Adventures with long


hives B S Lee, Northallerton and Thirsk


“ It is with a beehive as with a wife, do not choose either on the recommendation of another person.” Peter Boswell 1840


Preliminary hive design considerations


The main aims of the hive design were twofold: to eliminate heavy liſting and to tend towards ‘natural’ beekeeping, although swarming needed to be controlled and some intervention in the colony was expected to be necessary.


Having seen some of the difficulties experienced with the frameless Warre hive and top-bar long hives, both intended for natural beekeeping, it became obvious that for me, movable frames were essential. In a colony with the BS 14x12 frames, a compact nest is produced with a pollen and honey arch over and around the brood. Seeley has shown that wild honey bees choose a cavity of around 40 litres, which approximates to about ten 14x12 frames. This seemed a reasonable starting point for natural beekeeping. A 14x12 frame full of honey weighs about 3.5kg and is well within my target liſting weight. For swarm control and easy liſting of splits, the logical option seemed to be a long horizontal hive of at least 20 frames, capable of being divided into two quite separate parts and then united again into one whole.


Insulating the top of the hive and on occasion the sides and floor has always in my experience proved beneficial to colonies, particularly in winter. Honey bee swarms naturally choose a dry cavity of appropriate size, which can be defended,


Bee Craſt April 2020


sometimes in a hollow tree, which has the added advantage of insulating the colony. The long hive atempts to mimic tree nest cavities with top and side insulation equivalent to about 425mm of tree trunk.


Unlike in a tree, however, the presence of Varroa destructor compels the botom of the hive to be open and covered in 3mm mesh. Clearly the open-mesh floor changes the thermoregulation of the hive. However, this radical difference from the tree has not been shown to be detrimental to the colony. Indeed, some studies have shown that open-mesh floors have led to a reduction in hive condensation and significant improvements to the health and productivity of the honeybee colony.


As reported in an earlier issue of Bee Craſt (February, 1996), Helmut Horn and Alistair Reid have each shown that during the winter, with an open-mesh floor, top bee space and a sealed insulated coverboard, the colony clusters in a totally different way from one in a hive with a ventilated coverboard, and avoids the ventilation strategies needed for dealing with condensation.


The diagram (aſter Reid) shows the differences. With top insulation, a warm space is developed under the coverboard causing the cluster to move upwards, with many bees moving freely within the top bee space irrespective of the outside winter temperature. The humid air generated


As an octogenarian with consequent general decrepitude, and aſter a 13-year break from beekeeping, my passionate interest in honey bees and the environment remains. I designed, constructed and stocked two insulated long hives with honey bees – here I describe some of the experiences with these hives and their bees between 2016 and 2019.


Air circulation with and without a sealed coverboard and an open-mesh floor


by the cluster is removed by naturally occurring convection currents, thereby keeping the colony and the hive interior relatively dry.


My previous experience with BS National 14x12 hives, kept in a wooden shed, led to the development of both a labyrinthine entrance to the hive giving the guard bees a more defendable territory, and a coloured porch which improved the landing efficiency of heavily laden forager bees. With the current porch, fully adjustable slides allow the hive entrance width to be between 0–150 mm. During a nectar flow, the foragers land on the porch landing board and run directly into the hive. Intruders, generally wasps or bumblebees, land on the porch and find themselves not in the nest but in a separate outer chamber leading to it. Both the entrance and the outer chamber can therefore be effectively defended by the bees.


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Photos: B S Lee


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