Hallo Lloyd! I would like to comment some of your nots concerning bee behavioiur. You take for granted that the bees naturally only store honey upwards. But this is certainly is not true. If you have hive desighns where the combs are set side by side and you put a vertical queen excluder behing this combs and ad another row of combs in such a way that you have them in line with the first row directed to the entrance, than the bees will without doubt use the "backward" honey room with the same efficiency as the "above" honey room. 30 years ago this was a common argument against the Golz-hive I am using. However it was shown that this was proven to be wrong and thus not fact. By the way this was shown quite early by the german beekeper Gerstung when studying optimal comb dimensions for the desighn of his bee hive between 1890 and 1910. Secondly the problem with the "long hive" system is, that the have arranged the combs parallel to the entrance and not at 90 degress as is found normally in the Langstroth hive. If you desighn a bee hive in such a way that you have the frames accoring the the Langstoth desigh but uprigt, than a vertical queen excluter and the next row behing again uprigt, than you come to a desigh that was used for the Golz hive type. By this desigh you have access to each comb without moving any super and the bees have good acces to the honey room in the back. I do have experience with such bee hive type for over 27 years, and I have changed all my hives to that desighn, since it is verey convenient at least for a sideliner (up to 30 hives). Last comment: Bees do move laterally during winter time following the direction of needed food. Therefore again: That they move only upwards has proven to be not correct. However one hase to garantee that they find enough food in that direction. This is achieved in that way that the entrance is set to one side of the hive over the distance of about 10 frames. In that way the atum brood is near this entrance and the honey for overwintering is deposited to the side with no brood activiy and no entrance (less O2 availability?). Thus in winter the bees will follow the stored food moving in that direction. If you do not set the entrance to one side than the cluster can be in the middle of the combs and the bees have to choose one direction which could be desasterous if half of the stored food is found in the other side of the hive. Therefore one has to "guide" the bees by the correct set up for overwintering. In the long hive desighn the bees just move backwards, here is the situation less critical but the bees still move backwards when the first combs are empty. So the handling of HEAVY supers is not needed for easy beekeeping, especially if you do it as a side liner with problems of handling heavy weights. Such a desigh might - however -not appeal for a commercial apiary with thousands of hives, however it might be the ideal bee hive for many interested in a hive desighn with easy handling. Thus we come back to the thread how to avoid handling of heavy supers. There are ways of avoiding it, however with new hive desighn. Ahlert