> Nine or ten frames, I don't think you're going
> to see a lot of difference in honey production.
I'd agree if you said that in the context of
giving the bees lots of drawn comb with which to
work, but in the case of a limited amount of comb
(let's say 2 supers per hive, just for kicks),
you have one drawback to using 9-frame supers -
fewer cells in which to deposit and evaporate off
drops of nectar.
10% less cells in a 9-frame super means 10% less
evaporating real estate, which can only be
overcome by deployment of excess supers for
the sole purpose of insuring that the number of
free cells of drawn comb do not become the
limiting factor when evaporating nectar.
Sure, there is a "law of diminishing returns"
to stacking supers, but the basic approach
here is to super early, super everything you
can stack, and to harvest both early and often
to free up cells for the all-important step of
evaporating individual drops of nectar. Think
of how many drops of nectar must be evaporated
to fill one cell with honey. The ratio has to
be something like 10:1, and the amount of
available real estate decreases as nectar is
processed into honey, which fills some number of
cells per day.
So, if you have limited resources, deploying
9-frame supers could limit your harvests
until you build up a decent inventory of drawn
comb. What's a "decent" inventory? Well, one
can never be too rich, too thin, or have too
much drawn comb.