< I have been to Slovenia and have seen these hives in use. They are
difficult to use compared to ours, but the system is attractive for many
reasons.>

Any insight you have on the difficulties would be much appreciated, I
haven't had much luck finding practical guidance thus far.

I thought about the German style, because obviously that is much easier to
build, but the tradeoff is not being able to pull any frame (Have to work
your way through), not being able to see crosscomb etc. as well without
pulling it apart.  It seems to me you'd be much more disruptive trying to
do manipulations with the combs face toward the opening.  I may be missing
something though.

Evaluating tradeoffs seems to be the name of the game here.  I don't mind
the idea of the Darlington hive either, though I'd have to be careful to
make very small supers, that also might be doable.

Observation hive is out for me, he wants to keep bees for honey etc not
just to look at the bees, plus those are generally better suited if you
have other hives to support them (or pull frames to when they get too
big).  Not very feasible since I'm 4-6hrs away.

I'm going to keep researching, let me know if anything else strikes someone
as plausable.

Jeremy
West Michigan

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm