DE Hive Update:

[dcwilliams_29id]

Well guys,

The DE hive has performed very well this year.  Very little propolis, 3 deep supers full of drawn comb, and 1 very happy bee colony.  I have already gotten my hive ready for winter.  I didn't take any honey from the hive this year, but there are plenty of frames full of honey in the deeps. I experienced no bearding this year, and was only stung about 3 times.  The true test I guess will come in the next several months, as I see how the hive overwinters.  I am sure it will given its outstanding performance thus far.  I would recommend the DE hive to anyone, Or at least the conversion for the Langstroth hives that he offers.  I have been using grease patties (sugar and Crisco) for tracheal mites, and it seems to work very well.  I haven't noticed much varroa, but I will be treating within the next couple of weeks anyways.  I have also gotten a coworker into bees, and he has purchased a DE hive as well.  I am going to supply him with some bees in the spring.  I also plan on splitting my hive next year, at least once - mabye twice.  I had more than enough bees this year to do a few splits.  

Chris

[BigRog]

Glad to hear it.
Sounds like you had a great year and the DE Hives are working well.

[TwT]

I just ordered the DE hive mod-kit  for me to try next year, ill make some more myself before the year starts and ill report back here if anyone want to know how the mod-kit performs.

[Robo]

I just ordered the DE hive mod-kit  for me to try next year, ill make some more myself before the year starts and ill report back here if anyone want to know how the mod-kit performs.

My experience has been that rotating the hive and adding the ventilation box have had the biggest improvements.   These are the two aspects that I have adopted for my hives.

I think the bigger, ventilated top cover is not worth the extra effort, and I still perfer a screened bottom board.

[dcwilliams_29id]

I certainly agree that the rotation of the hive, and the added ventilation are probably the two biggest advantages, but the plastic frame spacers that are used in the DE hives really minimize the amount of propolis that the bees can glue the frame bars down with.  I am going to try to buy a couple langstroth deeps next year and see if they can be modified some way to allow the same sort of spacers.  

Chris

[Robo]

I totally agree with Chris that the other big advantage of the DE hive is the frame placement and reduced propolis.  Unfortunately you do not get this advantage from the Langstroth mod kit.  

This is where one has the decide on going with standard Langstroth and propolis or non-standard DE with reduced propolis.

Chris,
 I believe it is a basic design flaw in the Langstroth that you will not be able to fix.  The frame spacing in a Langstroth is controlled within the bee space (frame contact points where the bees can propolize it).  Whereas the DE hive has the longer frame tabs and the plastic spacers that control the frame spacing are out of the normal bee space.

[Anonymous]

I thought my bees were going to be minimalists when it came to propolis.  Unfortunately, since the weather  has cooled off, they are glueing everything together or down at an amazing rate.  Just to test them, I pulled the hive bodys apart and offset the top one.  5 hours later, I checked on them.  They were outside the hive, glueing the bodys back together and sealing up the offset.  I've never noticed them being so determined at getting this done before.  Must be a rough winter coming up.