Mr. Borst posted on alternatives to the top bar hive, assuming lifting bulky, heavy boxes is the bar to beekeeping in other setups. A couple of caveats apply...here are a few but I am sure others will supply more.

In the AZ/Slovenian hives and in other systems confining the active broodnest to a single deep, in general capped brood is removed from the single deep and placed in the box above, over a queen excluder. Slovenian beekeepers manage the hives very carefully to maximize honey returns: there is more to their style of beekeeping than simply different equipment, different bees and/or different nectar flows.

Or put more simply, the broodnest may be run in a single, but the entire colony requires more than a single, and a lot of beekeeper attention. 

TBH may be appealing to someone wheelchair bound, or with difficulties in lifting boxes or extracting propolized frames from balky Langstroth boxes. And colonies kept deliberately small may be a solution for urban situations, and/or beekeepers not wishing to face a large and feisty late summer colony.

In my area I found that TBH resulted in smaller colonies that resisted growing beyond what would be a strong single in Langstroths, they put up less honey and were very difficult to insulate and overwinter. Those drawbacks may be acceptable if the beekeeper also accepted, in return for relative ease of management, lower harvests and productivity.

I do second the suggestion to use low height stands. This season I experimented with confining the queen to the lowest deep, and low stands allow inspections to be made while comfortably seated on a spare super. Sure is comfy, and a welcome respite from the more active aspects of beekeeping.
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