# long hive info users



## ace admirer (Oct 5, 2005)

how many here use or are trying "long hives", hive bodies that house 20 or more frames? i know i found information here sometime in the past.

anyway i'm interested finding more information on how to use them.

Thanks


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## Severian (Oct 22, 2006)

I moved my bees to a 30 frame long hive. They are doing well, and are much calmer during hive inspections. It's easy to move frames around, to keep the brood on one side & honey on the other. Don't have to lift the heavy boxes, I just remove frames of capped honey when they need more room.

I can still super it if needed, by removing the center cover & stacking boxes there. Check out :
http://www.beesource.com/eob/condo/
http://www.dartingtonhive.co.uk/


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## ace admirer (Oct 5, 2005)

yeah, so i have added a long hive body to three colonies that i have. i have the long box above a standard deep body. 

the longs i built (from one of the web pages you posted, THANKS) with the partially closed bottom. 

i think i like the double wide bodies. a lot of frames for little wood and work. thinking of making them without the partially closed bottoms.,,,,,but... wonder how a hive is going to react/work a double stacked (height) long hive. are they going to: a. brood ball the center of the stack, honey the outer ball and ignore the outer perimeter? b. will queen screens be needed for double stacked long hives?

i have added a landing and entrance to the bottom of the second floor long body,,but have noticed that a small percentage of bees using the entrance on all three experimental hives.

anyway if this works out i plan to make a dolly/hive lift that can lift off the long hives of honey, then rotate them so the bees can be blown out of the box and stacked on a truck bed or trailer bed. 

but i sure could use the advise of someone that knows something about using the long hives.


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## Dahc (Feb 14, 2006)

I use one. We could never get the bees to move back into it themselves. I guess the other half could be used for honey storage like severian was saying. The bees stay in the front half and continued to do so even after I made a new bottom board to make an entrance at the other end. I was kinda hoping the other bees would move into it when swarming since it's present hive sealed the other half off but that didn't happen. It pretty much just sits there with a hive in one half and brand new frames in the other.


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