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