Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

Interchangable equipment?

4K views 12 replies 8 participants last post by  mmartin91 
#1 ·
Hello all. This was my first year beekeeping and we ordered our beehives from Kelly's. I am not at all happy with Kelly's and plan to buy the next beehives from Mann Lake. I was curious if anyone has had any experience with these two companies and if their equipment will interchange? Can I place Mann lake supers on top of Kelly's and they work just fine? Will the Mann Lake frames fit in the Kelly's boxes? Thanks in advance for any responses.
 
#3 ·
Welcome to Beesource!

Langstroth style hive equipment is built to the same general standards. You can stack 10 frame boxes from any manufacturer and expect them to mate externally with one from a competitor. BUT, there really is no "standard" interchangeability spec adhered to by major manufacturers of hive bodies when considering "bee space". The evidence is in this study comparing boxes across major manufacturers:
http://www.beeculture.com/content/BeeSpaceArticle.pdf

Its an imperfect world. :lookout:But I wouldn't continue to buy from a company I was unhappy with - if you wait to switch, it will be even more difficult after you have acquired more equipment.
 
#6 ·
There was a beeculture or ABJ article a few years ago where someone had measured all of the manufacturers frames and boxes. As I remember it, there was a variance between the manufacturers' top space and bottom space; The space refers to how the frame sits in the box some sit higher leaving more bottom space, and some sit lower leaving more top space. This difference is not a big deal in the big scheme of things and not significant enough to worry about.

I deal with Mann Lake as they are local to me. I have found their customer service to be excellent and their orders show up at my house within 2 days. I liked their boxes well enough, but prefer to make my own with craigslist cheap lumber in the winter.
 
#13 ·
It seems like we ended up getting stuff no one else would buy. We got the whole hive kit and made a few swaps with some of the stuff they had in the package. What we received was wood that had lots of knots in it, we ended up getting entrance reducers that would not even fit because they were cut wrong where there was no opening, and their entrance reducers are "special" so to speak you cannot order them from anywhere but Kelly's because other ones are too fat to fit, and our top covers which are wood started coming apart at the joints not even 2 months after installing bees. Not to mention their shipping costs are outrageous! We live maybe 3 hours from there and when they charge 10 bucks to ship something that fits in a bubble envelope that's a bit crazy. Most everyone that I have talked to around my area uses Kelly's and are happy so maybe we just got a bad go around but do not plan on trying them again any time soon.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top