This was my first year of bee keeping and i got bit hard by the bug, I love it. I purchased 2 nucs back in the spring. I placed them in a deep hive body and placed shallow supers on them as needed. I plan on getting 10 package bees next spring. It seems to me it would be easier to buy all medium Equipment. Can i do this use medium for the body and honey supers.Just seems it would be easier to handle and buy this way. What bad could come from this.
using all meduim frames
ashb82
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I have seen some homemade medium nucs that are 'double height', but again most established bee keepers seem to use the traditional deep/shallow set-up.
I don't know anything about the legailty of nuc sizes... that just seems a little over-reaching to me
I don't know anything about the legailty of nuc sizes... that just seems a little over-reaching to me
Local feral survivors in eight frame medium boxes.
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I've never quite understood why, when they came up with the "in between" size (7 5/8") they didn't just use a one by eight. It's not like the standard already existed...
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@PCM and iwombat:
There is some confusion about the naming of the 7 5/8 inch hive box size.
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=247643
In that thread AmericasBeekeeper suggested 7 5/8 be called Intermediate which agrees with these guys who also call the 7 5/8 size intermediate:
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/EquipmentList.html#hiveBodies
Some people call them Western, like fish_stix. That however does not agree with the following distributor who uses the designation Medium and Western interchangeably.
http://www.bee-outside.com/woodframes9-14forhivebody-1.aspx
http://www.bee-outside.com/search.aspx?find=super
But it is easy to see how muddled this can get because the 7 5/8 size has become especially popular on the West Coast due to a regulation there that requires a pollination hive to be more than just one deep. I guess for bees living out there that two 6 5/8 boxes is undersized and three is oversized but two different size boxes is unacceptable. This vindicates fish_stix but conflicts with the consensus usage.
Western, Illinois, and Medium are sometimes used as interchangeably. If one makes the natural assumption that 7 5/8 must be the Western then it is a quick step to call them either Illinois or Medium as well, or to think any one of these designations means the 7 5/8 box. It is easy to see why PCM would say that.
There is some confusion about the naming of the 7 5/8 inch hive box size.
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=247643
In that thread AmericasBeekeeper suggested 7 5/8 be called Intermediate which agrees with these guys who also call the 7 5/8 size intermediate:
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/EquipmentList.html#hiveBodies
Some people call them Western, like fish_stix. That however does not agree with the following distributor who uses the designation Medium and Western interchangeably.
http://www.bee-outside.com/woodframes9-14forhivebody-1.aspx
http://www.bee-outside.com/search.aspx?find=super
But it is easy to see how muddled this can get because the 7 5/8 size has become especially popular on the West Coast due to a regulation there that requires a pollination hive to be more than just one deep. I guess for bees living out there that two 6 5/8 boxes is undersized and three is oversized but two different size boxes is unacceptable. This vindicates fish_stix but conflicts with the consensus usage.
Western, Illinois, and Medium are sometimes used as interchangeably. If one makes the natural assumption that 7 5/8 must be the Western then it is a quick step to call them either Illinois or Medium as well, or to think any one of these designations means the 7 5/8 box. It is easy to see why PCM would say that.
Local feral survivors in eight frame medium boxes.
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I make two frame medium nucs for queen mating, but five frame medium nucs (which are available from Brushy Mt, Miller Bee Supply and others) can work for that. For splits, though, an eight frame medium works well for a nuc. Which happens to be my standard sized box... it's exactly the same as a five frame deep nuc in volume...
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@Michael, they did. It used to be that a 1X8 was 7/8" thick and 7 5/8" wide.
The hive boxes used to be an even 20" long; the width was determined by comb spacing so it was always an odd number. When lumber went down another 1/8 inch there was a problem with compatibility. For the box length the solution was to keep the board centerline the same and shorten the boxes to 19 7/8 with an extra 1/16 inch bee space inside on each end. That way old and new boxes could still be stacked and the inside spaces still worked. The lumber industry messed the bee industry up, and the 7 5/8 size is a historical artifact showing it never quite recovered.
The hive boxes used to be an even 20" long; the width was determined by comb spacing so it was always an odd number. When lumber went down another 1/8 inch there was a problem with compatibility. For the box length the solution was to keep the board centerline the same and shorten the boxes to 19 7/8 with an extra 1/16 inch bee space inside on each end. That way old and new boxes could still be stacked and the inside spaces still worked. The lumber industry messed the bee industry up, and the 7 5/8 size is a historical artifact showing it never quite recovered.
Local feral survivors in eight frame medium boxes.
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>For purposes of overwintering nucs, do you think that an 8 frame medium is better or worse than a 5 frame deep?
It is difficult to say. Perhaps in a cold climate the five frame deep has the advantage of the cluster staying pretty much on the same frames and only moving up, front or back, but not over to different frames. But I use the eight frame mediums.
>@Michael, they did. It used to be that a 1X8 was 7/8" thick and 7 5/8" wide.
But I never saw a 7 5/8" box until the one by eights were already 7 1/4"... back when they were still 7 1/2" I only saw 9 5/8" and 6 5/8" with nothing between.
>>The hive boxes used to be an even 20" long; the width was determined by comb spacing so it was always an odd number. When lumber went down another 1/8 inch there was a problem with compatibility. For the box length the solution was to keep the board centerline the same and shorten the boxes to 19 7/8 with an extra 1/16 inch bee space inside on each end. That way old and new boxes could still be stacked and the inside spaces still worked. The lumber industry messed the bee industry up, and the 7 5/8 size is a historical artifact showing it never quite recovered.
Certainly the 9 5/8" and the 5 3/4" are artifacts from that...
It is difficult to say. Perhaps in a cold climate the five frame deep has the advantage of the cluster staying pretty much on the same frames and only moving up, front or back, but not over to different frames. But I use the eight frame mediums.
>@Michael, they did. It used to be that a 1X8 was 7/8" thick and 7 5/8" wide.
But I never saw a 7 5/8" box until the one by eights were already 7 1/4"... back when they were still 7 1/2" I only saw 9 5/8" and 6 5/8" with nothing between.
>>The hive boxes used to be an even 20" long; the width was determined by comb spacing so it was always an odd number. When lumber went down another 1/8 inch there was a problem with compatibility. For the box length the solution was to keep the board centerline the same and shorten the boxes to 19 7/8 with an extra 1/16 inch bee space inside on each end. That way old and new boxes could still be stacked and the inside spaces still worked. The lumber industry messed the bee industry up, and the 7 5/8 size is a historical artifact showing it never quite recovered.
Certainly the 9 5/8" and the 5 3/4" are artifacts from that...
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I guess my post wasn't clear... I realize that there are nuc boxes available, but I am looking for a couple nucs of bees, but most sellers sell deep nucs.
Obviously if I were building (or buying) my own nucs I could use mediums, but as a buyer I am limited to what is the most prevelant in the marketplace.
Obviously if I were building (or buying) my own nucs I could use mediums, but as a buyer I am limited to what is the most prevelant in the marketplace.
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@Michael
>But I never saw a 7 5/8" box until...
What a mystery! One nice thing about the 7 5/8" size is that the comb face is really close to an even 100 square inches, which is convenient for mental arithmetic. By the way, this is the same size as you get with plastic frames in a Medium super. As to the 9 5/8" size of a deep, yes indeed, it used to be that a 1X10 was easy to come by. Back then a hive was conceptually quite simple: cut a 1X10 into 20" lengths for a box to throw 10 frames into, spaced as nature wants. The obtuse numbers actually in use hide the simplicity of the original plan.
>But I never saw a 7 5/8" box until...
What a mystery! One nice thing about the 7 5/8" size is that the comb face is really close to an even 100 square inches, which is convenient for mental arithmetic. By the way, this is the same size as you get with plastic frames in a Medium super. As to the 9 5/8" size of a deep, yes indeed, it used to be that a 1X10 was easy to come by. Back then a hive was conceptually quite simple: cut a 1X10 into 20" lengths for a box to throw 10 frames into, spaced as nature wants. The obtuse numbers actually in use hide the simplicity of the original plan.
Local feral survivors in eight frame medium boxes.
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>Back then a hive was conceptually quite simple: cut a 1X10 into 20" lengths for a box to throw 10 frames into, spaced as nature wants. The obtuse numbers actually in use hide the simplicity of the original plan.
And as much as everyone keeps cheating on the specs anyway, I wonder why we don't just go back to that for a deep... a one by ten cut 20"...
And as much as everyone keeps cheating on the specs anyway, I wonder why we don't just go back to that for a deep... a one by ten cut 20"...
Sorry I misunderstood this post.
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@Michael
I guess that people are concerned the frames they have would not fit properly if the boxes were a little shorter, bee space offering such little margin of error as it does. That must always have been the problem with ignoring the difference. The drawn frames one has are the biggest asset, not the boxes themselves. But, I am not convinced a smaller space is a bad idea because the bees keep building comb between the boxes; that implies to me the bee spaces there are too big and going over to the smaller boards might just fix it.
As to the 20" 1X10 with 10 frames, it occurs to me that if a computer geek were designing the hive it would go in even numbers of 2^n rather than sets of 10. A hive would have been made from a 1X8 16" long with 16 frames, which has about the same volume. He would have claimed that being 24" inches wide was a nice round number showing how natural such a box is. Then some young innovator would have come along and cut the boxes down to 10 frames pointing out that with this improvement the boxes are square and 10 frames is a nice round number showing how natural the improvement is. Perhaps we would be better off.
I guess that people are concerned the frames they have would not fit properly if the boxes were a little shorter, bee space offering such little margin of error as it does. That must always have been the problem with ignoring the difference. The drawn frames one has are the biggest asset, not the boxes themselves. But, I am not convinced a smaller space is a bad idea because the bees keep building comb between the boxes; that implies to me the bee spaces there are too big and going over to the smaller boards might just fix it.
As to the 20" 1X10 with 10 frames, it occurs to me that if a computer geek were designing the hive it would go in even numbers of 2^n rather than sets of 10. A hive would have been made from a 1X8 16" long with 16 frames, which has about the same volume. He would have claimed that being 24" inches wide was a nice round number showing how natural such a box is. Then some young innovator would have come along and cut the boxes down to 10 frames pointing out that with this improvement the boxes are square and 10 frames is a nice round number showing how natural the improvement is. Perhaps we would be better off.
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That must have been before 1963 when the American Lumber Standards Committee determined a 7 1/2" width was the national standard. They later reduced it to 7 1/4"
Wayne
Local feral survivors in eight frame medium boxes.
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I don't remember the exact year, but when I was a kid (which would have been the 60's) they were 7 1/2". When I was a carpenter (which would have been the 70's) they had shrunk to 7 1/4".
If I were designing them, I'd make them 15 7/8"" by 15 7/8" outside with 3/4" frame rests so you don't have to rabbet them and you can make the end of the frame rest out of a one by two. Make the bottoms and tops 15 7/8" (16" by 16" minus a saw kerf). And, of course, I'd make them all out of one by eights.
If I were designing them, I'd make them 15 7/8"" by 15 7/8" outside with 3/4" frame rests so you don't have to rabbet them and you can make the end of the frame rest out of a one by two. Make the bottoms and tops 15 7/8" (16" by 16" minus a saw kerf). And, of course, I'd make them all out of one by eights.
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This fall I have more hives that totally packed both their deeps with stores (I may be getting better at this, or maybe I got lucky) and that was a literal pain when checking on them this fall. Plus I squished more than I should have.I'm preparing for hives in the spring, and my vote is all mediums. Only problem is many times nucs use deep frames
What I am thinking of doing starting next year is to keep 1 deep with 2 or 3 mediums for brood and see how that goes, depending on how the colony is doing. That way I can steal from my medium supers and swap a few food frames around for winter if need be as well.
I like deeps for nucs though and likely will using that size to get new colonies started for a while yet.
When we started to go more towards mediums, I cut off a large number of deep frames on the table saw. That includes Pierco and various drawn plastic and even drawn wooden frames. Used all of the bottoms for starters in new frames, so that helped a bit to defray costs.
Cut off the bottoms of deeps and used the piece to make ventilated inner covers similar to the ones designed by Tim at Honey Run Apiaries. Shallows also work for this purpose, even if you also have to trim rotted parts.
Also cut off damaged and rotting parts of old deeps on tops and bottoms to make clean "new" mediums
Still have some deeps, but only as brood boxes in the home apiary. Our nuc supplier runs deeps. I get around the weight thing by swapping out frames rather than moving boxes. In our BeePod configuration, the deeps stay where they are and only the supers get moved. Put cleats on anything that's used for frame storage or utility.
Cut off the bottoms of deeps and used the piece to make ventilated inner covers similar to the ones designed by Tim at Honey Run Apiaries. Shallows also work for this purpose, even if you also have to trim rotted parts.
Also cut off damaged and rotting parts of old deeps on tops and bottoms to make clean "new" mediums
Still have some deeps, but only as brood boxes in the home apiary. Our nuc supplier runs deeps. I get around the weight thing by swapping out frames rather than moving boxes. In our BeePod configuration, the deeps stay where they are and only the supers get moved. Put cleats on anything that's used for frame storage or utility.
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