Hello, I met David at EAS 96 and bought from him the D.E. hive he had on display there. It is a beautiful piece of workmanship which I treated with linseed oil to preserve it -- too pretty to cover up with paint. I put a decent-sized, but not enormous, swarm in it in mid-May of this year. They quickly filled two brood chambers and went on to make two supers of honey, which is about as much as I got from any one of my established hives in Langs. The absence of propolization on the ends of the frames is a very positive aspect of this hive. It's easy to remove and replace frames -- I adapted one of the the super frames above the excluder to bank a few queens until I could install them in other hives. Very easy to remove and replace. David's is the only NEW hive I have ever bought. All my others have been used or I have built many of them. If I were starting with no equipment and buying everything new, my experience, limited as it is to one season with one hive, would lead me to seriously consider the D.E. David's service when ordering from him is outstanding, and the items he stocks are first-rate. FWIW Regards, Fred Augusta County, Virginia