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All Mediums a bad idea?

16K views 84 replies 37 participants last post by  AramF 
#1 ·
I know there is likely to be many schools of thought on this so please feel free to provide your thoughts good or bad, I can't learn and make a choice without knowing as much as possible.

I will be starting with bees in the spring and have been thinking I would standardize on all medium 10 frame boxes. I first read about this over the summer when looking into the checkerboarding methode of beekeeping that I would like to try. I started contacting a few nuc suppliers to ask about the availabilty of medium frame nucs, now I am hearing from them that all mediums aren't a good idea and I would like to hear other thoughts.

Thank you!
 
#2 ·
If you were planning on using double deeps use 3 mediums. The bees don't know the difference. A deep full weighs 90 lb, a medium full weighs 60 lb. While you are at it consider going to 8 frame, a 8 frame medium weighs 48 lb. and bees like 8 frame better than 10. Best of luck on your new venture.
 
#3 ·
Thanks for your thoughts DBF. I am not to worried about the weight issue, why do bees prefer an 8 frame over a 10 frame setup? I planned on 3 mediums to replace the 2 deeps.
 
#4 · (Edited by Moderator)
I know there is likely to be many schools of thought on this so please feel free to provide your thoughts good or bad, I can't learn and make a choice without knowing as much as possible.

Thank you!
I went through this a few years ago as well. In true beekeeping style, everyone whose not done it says it's "not a good idea". I don't see it myself.

One of the ways around this is to put the bees initially into a deep, and accommodate growth with mediums. Overwinter with 1 deep, 2 mediums. In the spring, the bees will have eaten their way up, and you can just remove the medium from the bottom and trade it for some beer, getting it out of your setup.
 
#7 ·
Ditto what Mark said.

"ya can't please ever'body so...ya gotta please yourself!"

I'm a newbee just starting out and after probably *way* too much studying I'm going with all 8-frame mediums for my apiary. I understand that the weight of the supers aren't an issue...right now. Later, as the body begins to loose it's "I can do anything" ability (not knocking that, but there comes a day...) the lighter weight boxes will be nice. That time comes possibly with age, possibly in a split second when you bend over to tie your shoes one day, or maybe it never comes. But, for most of us, our physical strength tends to begin to lessen at some point in our life. We trade out strength for smarts....we like to think of it that way! ;)

Best wishes and have fun!
Ed
 
#6 ·
Mr. Spock that is a good idea for cycling out the deep box. I had hoped to not need to buy the extra equipment (2 deeps and frames/foundation) if it wasn't needed, but I guess the added cost isn't much when I think about the fact I will be getting nucs with five deep frames each (so only need a few frames and foundation) and the extra existing brood space they will already hold...
 
#9 ·
Is there a problem with starting bees in a med? I already understand that opinions vary and am interested in all sides. mainly for education.

I have started building my longstroth hive and from all the information I have read or seen so far had decided to make 2 deep bodies and 3 med supers. may have a couple of hives in there for this area. It is all free except for the time so not a big waste if I made a choice that I will only change later. I don't have a lot to go on so far in making choices so am pretty much geared up to realize I made mistakes.

Having all one size boxes makes since to me but not deeps. I am not concerned with efficiency in handling honey since that is not my focus. I see little or no need for myself to have to heft the extra weight. plus I am not sure my back can get away with it anyway.
 
#13 ·
Michael has put together an amazing amount of information. Just taking a moment to recognize him specifically and express my appreciation for the work you have done Michael.

His write up on Easier to work hives is good. I had not thought of reducing to 8 frame as well until this morning. I saw another comment on a different thread that said bees do better in 8 frame equipment. It is not to late for me to make that change if necessary.

Does anyone have the particulars as to why Bees would do better with 8 frames? or at least why some think they do. It's pretty obvious why the keeper is better off. Right off the bat I would suspect it has to do with bees wanting to move up and down rather than side to side.
 
#14 ·
Does anyone have the particulars as to why Bees would do better with 8 frames? or at least why some think they do. It's pretty obvious why the keeper is better off. Right off the bat I would suspect it has to do with bees wanting to move up and down rather than side to side.
I'd be careful putting too much into "bees wanting to . . ." Bees want to do what they do naturally. Naturally, I've seen bees build combs very narrow and tall(deep, like several feet) and only a few of these in a row, and I've seen comb 10" wide by 6" deep built into a roof soffit many combs in a row. Who says bees do better with 8 frames?
 
#16 ·
Here's how it works for me. When I started, I got some great advice to use all the same size boxes. I can only imagine it makes things easier. I don't have to worry about where the bees are vertically in the hive or for splitting or combining. They're always in the same size frames.

That being said, I started out with 10 frame deeps. I have found a few problems with ten frame deeps even though they are about the most efficient when it comes to a dollars per square inch of comb ratio. Firstly, I have a lot of problems with the foundation folding or becoming wavy at the bottom. I tried trimming the bottom of the foundation, but it still happens between the last two wires. I don't like it. Plus, they are heavy. With a larger frame, there is also a greater propensity for being crooked.

After talking with Michael and seeing his hives, I decided to switch to 10 frame mediums. Deep boxes can be trimmed easily enough and I'm slowly selling all my deep frames as nucs. It will take a while though. As a side note, many extractors can take twice as many medium frames as deeps. I have a 9/18. That means I can extract about 50% more honey per cycle.

Mediums are a good idea, and don't worry about starting with nucs of deep frames. You can start the hive with two mediums stacked up and place the deep frames in the top box hanging down to the bottom box. As the bees expand outward, you can move the deep frames outward until they can be removed. I had to do essentially the same thing with my first nuc which was a medium.
 
#70 ·
...Mediums are a good idea, and don't worry about starting with nucs of deep frames. You can start the hive with two mediums stacked up and place the deep frames in the top box hanging down to the bottom box. As the bees expand outward, you can move the deep frames outward until they can be removed. I had to do essentially the same thing with my first nuc which was a medium.
This was covered early in this thread about atarting nucs in mediums.
 
#17 ·
Michael B, thank you for the reply. Your website and discusion on box size as well as very early spring brood management is what led me down the road of exploring checkerboarding/nectar management and your similar spring manipulation. Would you mind telling me/us why you use 8 frame boxes over 10's? What about 10 frame boxes with 9 frame spacers?

Solomon, thank you very much! That is a clear and consise description of an easy way to use the deep frames from a nuc in medium frame boxes!!!
 
#20 ·
I know there is likely to be many schools of thought on this so please feel free to provide your thoughts good or bad, I can't learn and make a choice without knowing as much as possible.

I will be starting with bees in the spring and have been thinking I would standardize on all medium 10 frame boxes. .... I started contacting a few nuc suppliers to ask about the availabilty of medium frame nucs, now I am hearing from them that all mediums aren't a good idea and I would like to hear other thoughts.....

Thank you!
I am a new bee too. Do not get too serious with any particular beekeeping ideas.

I was going to "standardize" my equipment from the start under an influence of some books and forums, but due to availability of starting stock (bees, nucs etc) I finished up with a few hives both deeps and mediums. I do not regret it, I am going to find out how it works for me. I did not make an investment of thousands of dollars, so whatever happen will be a enjoyable and learning experience.

If you want to start with nucs, there is limited availability of medium nucs, besides 5 frame deep nuc is a better deal than 5 frames medium nuc since it will contain more brood and bees, for the same price. Likely 5 frame mediums may be priced higher than 5 frame deeps due to limited availability.

From my perspective after 1 year experience of a newbee my take is this:

Why don't you try both sizes and find out what works best for you?

With only a few hives to start weather if you buy or make your own equipment what difference is going to make financially?

This "all standarized " equipment mantra came either from commercial beeks, or from the beeks who think they are a commercial beeks, but in real life they are not.

Commercial beeks handling hundreds or thousands hives need to "standarize" for obvious reasons, cutting cost and making profit or they are out of bee business.

A new hobby beek needs not to "standarize", from the get go, what the heck for???? He or she needs to learn, have fun, and find out what works best for particular situation, location, climate etc.

I run now 8 frames deeps, 8 frames mediums and I am seriously considering trying 3/4 (7 5/8 boxes).

Some commercial and I think smart beeks swear by them, they are a compromise between the 2 most popular sizes. If that works for me I am going to "standarize" with all 3/4 supers since they seem to be a perfect compromise/balance for both weight, size of broodnest, and easy extraction of honey.

I know, many will say this is an "odd" size, when you have to sell... etc bla bla bla.

Well I do not give a crap about "reselling value" since I am a hobby beek, I do not have to turn profit, I will likely never keep more than 10 hives anyway, and I keep my bees for personal enjoyment and some great tasting honey.

That's some ideas to consider for a new bee whatever they are worth.
 
#24 ·
This "all standarized " equipment mantra came either from commercial beeks, or from the beeks who think they are a commercial beeks, but in real life they are not.
False. This comes from commercial beekeepers who have been keeping bees for many years and hobbyist beekeepers who have been keeping bees for many years and who have plenty of experience in knowing what they are talking about. No longtime hobbyist or sideliner has any delusions as to which they are. Keep that in mind.
 
#22 ·
I have done mediums and deeps and combinations of both. In northern climates like where I started in VT I like Deeps and have even considered going Dadant deep or deep and a half. For wintering purposes I find it better for the bees to have as much continuous comb as possible. There are times that a cluster cannot, or will not, cross the 3/8th gap between boxes and if they don't, they starve.

A deeper frame gives them more stores to access until they get a day that it is warm enough to cross the gap.

lots of people have varying opinions on this. But Langstroth and Dadant carefully calculated the required space needed for the best possible outcome in a brood box... Dadant was a couple of inches more generous. The bees they kept where a different animal from what they have become today... they have been selectively bred for larger brood nests and bigger hives... I think if they were doing their work now days, deeps would even be deeper. Keep in mind that their intention was for there to be only one brood box and it had to be of a volume that would be adequate for the brood nest... One brood box for bees of today is not enough space. so making that space even smaller makes less sense.
 
#27 ·
Without a lot of experience, other than having to deal with a bunch of different size frames - if the consensus is that the bees don't care - you sure will when trying to deal with it. I started traditional with brood deeps & I am constantly juggling either where to store them, introduce them or if I have enough mediums to fill out a box - The point being you're not going to be running more than 1, rarely 2 deeps on a hive, everthing else will be mediums or supers which might be 3, 4, 7+ high.

My brood does well in the deeps, but what a pain to deal with - I haven't been into the bottom deep of my big hive since spring & have no idea what's going on there, other than they are huge, happy and gave me 60+ lbs of honey this year.
 
#28 ·
Mediums are great. They are standard and they stack up well. The nice thing about deeps is that more often than not you will find your queen in the deep box than anywhere else. I do medium on the bottom, then deep, then as many mediums as needed on the top. If you are following Walt's recomendations, then he suggests a deep and shallows.

It was brought up before, deeps are very cost effective. I think the bee space between two deeps is more than bee space between two mediums. Just look at the frame depth and box depth and you'll see it is much more than with mediums. So staking mediums on top of deeps keeps the bee space much smaller than going deep upon deep upon deep, which of course helps with winter migration up to the top of the hive for honey consumption.

Walt also mentions that a deep full of brood and pollen is not nearly as heavy as a deep full of honey, so, you are unlikely to break your back. The only time it is full of honey is in the winter/fall, which is not really the time when you do too many inspections.

If you ever need to overwinter two queens, a solid separator in the middle of the deep with let you keep two queens. I doubt you coud do that with a split medium, although mediums could always be stacked with a solid floor separator to overwinter with one queen per box.
 
#30 ·
On the first point, the purpose of a Modern hive is maneuverability. A monster like a Darant deep starts to limit that.

On the last point, exactly how different is what the bees do down south than uP north? Certainly it is not 'very different' especially since many many bees are exported to the north on a yearly basis. Now if you want to claim beekeepers do it differently in the north, that would be a different story, but still, the differences are ultimately quite limited.

The argument 'you don't understand because you don't live around here' doesn't hold in the slightest when it comes to beekeeping.
 
#34 ·
On the last point, exactly how different is what the bees do down south than uP north? Certainly it is not 'very different' especially since many many bees are exported to the north on a yearly basis. Now if you want to claim beekeepers do it differently in the north, that would be a different story, but still, the differences are ultimately quite limited.
Up North;
They spend no time propolising Small Hive Beatles into every corner. I would deffinately not suggest a northern beek invest in SHB traps or ground drenches.

Brood rearing completely shuts down by early/mid October, so I would not recommend that a northern beek follows the southern time table for treating for mites, it can be done much earlier here.

I would also not recommend that a northern beek try and feed syrup all winter, it will just freeze solid, feed early and take it off before the freeze.

Drones are not mature until about the last week of June so I don't recommend grafting queen cells in April.

If I sit here long enough, the list could be endless.
 
#31 ·
Thank you all for your replies and thoughts on standardizing on all one size box/frame. As I figured this has brought about a lot of discusion and differening opinions, it has given me a lot to think about... At this point I am still leaning towards standardizing on 10 frame mediums since several suggestions on dealing with deep nuc frames have been suggested, but time will tell as I get started on this adventure.

Thanks again!
 
#32 ·
I was in the same position last year and decided to go with 10 frame medium. I very glad that I did it. Things are just a little easier to handle.
The bottom line for me, it is not a bad idea to go all medium.
I have good comparison, me mentor uses all 10 frame deep. These boxes become very have quickly and I already pulled my back once
when I was working with him.
 
#33 ·
I'm replying simply because I'm new and I just went through both my hives extensively, down to the screened bottom board.
I have 10-frame deeps and mediums (mostly because I inherited the equipment and some bees) but I can see the appeal of using all mediums.
Yesterday I had to rearrange my weakest hive to give them all capped honey frames and if I was running all mediums I could have done that much more easily for both me and the bees. As it is, I had to shuffle the 2 deeps I had them in and put the medium on top. All I can say is if it was all mediums it would have been easier.
That said, I'm running 2 deeps and a medium for each hive and I don't plan to change it. When I need to get down into the bottom deep, I use an empty deep as my "frame holder" to make the hive lighter for me.
 
#35 ·
I've used 3 mediums, 10 frames, and even with this size it can be a load lifting that full box off the top of a stack, particularly since I have them sitting on boards across concrete blocks, which places the honey super, and I use mediums for that as well, 4 high on the stack. If you are new to beekeeping, remember that you aren't just lifting a 60 pound dead weight--you're lifting 60 pounds filled with thousands of living, buzzing things, which can be pretty daunting to some. That said, starting again, I'd seriously consider the 8 frame box. My only other concern with the mediums is, as was mentioned earlier, having more frames to search through when doing an inspection than you would have with 2 deeps. You have to have a plan for where you will set each box as you remove it to do an inspection so you're not setting boxes down in the grass/weeds but you can work out a system. Good luck, and welcome to the ranks.
 
#37 ·
Thanks all! I could start a new thread, but since it has been mentioned here several times I will ask. Is there any benefit (other than lifting weight) of using 8 frame boxes, I.e. do bees use 8 frame boxes better, etc?
 
#41 ·
Fishman- one school of thought is the 8 fame medium does well because it is closer to the bees natrual nest cavity, tree hollows. They tend to build them out edge to edge better, without having to swap frames from the #1 and #10 postion towards the middle to get the bees to draw them out, which is the case with 10 frame deeps. I am moving that direction my self, as I Nuc out my deeps. Good luck, take everything you read hear with a grain of salt, but read read read.
 
#38 ·
If you are in a windy location 8 frame boxes are more likely to blow over if stacked high.

8 frame boxes have to be stacked higher, meaning more equipment is needed for the same size colony in a 10 frame hive.

Some bees will never fill the outer frames of a 10 frame box, in 8 frame they are more likely to use the outer frames.

Clusters are usually round... a narrower box makes it harder for them to maintain a round shape.
 
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