BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > EQUIPMENT USAGE, EXPERIMENTATION, HIVE PLANS, CONSTRUCTION TIPS AND TOOLS
Building a rectangular hive thoughts comments
RatedMark:
Going with the top bar style, this won't probably ever be moved as its a suburban and its on my patio roof. Gotta get some glue. I used 3/8 plywood and I screwed 4 sheets together on each side. Thinking about running a 5th but with an air gap between them. I also have flow frames im gonna install. But have them installed perpendicular to the hive instead of parallel so I can access honey with minimal changes.
Thoughts comments. I got all the measure menus working. What is the gap recommendation between the bottom of the frame and screen. Right now I have about an inch, and then 1 inch between the top of the frame and the removable boards.
Kwalt:
Look up "beespace". If you have more than 3/8" space anywhere the bees will fill it with burr comb. If you have less than 1/4" they will fill it with propolis. If you have more than the 3/8 open space above the frames the bees will build comb up there. If you have too much space at the bottom of the frames they may build comb below but I've never had them attach it to the bottom. It's something to be aware of when designing your hive.
Kevin
RatedMark:
My hive is gonna be similar to yours in the picture. Only diffence is I'm building in flow frames.
cao:
I have several long hives and Kwalt is right about beespace. The top is more important than the bottom. No more than 3/8" between top of frames and cover. The bottom can be more. Most hives with bottom boards have over 3/4" space under frames.
FloridaGardener:
It's been my observation with my TBHs that they take more active management than a vertical Langstroth. That's quite fun for a new beekeeper, and certainly I prefer the way the bees aren't in the air during inspections as they are in and vertical hive.
As far as disturbing the bees: You have a great head start in the long-hive format. Actually the bees are good natured and don't get disturbed much if you can cultivate work that is gentle, purposeful, precise, and quick. You may even find that you have a little communication with them as livestock, in that they can tell you what's going on by their sound or what they're doing, and they can act sort of relieved when you fix something for them. So "disturbing" the bees is one of the little pleasures of beekeeping.
That said, honey management is more difficult in a long hive. I'm foundationless, and it appeared to work best if, after one use (first white wax + drones), drone comb was moved to the outside edge as the "pantry" ... out of the way where the queen could conveniently lay more drones.
In a long hive, others too have noticed that the bars become sort of mixed honey/pollen/ brood. If I want a couple cups of household honey, I can bring a tupperware and cut out the top of a bar which the bees can easily festoon and re-fill. There are fewer solid bars of all honey.
So from my experience, using a flow frame would be sort of incompatable with a long hive without an queen excluder...the bees might not fill it. But it would be a good experiment.
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