Detailed hive construction


In principle, each long hive is simply an elongated National Deep brood box with top bee space, insulated coverboards on front and sides, and full-width stainless steel open-mesh floors. No top ventilation is provided, and the coverboards are kept totally closed except when feeding.


The internal dimensions allow for 29 14x12 Hoffman frames and can be divided into two parts by a movable divider board. Coloured porch entrances are provided at each end of the brood box. One hive has white porches (Long White) and one has blue porches (Long Blue). The whole brood chamber is covered with a hinged pitched roof. The long hive brood chamber sits on a stand, which raises the working height to that of a kitchen worktop and doesn’t require bending when examining frames.


A skirt surround to the legs of the stand gives space for a white varroa board at about 400mm below the open-mesh floor. Live mites dropping onto the board are therefore unlikely to re-enter the hive. The open-mesh floors are leſt in place throughout the year, and a secondary mesh, to decrease upward draſts into the brood chamber, replaces the varroa board when not monitoring for the mite.


The front and sides of the brood chamber are constructed from a minimum 25mm-thick timber covered with 25mm of Recticel Eurothane GP insulation board covered with a 5mm-thin sheet of aluminium (or plastic-aluminium) recovered from offcuts at a local vehicle- conversion specialist.


Rule of 3–3–3


In 2018, both colonies were stocked with bees headed by Buckfast queens: Long Blue with a nucleus and Long White with a ten-frame colony. Stocking Long White involved moving a colony about five metres down a slope and over a fence.


It is perhaps not so well known that the 3-3 rule (moving stocks less than three feet or more than three miles) is in fact a 3-3-3 rule with the third component of the rule relating to three days confinement of bees in the hive, during which time it is hoped that the bees will have forgoten where they came from and will mark the new hive site as their normal abode. Confining a fully active colony for three days in summer is not for the faint-hearted and the passage of the three days did seem eternal.


However, when the third day finally arrived and the hive entrance, camouflaged with a leafy branch, was opened, the bees did not boil out as expected, but rather


12


TOP LEFT Hive interior showing open-mesh floor and queen excluder divider board


TOP RIGHT Hive in position showing the substantial footings required to support hive and up to 29 14x12 frames of bees and stores BOTTOM Hive under construction showing insulation materials


tentatively examined the entrance and its leafy branch and began to explore and mark the hive. A few of the oldest bees did return to the old site but eventually learned the new position returning to it along a rather circuitous route via the old position. All the bees seemed to stay with the Long White hive and, as far as I know, no flying bees were lost and the five- metre move of the colony was completely successful.


2019 surprises


In 2019, I wanted to expand to six stocks. The long hives were to be re-queened. The remaining four stocks were to be hived in two insulated standard hives.


In North Yorkshire, January to March and even April can have extremes of weather – from intense cold, sometimes with snow, to occasional mild sunny periods. Exceptionally, 2019 had three weeks of relatively mild weather in February and the long hive bees, having wintered well in the insulated hives, expanded rapidly. Without supers to give the colonies more room, the only option is to add frames of foundation at each end of the brood nest or replace frames of comb with frames of foundation. The foundation was drawn rapidly and by the end of April Long Blue


“ It is not safe to say that bees will always do this, never do that – too many times the pesky critters up and do just the very thing they never do, and vice versa.” Allen Latham, 1840


Bee Craſt April 2020


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