented by rotated Brit Nat DN4's mounted on adapters should this ever prove necessary - a feature absent within the Layens Hive with it's slightly shorter depth.

If you ever get tired of lifting heavy boxes simply in order to inspect a brood nest, you could do a lot worse than consider a Horizontal Beehive - all in all, it's my favourite hive format.
LJ
 #14257  by AdamD
 26 Jan 2024, 12:44
Interesting comment.
I guess a Dartington is broadly similar. When using 14x12 frames, I found that the comb would often get messed up in the bottom few inches by the bees (will they ever do as they are told?) and I didn't much like them and you can't usually extract frames any bigger than DN4's if you ever wanted to. I regularly see a double brood-box (DN4's) with 4 or 5 supers on them in summer. Would a Layens be big enough for that?