how would you stop them getting crowded and swarming?
Horizontal Hives
- Thread starter Prue47
- Start date
There'd have to be a regular program of beeocide. Feed most of the brood frames to the chooks.
That is the problem with all mini hives or top bar hives.
yes.
typically height is not a big problem. just a matter of having something else to stand on.
the real issue is typically box weight. this is where 3/4 size is quite handy.
or something like a warre hive where the boxes are a bit smaller than a FD. you end up with a tall skinny hive but lighter boxes.
Where I grew up in Texas, we had 10 frame Langstroth hives like here (NZ), but also had 8 frame Langstroth, narrow little boxes that would never stand up to wind and cattle in NZ.
I have two horizontal hives...bought the first one at the end of 2016 and had the colony installed on the 1st of Jan 2017. That one uses standard deeps.
The second is one I knocked together myself, using jumbo deep boxes and frames from BeeQuip.
They have mesh floors with sliding drawers underneath so I can do my OAV treatments from below as well as do the mite counts.
The biggest problem is that the frames are designed for lang hives.....that gap along the top is not needed for horizontals because the bees do not need to go up. What they do is form burr comb between the tops of the frames and the inner covers, which is annoying to have to scrape off all the time.
This has to be done especially when frames are moved over, even slightly to make sure the inner covers fit snug along the top of the hive.
So far both hives are still live and doing quite well.
Do what is best for you.
The second is one I knocked together myself, using jumbo deep boxes and frames from BeeQuip.
They have mesh floors with sliding drawers underneath so I can do my OAV treatments from below as well as do the mite counts.
The biggest problem is that the frames are designed for lang hives.....that gap along the top is not needed for horizontals because the bees do not need to go up. What they do is form burr comb between the tops of the frames and the inner covers, which is annoying to have to scrape off all the time.
This has to be done especially when frames are moved over, even slightly to make sure the inner covers fit snug along the top of the hive.
So far both hives are still live and doing quite well.
Do what is best for you.
the gap is controlled by the ledge the frame sits on rather than the frame. eg nz runs bottom space langs while other countries tend to run top space langs. same frames, just a change in how deep you cut the frame ledge in the box.
are the old metal frame ledge still available? you can use that to make them fit.
however with no bee space at the top they will propolise the frames to the lid. to much space and they will fill it with comb.
For me this is one of the biggest drawbacks of top bar hives as you have to pull a whole hive apart to see what's happening. With a conventional hive or a long hive using conventional frames as soon as you take the lid off you can learn a lot about what's happening in the hive. Personally I would put up with having to scrape them occasionally but you could just put top boards of straight plywood on top. Most top boards in New Zealand iincluding all of mine have too much top clearance i.e. more than a bee space above the frames so they are always filled up with honey and wax whenever the hive gets full. Way back in the day when all our hives were on individual floors the vast majority of our lids just sat straight on top of the frames and they worked fine.
Ive been using 6 frame boxes for a couple of years now, I put them on a 10 frame base, easy to split and have no shortage of honey @ about 20kg a box its not to heavey
I use top bars in mine that are tight together so don't have that issue, but knowing how bees will do their thing with burr comb and propolis I guess the object is to remove that space that triggers their instinct to fill it. I am thinking wooden spacers cut to fit the gaps could be a solution. You could lift them out to peek between frames. Depends on how many hives how much of a hassle that would be.
Just found your question, I live in Michigan and was tired of loosing my hives to the bitter cold winters so over the covid winter I built 2 horizontal hives. I didn't get bees into them until mid June 2020 and was somewhat worried that they wouldn't be ready for winter with their stores. I didn't take anything off the hives last year and I put 2" styrofoam on the follower boards for insulation and in the spring time when I opened them up they were in great shape. Then I decided to build an Insulated Layens hive and made my deep Langstroth frames using dove tails so I could take them apart for extraction ( I have a Langstroth extractor). So I put a swarm in it that I caught in the spring and they are doing fantastic. I'm in the process of building an insulated horizontal hive for standard deep Langstroth frames to put another swarm I caught. It should be interesting to see how they all come through the winter.... Bottom line no matter what you hear don't be afraid to experiment, I love the horizontal hives and will not go back to the vertical hives........ Good Luck...
In a month or two you'll be able to stop pondering and start doing ! let us know how it goes !
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I have tried horizontal hives with conventional frames and topbars. Just because I wanted to give them a go. I am going to stick with Langstroths now. Much less fiddling. I expect to also transition to all 3/4 boxes in the future as well. Though I shall probably go foundationless as I want the wax for other stuff, and it is easy to cut our pieces of cut comb.
Well the original FD Nuc was going gangbusters in June!
My priority was to go to 3/4 so I have been slowly adding 3/4 supers with the intention to go into 10 frame boxes, I decided a high Nuc would be too much work and have lots of 10 frame boxes lying around. The queen has been laying up a storm last couple of months.
My configuration was 1 x FDBrood, building up to 3 x 3/4 boxes.
Last week after the rain, it was time for another hive check and I wanted to move the FD brood up top to force her down so I could get rid of the box. Inspection showed FD box mostly empty just 1/4 frame brood, I thought yay I can get rid of it soon.
Configuration became 1 x 3/4 bottom box with brood and a couple of queen cells! then 2 x 3/4boxes honey/nectar, QE, hive mat with center hole, FD box with capped brood. I also turned this box around to get a rear entrance.
Yesterday I saw what appeared to be swarming at the rear and saw the old queen on the ground dead. They didn’t swarm but went back in, confused it seemed.
Today I looked at the FD box with the intention of removing the old brood frames and saw several swarm cups. I don’t think there is a queen, I listen to the boxes most days and didn’t hear any quacking, but I can’t be sure. I added another 1 x 3/4 box under this box. So next step…..have to wait till brood emerges, but by then they will have filled up the frames with nectar and pollen🤔Any suggestions?