On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 09:53 -0500, Lloyd Spear wrote: But the boxes
> hold two more frames, and frames for the deeps are 12" wide.  A deep full of
> honey will weigh about 110 lbs.  But, with 11 or 12 frames these provide
> lots of room to control swarming as well as lots of honey for the winter
Interesting comparison Lloyd. My best hives (West Cornwall UK) have
11/12 14" square frames (best 11 plus dummy). So they often overwinter
with an estimated 70-90 lb of stores, compared with the typical 40lb or
so in the "standard" 14"x8.5" needed to cover a poor spring, and all
without feeding. They build up more quickly and have more bees, IMO
because the frame size encourages a vertical oval brood shape, which is
more efficient in the sense that more brood can be covered by the same
amount of bees. So, if we have a good spring, we can have a significant
surplus (for us that is: 50lb or more), and a very strong colony going
into summer with good swarm control, with harvests of around 160lb in a
reasonable year plus the winter stores again. (Static hives! - they are
too heavy for one person to move by hand). Otherwise strong standard
hives need two boxes, swapped up to twice, or split for nucs. We have
intermittent flows with occasional exceptions - two seasons ago, the
hawthorn was abundant and continuous for 3 weeks or so as was the
sunshine.

-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and  other info ---