8 frame or 10 frame hive

[wildflowerlanehoney]

i use 10 frame hive, but i hear and see stuff for 8 frame hives.

what is the advantage to either set up? availibility for me is not an issue and with the internet, it doesn't seem to be an issue if you don't mind shipping.

i would guess for honey production, a ten frame setup would be better.

just curious.....

[honeybeekeeper]

what is the advantage to either set up?

The 8 frame hive boxes would be lighter then the 10 frame hive boxes so in turn it would be much easier to manipulate the 8 frame hive, specially if you had alot of hives!

[Michael Bush]

http://bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm#lighterboxes
http://bushfarms.com/beeseightframemedium.htm

The main issues is weight. The other advantage is better wintering, although I would say this is a only a slight difference.

[scdw43]

They are lighter in weight, but also it is easier to get bees to move up, than out. I run all 10 frames on production hives, but I have seen bees that have plenty of boxes given to them, not work the combs in the 1 and 10 position. When they run out of room to move up they will fill the combs on the side.

[peacekeeperapiaries]

SCD hit the nail on the head, for a while we ran both 8 and 10 frame equipment, deeps and mediums. I quickly got tired of 4 different sized boxes everytime I went to the bee yards. We decided to go with one size box and found that in most of the 8 frame boxes the bess utilized all of the space wall to wall, while in most of the 10 frame boxes either frame 1 or 10 and often both were just not utilized to their full potential.. and the 8 frame boxes are lighter. We got rid of the 10 frame and stuck with 8 frame.

[Michael Bush]

The other wintering issue is related. They often leave the honey in 1 and 10 and move up leaving quite a few pounds of honey behind and then they sometimes starve at the top with all that honey below them. An eight frame box just fits the typical cluster better.

[iwombat]

In addition to better overwintering, the spring build-up is faster too. There was an article a few months back in ABJ about that.