66
« Last post by Bob Wilson on March 16, 2025, 10:25:46 pm »
LAYENS ADVANTAGES
1. No lifting boxes.
2. Well formed brood nests. A standard deep langstroth frame is only 9 inches tall, and there a gap break between boxes for the queen to cross taking her nest upward. The same problem happens in a long langstroth. The queen tends to pull out a long, thin brood nest through 10-20 frames because she has no upward mobility. In a Layens hive, the 13 inch wide frame is plenty wide for the brood nest, and the queen uses the 16 inch height to lay a large nest with a good honey band at the top. Layens hives tend to have great brood nests.
3. Its easier to inspect and manipulate the hive. Its all about shifting frames further down the 4 foot box and inserting empty frames where needed.
4. There is less trauma on the hive. Simply by opening the lid, you can see all the frames (nest and resources) without disturbing them at all.
5. Uniform equipment. There is only one frame size throughout the whole hive, easily exchanging between different areas of the hive, into nucs, or between different colonies in the apiary.
LAYENS DISADVANTAGES
1. All long hives are unwieldy to move. It takes two people, even in early spring.
2. You can fit two standard hives in the place of one Layens.
3. Standard langstroths enjoy cheaper equipment prices and a huge beekeeping learning community, while Layens equipment is expensive (unless you build it yourself).
4. Long hives, including Layens, have to have honey pulled more often. There are no stackable supers to take you to the year's end.
Recent Posts