Hi All
 
Recently I took over twenty beehives from another farmer who has got
too busy to care for them.
 
He inherited them from a man in his 90's who decided to scale down
his operation and gave sets of twenty to people he believed were
promising beekeepers.
 
Anyhow, he used a deep brood box, and a shallow brood box
combination. He used in the deep brood box a spacing of one deep
frame and one shallow frame. The bees then attached a piece of comb
to the bottom of the shallow frame.
 
He used all shallow supers for honey extraction.
 
I asked as to the logic: The answer was as follows:
 
He would get the bees to draw deep frames, and then they will draw a
shallow frame inbetween two deeps to the same size. The shallows can
then all be moved to the center of the brood nest and can be used for
 brood rearing until dark. Then he cuts the added comb bit and moves
the frame into a honey super, where it will never blow out when
extracted. The wax from the other piece is used to provide foundation
for a new frame.
 
The deep frames are kept mainly on the outside for pollen storage and
also for the end two frames of honey, which he extracted each time
just before moving these frames to the ceter to draw new shallows.
 
Seemed  like a nice system, but too messy and bitty for my liking.
 
Keep well
 
Garth
 
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Garth Cambray       Camdini Apiaries
15 Park Road        Apis melifera capensis
Grahamstown         800mm annual precipitation
6139
Eastern Cape
South Africa               Phone 27-0461-311663
 
On holiday for a few months     Rhodes University
Which means: working with bees 15 hours a day!
Interests: Fliis and bees
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post in no way
reflect those of Rhodes University.