ΔΙΑΣΤΑΣΕΙΣ ΚΥΨΕΛΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΛΑΙΣΙΩΝ ΔΙΕΘΝΩΣ

Booty and frames

Langstroth - Designed by American Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, acclaimed for the "discovery" of bee-space - that mysterious amount of space which bees will neither fill with propolis or comb. This is the most widely used hive design in the world. 

The Langstroth Beehive

The Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth created this beehive and received a US patent for it in 1852. It is the most common beehive in use around the world.

Dadant - Designed by American (emigrated from France) Charles Dadant and most commonly found across Europe, northern Asia and parts of South America. It is a close second for "world's most popular hive".

Dadant hive

The Dadant hive is in interesting beasty. C.P. Dadant experimented with many different dimensions of frame during his beekeeping. At one point (1868) he recommended, in France, to adopt a frame size of 12x13 inches. In years of experimenting, however, he found that larger combs had hidden benefits. They give the queen more room to lay, for she is loathe to cross the frame-frame boundaries vertically. Thus a deep frame is of benefit and as wide as is practical.

His own apiaries were standardized on ten Quinby-dimension(18 1/2 x 11 1/4 inches, spaced 1 1/2 inches) frames. He later admitted that he would move to the Langstroth width were it not for his significant investment in the Quinby volume. And, indeed, that is the size of frame current associated with the name Dadant.

The 11-frame modern "Dadant" hive is more properly called Dadant-Blatt (Blatt being the fellow who pioneered the Quinby depth with Langstroth width and spacing) or Modified Dadant and is sometimes also called the Langstroth Jumbo. Fear not, they are all the same hive.

It's a curious side-note that while much thought and experimentation went into choosing the brood frame size, the height of the honey frame was chosen as the most efficient given the size of knife used by Mr. Dadant for decapping honey for extracting.

At time of this writing, the Dadant-Blatt hive is the most common beehive dimension in the world, followed closely by volumes varying only in the number frames. Langstroth hives are catching up fast, however, due to lower cost because of the narrower planks required for the brood box.

For historical reference, I suggest a good read of the Dadant System of Beekeeping (C.P. Dadant, 1920). See also The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture (A.I Root, E.R. Root), page 365 of the 1917 edition.

WBC - Designed by Englishman William Braughton ****. This hive type is almost exclusively found in UK and only then in the apiaries of hobbyists who mostly use it because its sloping sides beautify their gardens.
British Standard National - Essentially designed by committee and refined over several decades, this is the "standard" hive in use in UK and has little following elsewhere in the world.

Smith - Designed by Scotsman Willie Smith. This is, essentially, a smaller and simplified UK National. Use is almost exclusive to UK; most frequent in Scotland.

Layens - Designed by French botonist Georges de Layens. This has great popularity in France and Spain.

Warré - Designed by French monk Émile Warré. This hive has some following in France and gaining popularity amongst experimenters in UK and the Americas (both North and South).

Voirnot - Designed by French monk Jean-Babtiste Voirnot. This hive is popular in parts of Spain and France. However, this popularity has dwindled in favor of the Dadant and Layens hives.

Adansonian - Design by Belgian professor Roch Domergo. This is another not-popular hive, but it is distinctive in two ways: 1- It is designed specifically to house the smaller African honeybee (Apis Mellifera Africanus) and, 2- It is the most recently designed hive on this list, having been concieved in 1980.

Newton - I have no idea who designed this hive, presumably a man named Newton. This, also, is not a popular hive type. It's distinction is having been designed specifically for the Asian Hive Bee (Apis Cerana). It is notably smaller than the other hives, as befits a bee colony with populations notably lower than the European honey bee.

Skep - Since I live in a place where it is permitted to keep bees in this type of hive, I will build one. These are virtually extinct in North America (legal issues), but can still be found in Africa, southern Asia, South America, the Indian subcontinent and, rarely, in Europe.

Zander - Commonly found in Germany. It's a vertical, sectioned, framed hive. Still looking for some history on this one.

Segeberger - Found mostly in a limited area around Segeberg, Germany. This is a vertical, framed hive.

Bienenkiste (bee-box) - An old German horizontal beehive finding new interest among hobbyists. It is worked either from below or the rear of the hive, dependant upon the goals of a given intrusion.

Die Bienenkiste

The Bienenkiste is a modern incarnation of an old folk hive from Germany. These simple hives were designed to be virtually maintenance free. They provide plenty of space for a large cluster of bees and a separate honey compartment which can be robbed by the beekeeper with little risk of disturbing the bees.

Essentially an horizontal box, about a meter long and 1/3 meter tall. The front 2/3 of the box contains the cluster and the back 1/3 the honey reserve for the beekeeper. The two sections are partially separated by a board running the full width and most of the height of the box, leaving a space for the bees to crawl underneath for access to the rear.

Honey is harvested through a removable board at the back of the hive, allowing the beekeeper to remove the filled combs. Once removed, the honey can be strained from the wax. This leaves plenty of wax for candles, varnish or other uses and plenty of honey for the table. German beekeepers report average harvests of 14-18 kilograms honey and one and one half to two kilograms wax, after cleaning. Little propolis is found on the combs or anywhere else in the back portion, so the wax starts quite clean right from harvest. The separator board largely limits brood rearing to the front portion meaning few, if any, left over crysalis material. Perfect comb-honey!

Most manipulations are performed from underneath by tilting the hive onto one end and unlatching the bottom board to expose the combs. While not the most convenient way to access your hives - especially if you stack multiple hives atop one another - it does provide excellent access to the combs for drone population control, cutting out queen cells, sugar rolls, etc.

Swarm management ability is limited, at best. There just is no easy way to access the broodnest. Then again, there's a strong argument in favor of just letting the bees be bees and leave them alone. The volume of the hive does not allow for enormous populations that commercial honey producers aim for. Let them swarm. Capture the swarm and hive it in another hive - perhaps another bienenkiste? - and increase your hive numbers. When the colony dies out, scrape out the old comb and repopulate. The labor requirements for the hive are so minimal, this is really the perfect lazy beekeeper's hive.
Disease management is likewise limited. Again, without easy access to the broodnest, the common techniques of disease control are not practical. The hive promoters recommend organic acid fog treatment, through either the entrance or from the honey chamber, for treatment against varroa. Probably the best method is let nature run its course. Let the bees fend for themselves. They can and will adapt to the presence of parasitic mites, given time. Other illnesses are likely to be less prevalent simply due to fewer intrusions by the main honeybee predator: the beekeeper. Remember, disease is dis-ease. Allow the bees to live at their ease and they will thrive in almost any circumstance. Eventually, any given hive will lose its population. This is perfectly normal and natural. Just clean out the hive and repopulate with a package or swarm.
Full details and construction plans can be found at the home of the bienenkiste movement on the web.
http://www.bienenkiste.de/ (site in German language)

Kevin Pfeiffer has kindly allowed me to link to a model he built in Google Sketchup.

Kerkhof - Designed by Canadian Herman Kerkhof, this is basically a double-hive consisting of two colonies in Langstroth nucleus boxes with a shared honey storage area. There is a complex ventilation system throughout. It has recently come back into commercial production - with modifications - by a New York beekeeper, under the moniker "H3".

Hinterbehandlungsbeute (rear-access hive) - This German contraption is an odd combination of horizontal and vertical hive. The framed combs are arranged as a vertical orientation, yet the beekeeper accesses the interior of the hive from the horizontal aspect. It also appears that I will need a cabinet-maker's precision to construct this; intimidating!

Golz/Bremer - This framed, horizontal, two-chamber hive hails from Germany. The original design, by Wolfgang Golz, has the combs oriented perpendicular to the entrance ("cold-way"). John Edwald Bremer's primary modifications are to reorient the frames parallel to the entrance ("warm-way") and change the frame size.

Quinby - This American beehive is extremely similar to the book-hive used by Huber to make his famous - and still often referenced - observations. Essentially, it's a series of frames lashed together with end-boards to enclose the whole mess. How he ever managed to achieve any profitability with these as a commercial beekeeper, I'm not sure I'll ever understand, even after reading his book!

 

Hive Dimensions	Brood Internal(Length, Width, Height)	Honey Internal(Length, Width, Height)	Frame Dimensions(Length, Width, Height)
Langstroth
Dadant	450 x 380 x 320 mm	450 x 380 x 170 mm	470 x 24 x 300 mm  470 x 24 x 163 mm
Kerkhoff
B.S. National
Smith
Layens	345 x 345 x 405 mm	345 x 345 x 215 mm	364 x 24 x 397 mm  364 x 24 x 207 mm
Warré	300 x 300 x 210 mm	300 x 300 x 210 mm	None
Adansonian	320 x 320 x 320 mm	320 x 320 x 320 mm	332 x 31 x 318 mm
Newton	238 x 229 x 162 mm	238 x 229 x 162 mm	254 x 22 x 140 mm
Skep	varies	varies	None
Bienenkiste			None
Hinterbehandlungsbeute
Trunk	varies	varies	None and/or varies
Voirnot	380 x 380 x 380 mm	300 x 300 x 210 mm
Voirnot (correct measurements?)	350 x 350 x 360 mm	350 x 350 x 160 mm	330 x 13 x 300 mm  330 x 13 x 150 mm

Name / prey	A	B	C	D	cross-section mm 2	MW b / h
Alberti leaves Stock			420	270	1134
Worksheets spoils of Empire Section beekeepers			223	370	825.1
Badisch all (Vereinsmaß)	237	210
Badisch half			240	420	1008	220/195
Bayrisch.Hoffm.kl.						350/235
Berlepsch
Berchdesgardener measure	235	370
Brown cal measure
Bürki Case			270	230
Dadant brood chamber	435	300				420/270
Dadant Honigraum(ΜΙΣΟ ΠΑΤΩΜΑ)	435	160				410/132
Dadant type American	460	270			1242
Dadant mod(ΤΡΟΠΟΠΟΙΗΜΕΝΗ)	448	285
Dadant leaf frame	435	300
Dadant Journal			420	270	1134
Dahte wide honeycomb	347	225
Dahte high honeycomb	223	360
Danish trough prey	310	260
German Normal	370	223				350/200
German Normal 1 1/2	370	311				350/308
Alsace-Lorraine-measure	240	320
French Congress prey	362	362
Double Zentralvereinsmaß	320	430
Freudenstein	338	200				320/180
Gerstung wide	410	260	400	250		390/235
Gerstung high	260	410	250	400		240/390
Helvetia box (brood chamber)	360	300	344	270	934
Helvetia box (Honigraum)	360	150
Hoffmann small	370	260
Hoffmann large
Italian Vereinsmaß	426	261
Yugoslavian special size	400	300
Kuntsch wide						310/230
Kuntsch high	330	250				230/310
Langstroth flat	448	159				420/133
Langstroth	448	232				420/205
Lüfteneggermaß	420	220
Master Stock from Schulz	350	240
Austria. wide honeycomb	426	225			922
Rheinische Ideal prey (Schneider)	250	420
Spühlerkasten brood chamber	385	335	370	310	1147
Spühlerkasten Honigraum	385	170	370	150
Swabian camp prey (Alsatian)	272	362
Schweiermaß old	272	277
Schweiermaß new	340	260
Swiss Case	286	354	270	346	934
Swiss high honeycomb	270	340
Swiss Stock (brood chamber)	288	361
Swiss Stock (Honigraum)	288	177
Schleswig Holstein mobile hive	310	260
Sträuslis- Dadant- Alberti frame	435	300
Hungarian Bockzonadibeute	420	360
Wiener Club Stand	250	420
Würtenbergisch New	272	277				250/250
Würtenbergisch Old	272	220				250/200
pike-perch	420	220			800	395/195