[psycain89-Germany]

Hi,
I´m Patrik from Germany. I live in a small town near Berlin.

I started this year beekeeping cause I like to make mead.

Now I have 4 Hives. 3x langstroth 2/3 and one in dadant in my garden.
The choice of the hive size is something weird in Germany.
We use mostly Zander (a bit smaller than langstroth) in the south and Deutschnormalmaß (a lot smaller than langstroth but still bigger than langstroth 2/3)in the north.

People start to use dadant and in Berlin their are some rebells using langstroth. I wondered why Germany is so special about that although the whole world uses langstoth hives.

Now in the beesource I hope to learn a lot about other lifestyles. Thanks to youtube I can watch a bunch of videos from all over the world.

Greetings,
Patrik

 

[AR1]

Hi and welcome. Beekeepers from around the world here. Lot of people use designs other than Langstroth.

 

[Michael Bush]

The British seem to be a mixture of British Standard and Langstroth. Most of France, seems to be on the Dadant-Blatt though there are many variations. Slovenia has their own style. I would guess many countries have their own variations on a frame and box hive...

 

[GregB]

Hi,
..... I wondered why Germany is so special about that although the whole world uses langstoth hives.

Patrik,
This is incorrect.
Check your neighbors to the very East (start with Poland).

 

[psycain89-Germany]

Patrik,
This is incorrect.
Check your neighbors to the very East (start with Poland).

Of course we are not the only one. The German Langstroth book writer says there are 70% Langstroth, 25% Dadant in the world. Our number of hives is not really big. We have only 800k Hives.
Curios that around 30% has hives made of polystyrene with all year open screened mesh bottoms because of the "cold" winters 😂

 

[GregB]

Of course we are not the only one. The German Langstroth book writer says there are 70% Langstroth, 25% Dadant in the world. Our number of hives is not really big. We have only 800k Hives.
Curios that around 30% has hives made of polystyrene with all year open screened mesh bottoms because of the "cold" winters ��

If you look at the large scale commercial operators - the "German Langstroth book writer" maybe correct (for now). This is where the balk of equipment is found.
If you look at the small scale/hobby operators - the writer is not correct. This is where the variety of equipment is found (although in small volumes).

Polystyrene as a material (unlike unpainted wood) has 100% water vapor passing resistance (or whatever the proper unit; I forgot).
Also, the polystyrene hive bodies are made in fully controlled industrial setup and are uni-bodies - they have no holes (simply put).
This is a huge difference from wooden-ware.

If you consider that for every 1kg of honey consumed, about 600-700g of water produced - you should realize how much water vapor needs to be evacuated from the hive (more critically in winter).

So - the mesh bottom is a good solution for the polystyrene.
Else the bees will be floating in water.