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I'm in my fourth year of beekeeping and things are going just great, finally. Wanted to share what I think may be the BEST advice I got starting out: using one box size for everything. Since I started in middle-age and want to keep bees for as long as I possibly can - I went with 8-frame mediums to minimize the weight of supers. That's not the important part although I am amazed at how much a super of honey weighs in real life vs reading those weights on a page! HA!
Being able to exchange ANY box and ANY frame in the whole apiary has been a total, utter, blessing and I thank my lucky stars I had a mentor to tell me to choose one box size and use it for EVERYTHING. (And the mentor learned it from Michael Bush who I thank for loads of wonderful info.)
The times the one-size system has come in most handy are when I needed to move a frame of eggs or a swarm cell to a queenless hive regardless of where in the hive I find either. I can easily renew brood comb by using a super frame that had honey in it last year. The question is simply 'do I have a box' rather than 'do I have the right sized box' when I need to split a hive or hive a swarm or pull a nuc. (Same with frames - only one size needed.)
Just wanted to put this out there to anyone new who hasn't bought too much equipment to change course easily.
Being able to exchange ANY box and ANY frame in the whole apiary has been a total, utter, blessing and I thank my lucky stars I had a mentor to tell me to choose one box size and use it for EVERYTHING. (And the mentor learned it from Michael Bush who I thank for loads of wonderful info.)
The times the one-size system has come in most handy are when I needed to move a frame of eggs or a swarm cell to a queenless hive regardless of where in the hive I find either. I can easily renew brood comb by using a super frame that had honey in it last year. The question is simply 'do I have a box' rather than 'do I have the right sized box' when I need to split a hive or hive a swarm or pull a nuc. (Same with frames - only one size needed.)
Just wanted to put this out there to anyone new who hasn't bought too much equipment to change course easily.