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  • Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
 #3911  by NigelP
 05 Jul 2019, 20:03
Far from it Adam, it's a good well known efficient system. Rose hives are the obvious example. Lots of people used Dadant supers only hivbes, moving honey frames up and brood down. Not sure why more don't use this system.
Wondering about it myself.
 #3918  by Adam Bee
 05 Jul 2019, 23:16
I am inherently an oxymoron (you might want to omit the oxy- part every now and then).

I am lazy. So I work extra hard so I can be lazy.

I’ll work overtime to set up a system that is in itself more self sustaining. I like the system itself to support as much of the weight of a project as it can, so I can minimise the heavy lifting I have to do myself.

When it comes to beekeeping, the one sized box seemed to fit the bill; that elbow, or sweet spot along the curve. The main reason was completely interchangeable gear.

I did look at top bar hives, but ultimately, the inability to expand beyond the volume of the basic hive seemed silly. Warre seemed over complicated and non-standard and had neither the advantage of a top bar hive nor the box, langstoth, national hive. I wasn’t interested in honey farming, which nationals seem well designed for, so this is where I ended up: foundationless frames in one sized boxes.
 #3919  by Patrick
 05 Jul 2019, 23:27
The thing to always bear in mind is that bees will live in just about any dry cavity, from a chimney to a postbox. As such, the bees are not usually the issue they are claimed to be, it is the practically of the space or system to be able to carry out the desired or believed necessary, beekeeping tasks.

In that latter regard, some systems or hive types may indeed be just the ticket but it’s less clear how you do things like disease checks, varroa treatments or collect honey without huge disruption. I always wonder when someone tells me their system has no need to manage issues with varroa, disease, swarming etc because it is so inherently good their bees never suffer such problems. Really? How wonderful.
 #3922  by Alfred
 06 Jul 2019, 08:45
It's passed down the generations but also sideways across the internet.
Whenever a new scare,craze or fashion pops up I get a corresponding email from the association.
 #3927  by Adam Bee
 06 Jul 2019, 12:06
I’d say the one clear drawback to the all mediums and no QE is the need to inspect more boxes. If you have clearly separated brood boxes and honey supers, checking the brood is easier, as the supers can be pretty much ignored. As I don’t use a QE, I have more uncontrolled volume to inspect.

Now, tbh, if you read Tim Rowe’s book, he doesn’t do frame by frame inspections unless absolutely necessary. He simply recommends looking for signs; BIAS, new eggs, swarm cells by tilting a box and looking at the bottom of all frames, etc., and regular bi-annual treatment.
 #3942  by NigelP
 06 Jul 2019, 19:36
Running same size boxes is the most efficient honey production method. You simply move frames full of honey up into top boxes to extract later. Instead of usual problem of honey bound brood frames that you can't move upstairs....
But it is a lot of work....LOL
Probably what you aren't aiming at.

The beauty of beekeeping is you can sort anything to adapt to your own needs, the bad thing is it isn't usually taught. Usually it's you must go local bees and National sized hives propaganda without an explanation of the different strains of bees and their properties nor the different hive types and how they might be used/be more suitable for different strains if bees.

I must start that book )LOL)