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Crazy Hive Design

20K views 44 replies 32 participants last post by  VolunteerK9 
#1 ·
This hive is the brain child of my brother. He is a just entering his second year of beekeeping and decided he wanted to build a monster hive. At first he is planning to have multiple colonies in this behemoth. At some point he wants one colony in here. I had to just shake my head and smile.
Wood Plywood Hardwood Chest Furniture

PS that is a deep frame in the foreground :D
 
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#4 ·
OK, I'm guessing here that it's 2x as wide, 3x as tall, and 3x as long as a 10frame deep (approximating from the pic)?
...that'd be like an 18-body Lang. using all 10-frame deeps! How exactly is he intending to lift those "supers" forklift/crane? If he placed one full-width (of that hive, so double-width for "normal") frame that was the height of all 3 boxes in there, the bees could potentially stock that frame with >60lbs of honey...have fun luggin' those frames around! lol

Let us know how his hernia operation fares! :lookout:
-Rob
 
#6 ·
He might do a search for my threads on my Gargantua hives, which I have modified this year. My main finding - don't build a frame bigger than will fit in your extractor.
 
#7 ·
The hive is 4x8 ft. The deep is using a 1 x 12 and the supers are 1 x 8. He is building frames for it and initially using 10 nucs to start it. He built removable frame supports for the deep nucs that will be removed when they pull out wax on the frames made to fit it. And yes it is designed to be lifted with a forklift. I estimate a super will weigh about 1 ton (if ever filled). The whole thing is insulated.
 
#16 ·
If this is anything like fishing, He's gonna need a bigger boat - That thing is going to bring in some HUGE bees.

Way to go - more power to him!!......Half the stuff I do is not practical as well but I guarantee I live an more exciting life then you practical people!
 
#19 ·
Yes this will be a forklift breaker. I will try to get new pics, he installed multiple nucs in it with division boards to keep them seperate. Once they have drawn comb on the super sized frames he will pull nuc frames.
 
#20 ·
Let us know how it goes. My guess is that a one-queen hive will never fill it, for the same reason we never find 4'x8' hives in closets, barns, tree cavities, and other large space. There seems to be a natural limit to hive size, which we can stretch somewhat with hive management but the limit is still there.

If he can find a way to manage it as a many-queen operation though (creative use of double screens and excluders?), he might just have the world's largest box of bees :)
 
#23 ·
Sorry, I forgot about this thread. The hive was installed last summer and nucs were placed in. My brother has not opened it up this spring as of yet.

Here it is in place.
 
#28 ·
Well we opened the hive up last weekend. The hive configuration was not ideal, the division boards were to close together and most of the colonies became honey bound and swarmed themselves to death last fall by leaving an insufficient biomass of bees to survive the winter. There is one that is building back up and is looking good. I advised my brother to move the division boards to make the equivalent of about 3-4 deeps in volume. There is a ton of drawn comb, and I would love to get a picture of the monster frames, however it was to cold to open up the large box on the bottom. I will try to make it down there when they repopulate the dead out sections and get some pictures. Once the colonies are established the goal is to remove some of the division boards and have two queen sections. We will see how it turns out.

The window below the roof is a ventilation vent. The shallow top box is full of standard medium frames. The deep is full of custom frames that measure 12 x 48 inches. The whole hive is about 8 feet long.
 
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