Mix and Match

[David McLeod]

How about those of you with different styles of boxes pick through them and list the features you would like to keep from each and let's see what shakes out.
I personally have never had bees in anything other than a lang but I had studied the warre and tob bar and see some things I like. For one I like the whole concept of the quilt for all styles of hives and will test it when I get my boxes (langs) assembled.
Let's hear some of your ideas.

[bigbearomaha]

I have been doing that this year.  essentially the change I made was using 5 frame nuc boxes and working them as  Warre hives.

I have a custom floor and quilt box to fit them and treat them as a Warre hive in terms of methodology.

What this provides me is the small size hive body, not much bigger than a traditional Warre box, different shape, but a Warre style hive that is much more able to be transported and  I can use mass produced frames as well as commonly available boxes easing interchange-ability.

[David McLeod]

Wow, nucs run like a warre. makes perfect sense. How is the quilt working out. I may be dense but it seems like a perfect solution for ventilation without moisture issues.

[bigbearomaha]

 I find it works out very well myself.

It helps keep the hive dry by wicking the moisture up and out of the hive.

It also allows the bees a more controllable air flow/ventilation as they can propolise/unpropolise the screen/cloth holes to increase/decrease flow.

[David McLeod]

I will definitely run a quilt or two on the boxes this spring.

[bigbearomaha]

here's how I look at things.

I am a technician turned beekeeper, turned pest management tech.

one of the biggest thing in solving insect "problems" is understanding their harborage.

some insects seek out moist, humid locations.

some seek out cool moist places. 

honey bees seek out dry, warm places.

I believe that if we as beekeepers can help the hive be as warm and dry as possible, that leaves the bees in a better place to handle nest control issues themselves.

if the hive is doing a lot of the work of staying warm and dry, the bees don't have to work as hard at fanning to cool down or increase heat in the hive.  Nor do they need to work as hard to control the air flow to remove humidity moisture in the hive.

by not having to do that much more work, they conserve food stores and have more energy to maintain healthy immune systems, patrol the nest for pests and parasites, etc...

This is just my thinking (influenced by historical beekeepers like Emile Warre, Crist and others who thought similarly)  and so I am working to build hives like this to allow bees to do what they do best. Which is colony/nest management.

[David McLeod]

Makes perfect sense to me. The better of an enviroment we can create for the bees the less they have to expend enegy and stores to adjust the enviroment to their needs. Alot of things are beyond our control such as the ambient temperature or relative humidity but we can adjust the boxes to better allow the bees to adjust the internal conditions of the box.
JMO, but I think the absolute worst offender inside the hive is moisture. Water has to have a way to be dumped overboard as fast as possible. I guess that is one of the reason there is so many experimenting with top entrances, ventilation and the reason we see so many different types of inner covers. You would think after a century's worth of running langs the whole ventilation/moisture thing would have been resolved.

[bigbearomaha]

Something else you might find interesting.   I have a tanzanian top bar hive built to approximate width and depth dimensions of a traditional Warre hive box.

Obviously, it could be used as is easily enough.

The way I use this though is to start captured swarms on 16 bars and let them establish themselves.  upon drawing out the 16 bars of comb, they are ready to be transferred to a  Warre hive and now there is room to start another.  At this setup, the hive being close to 4 ft long, I can start up to three hives in one box this way.

Taking that a step further, I needed to change out a colony from a 5 frame nuc box that required repair.  Looking for somewhere to place said frames of bees  (I was needing to build more nuc boxes at the time)  I cut two follower boards just shorter than the top of the box to use as frame rests.  Then I sit the lang frames in sideways in the ttbh easily and the lid closes over just fine.  Thus giving me a multi-hive starter box.

I thought this would qualify as another example of "mix n match"

Big Bear

[bigbearomaha]

Trying to keep this somewhat seprate and followable...

I took the nuc notion of the above described ttbh even further.

I can cut a simple follower board to dive the ttbh int o2 compartments and then put 4 shorter boards in next the the divider and ends as frame rests.

Now I can start two 5 frame nucs (to be run as warres as my first post discusses) in one box.  Not only that, with some customization of the box making now the same size in terms of width and depth of a nuc box,  I can stack empty nuc boxes on top of each compartment if they need to expand quickly.

in true Warre managment fashion, one simply takes the 5 frames in the ttbh compartment and replaces them with 5 empty frames.  Then place the empty nuc box over the compartment and put the five drawn frames in that.

Walla, presto!!  bees working downward as Warre method suggests to.

This could be a good wintering plan as the heat between the two compartments might be beneficial to the clusters right next to each other.

In Spring, the top box over each compartment and the 5 frames below each respectively can be transferred to other nuc boxes and set on top of empty boxes set underneath them.

Use the ttbh to start splits or new swarms after that.