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Author Topic: My idea for a beekeeper with a bad back  (Read 10522 times)

Offline Culley

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Re: My idea for a beekeeper with a bad back
« Reply #20 on: November 24, 2014, 07:12:46 pm »
I wonder how much it would hinder the bees using half depth frames for the brood, with all the extra gaps this will make in the brood nest.

I'm leaning towards making a long hive that takes deeps, and using these 'quarter size' boxes for the honey. The thing with half depths is you can hang a deep down through two half depth boxes, but you can't put two half depth frames into the deep  :-\ I'm pretty sure dad wants to use a queen excluder anyway, so it could work well.

Offline Michael Bush

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Re: My idea for a beekeeper with a bad back
« Reply #21 on: November 25, 2014, 09:22:38 am »
>I wonder how much it would hinder the bees using half depth frames for the brood, with all the extra gaps this will make in the brood nest.

They do fine.  With short frames the queen does not hesitate to lay in several boxes.  With deeper frames she often hesitates.
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Offline BlueBee

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Re: My idea for a beekeeper with a bad back
« Reply #22 on: November 26, 2014, 05:51:29 am »
Yeah, I made a couple of hives to comb up a bunch of small queen mating frames.  Each frame was about 12cm x 12cm (5” x 5”).  I had boxes stacked 4 high.  The queen roamed all over the place in there!   The bees did pretty well too.

Offline Culley

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Re: My idea for a beekeeper with a bad back
« Reply #23 on: December 26, 2014, 03:03:30 am »
We ended up making a long hive from a new sheet of 12mm plywood (1200 x 2400).

It takes 30 deep frames. The half depth mini supers idea is on the back burner for now, but I will probably give it a try sooner or later. I discovered the half depth boxes I have are 8 frames, not 10 frames, and in worse condition than I thought.

The weird entrance on the landing board is because of a design error. We made a few minor miscalculations, which I documented, along with all the dimensions in mm's.




Offline Culley

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Re: My idea for a beekeeper with a bad back
« Reply #24 on: January 31, 2015, 02:45:21 am »
We put a spring split which had built up to two 8 frame deeps, into the long hive.  :happy: