Ace
I plan on keeping my langs too. As far as small hive beetle. I went through 4 over wintered hives with my mentor of sorts and even on his biggest ones, they had hive beatles running all over the place. I am thinking due to the warmth of the winter that they are going to be a real issue this year.
I definatly don't want to buy bees ever and this year I will probly try to expand a little just because I have lots of equiptment built. If I end up with bees in the warre which is questionable, it will be because a swarm moved in them on there own. I do think that if I get some in it, that I will probly not work them too hard but I have the same comb guides it them and I put on the top bar of my langs and if the bees follow the guide, I am thinking a bread knife along the hive walls would free the combs up pretty easy. They should be much easier to handle then the top bar long hives just due to them not being so massive and the fact that you can get to them from the bottom.
I have watched the michael palmer vidios of him inspecting his nucs where he does not pull frames but just looks from the bottom of the hive and pushes the combs sideways to look up the center.
I might be in for a rude awakening but it just does not seem like it would be that hard to take the comb out one at a time if you wanted to. I do see where the innerchangability could cause you to lose a hive cause you lost a queen and can't add a frame of brood.
I don't say a guy should want to kill bees but on the other hand, it would be interesting to see how long a hive would survive with small interventions.
I am sorta doing that with my lang hives as I have not treated for mites and am just wondering how long it will be before that takes its toll on me. Don't know if you don't try.
So, I would consintrate my efforts on learning to manage the langs and end up with live bees and a little honey but when I feel comfortable that I won't have to buy more bees, I will probly put a sacrafice swarm in the warre and just play with it.
I love hearing people views on this stuff and try to take what they say and learn from it.
Cheers
gww
Ps I am building everything that I use and did build all mediums for interchangability but also built the warre and built the excape board and the double screen boards and feeders and so am not buying stuff and so the warre being a little harder to buy stuff for doesn't mean much cause I don't intend on buying anything if I have a prayer of making it.