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 --- 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.