Faith Andrews Bedford wrote:
>In a message dated 97-06-26 16:52:00 EDT, Arron Morris wrote:
>
><< One funny thing at the trade show was that few people paid attention to
>the
> Backsaver display.  Perhaps it was a macho thing - "REAL men don't have to
> worry about their backs!". >>
>
>
>I got such a kick out of this.  One could paraphrase that "REAL women look
>for the easiest way to do things and don't worry about being macho."
> Strength (or lack of it) pervades.
>
>But seriously, wouldn't it be easier to run our hives with nothing but
>shallow supers - four for a "two brood chamber" basic hive and the rest for
>honey?   That way everything would be eminently interchangable.  As a
>beginner, I eagerly went out and bought all "the right stuff", i.e. deep
>brood chambers.  It was quickly apparent that they were just too heavy for me
>to handle. A fully loaded super is about all I can handle, unless I can con
>my somewhat bee-phobic husband into helping.   After l7 years of beekeeping
>and recently having hit the "half century mark,"  I'm moving slowly to the
>all shallow situation.  Can anyone see a problem with that?  Thanks!
>
 
I agree that shallow supers are easier to handle - the difficulty is what to
do with all those perfectly good full depth supers.  We run full depth for
the brood box plus one full depth super and a shallow (in Australia it is
known as a Manley size - after a Mr. Manley, I presume).  We very rarely
increase the supers from this level - although it has been known.  A Manley
super can be lifted off to enable the next super to be checked and we remove
sealed frames from this until it is light enough to lift.  We have an
excluder above the brood box and do not always check the bottom box.  This
gives us reasonable interchangeability between the brood box and the super
plus surplus space for a vigorous honey flow.
 
Betty McAdam
HOG BAY APIARY
Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island
j.h. & e. mcadam<[log in to unmask]
http://kigateway.eastend.com.au/hogbay/hogbay1.htm