>The rationale for the Manley which is that the side bars are about thickness of the comb and so uncapping with a knife is easy - just run the knife along resting on the frame edges of each side. 

More than that, the spacing is one and five-eighths inches- which Manley reckoned was the maximum distance that you could space foundation for it to be drawn properly (that might spark another debate!).

The standard Manley frames have a major disadvantage in that the side bars do not have the chamfer of the Hoffman frames and so tend to get propolised together, although it is now possible to get them with the chamfer.  The spacing also makes them very tight in a BS National box, so they can be very difficult to remove if you use 10 to the box as intended.  Most of my boxes are ordinary BS SN1 spaced 9 to the box using castellations and I now use the Manley's that I have (bought years ago) in the same way.

The Omlet hive suffers from all the drawbacks of that class of design (I guess they were all based on the KTBH) in that when you stand at the side of the hive the frames are difficult to remove without twisting your body.  The alternative is to stand at the end of the hive which involves quite a stretch to reach the front frames (assuming that you do not want to stand in front of the entrance).

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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