>I know people are successfully doing TBH in the north. What if any special management or construction techniques are being employed?
Not really other than getting them to one end at the start of winter and I think some kind of way for the moisture to get out the top.
http://bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm#management>Almost all the plans I see are utilizing 3/4 dressed lumber. I commonly have 4/4-8/4 white cedar stock lying around. Would there be advantages in building the hive with thicker stock?
No.
> I would think it would offer some buffer for those nights when the big arctic highs slide in and temps drop fast?
It won't make enough difference to buy 4/4 lumber, but if you have it laying around, I would use it.
> But conversely an see where our summers of warm days and cool nights might not like the thermal lag the extra insulation/mass would provide.
Yes. But I'm sure that evens out in the long run.
>We are starting out with a nuc from Kirk Webster. He is breeding "survivor" bees and he is working very locally to us. The nuc comes as 8 deep frames. I had been thinking of building a long hive set for deeps and just loading the frames in. Further research has indicated this to be a bad idea as several people have mentioned comb collapse on frameless set up of this depth. My next thought was hive set at standard width and either sloped sides or square at med depth. Then super the nuc on one end to get things going. But with this arrangement I do not see a good way to rotate the nuc frames out to honey and then out of hive so as to begin the regression process.
You can do foundationless frames in any box made to take Langstroth frames. You can use top bars only in any long Langstroth hive.
http://bushfarms.com/beesfoundationless.htmhttp://bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm#ttbhhttp://bushfarms.com/beeshorizontalhives.htmWe hope to build to two full hives and possibly a couple of nucs for back-up/trade each winter. Accordingly Alll will be built to be at least interchangable with themselves if not with others equipment.
Solutions and suggestions are much appreciated as I continue to determine what hive style and design we will be working with come spring.
I have a number of other questions (of course) but want to start with these before I get ahead of myself.