A National-Dadant Beehive. (under a WBC cover)
I've often thought that the WBC Beehive was fundamentally a sound concept, but would have been much better had it been based around standard British National boxes and, with the advantage of modern materials, latter-day builds would (imo) be vastly improved by the WBC lifts being fabricated from GRP or similar.
And so it was that a few years ago I built a WBC-lookalike cover for a National Beehive using uPVC cladding, but it soon became clear that removing lifts prior to splitting brood boxes on each inspection was going to be very time-consuming - so it was never used, and ended-up collecting dust.
However, having recently decided upon trialling 14"x14" frames to achieve the same volume as a Dadant Beehive, it occurred to me that a WBC cover over a fixed-volume hive might work reasonably well. And so I finished off the cover by making a base and legs, and this is what has resulted:
Shorter, splayed feet would have looked better, but in view of the expected weight I opted for straight feet instead.
The following pic shows the space available over the main brood box - just enough for a hard crown board and two 5-frame nucs or a standard brood box. Which could be useful as a feeder shim, to hold insulation or for queen rearing.
This shows the eleven 14"x14" frames in situ, set by screws at 35mm spacing for now.
And a shot showing the two entrance closures I've made.
And finally a Thermal Divider 'curtain' using Dadant's method of sealing the sides - I've used strips of PVC sheet (from a supermarket 'special offer' banner) wrapped around some soft foam rubber, instead of oilcloth. Let's hope the bees don't chew it up ! I did try thin-wall PVC hosepipe, but it proved too hard and inflexible.
So - all that's needed now is to install some bees later-on today (if the weather holds), and there are several suitable colonies on site to choose from ... decisions, decisions.
LJ