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From:
Trish Harness <[log in to unmask]>
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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 21 Dec 2017 11:37:06 -0500
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Here is a nice pdf with some "how to run" instructions at the end:  https://www.omlet.ie/files/public/omlet_guide_to_keeping_bees_and_beehaus_instructions.pdf  It's free, which it darn well better be for how expensive this hive is!!!!

The included directions show this hive being managed as a wider and deeper Lang, not as a horizontal hive.  Bars or frames, either way the bees treat the space as a fallen tree.  I'm sure many beeKs in winter areas have heard of bees surviving in fallen logs over winter, or possibly surviving years in such spaces.  And in Scandinavia, according to Eva Crane, bees were kept horizontally.  People in Russia are still doing so - Layens hive ( http://www.beeculture.com/the-layens-hive/) And I've been doing so for the past 2 years, so 1 full winter and starting this winter, in NE OH!  They are essentially long langs, I have 4 alive now, 4 last year.  I have had several die due to beekeeper incompetence (undetected queenless, varroa), but not due to immobilization due to cold.  Lots of evidence that bees handle horizontal spaces fine in winter!

As far as running a horizontal hive, the bees in my hive want to add large celled honey comb (or drone brood) at the REAR, far from the entrance.  This Omlet is intending for the bees to store honey ABOVE the variable-sized brood nest.  There are really nice diagrams at the end of the pdf showing the beekeeper expanding and contracting the number of frames in the brood space through the seasons.  The omlet hive can be considered to be a variable sized, wider and deeper Lang hive, with limited supering capacity.  

Bee Culture just did an article on a horizontal hive run with supers above.  This may cause a physics problem - the bees being forced to use a very wide fallen tree for their ventilation, one with no bottom.  The airflow is going to be different compared to a "tube" like the Lang or a horizontal hive, since the space starts to approach a cube.  http://www.beeculture.com/experiences-top-bar-hive/  Long story short, the bees survived winter and the author got honey just fine, but it took longer to do basic beekeeping operations.  

Keep in mind as far as treating for mites is concerned, if you start having a cube space instead of a rectangle, as you would in the summer with expanding the brood nest the way this manual suggests, then you have a wider diameter that you want affected by mite treatments.  I haven't used MAQS; maybe the fumes would dissipate just fine over a wider and deeper area.  I just started with OAV and I was using too small of a battery; maybe the vapor would handle a larger brood space fine (though not much point in doing a single OAV in times with brood, of course).  Apivar should be fine as long as placed in the center of brood - the space should be like a Lang 2 story, but the strip would not be in the center of the bees if it was on top of the frames.  

But I have to say that I do not manage my horizontal hive brood nest to minimize empty space, the way this manual is suggesting.  The first year I want more worker comb, and until I get 10-12, I add space between brood and honey area.  I do not constrict the brood area to fit the eventual size of the fall cluster - that's the bees' job.  They backfill the worker comb to the edge of where they want to be for the winter.  The second year I only remove worker comb to make a split, because the queen really can only lay as far as position 12 or so for worker comb.  There's no point in expanding too far past that, because at 2000 eggs a day, or even 2500, the queen will find plenty of open worker comb with 12 combs available for laying in.  (21 days x 2500 eggs) / 4500 available cells in a deep frame for eggs excluding pollen or honey = 12.   Adding more space beyond the 12 worker combs is resulting in lots of drone comb, at least in my variable-sized horizontal hive brood nest.

This Omlet hive can be managed like a Dadant AKA Jumbo hive, which is pretty similar to how we manage Langs.  Though you would not expand and contract the brood nest with a Dadant, unless you use a dummy board, which I think he did.  Maybe that was CC Miller.  But Dadant did not pamper his bees by managing the brood area for the number of bees during the seasons.  They had a carefully managed brood area - drone comb was not tolerated - but it was not expanded and constricted by the beekeeper through the seasons.  

So you can manage the omlet hive like a Dadant, or like a long lang, but managing it like a variable-sized deep Lang is pretty different from how people manage either of those styles of hive.  Might work fine, might be suboptimal, definitely blazing new trails!

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