I suppose that Langstroth hive has very good formula to human work. For women its is too heavy but to manpower it is proper.
Finsky, ha!!! LOL. I am a 54 year old, 5 foot 2 inches woman and I
can lift a 10 frame deep Langstroth hive filled with bees. I am powerful in the arms. Now. I
cannot lift a 10 frame deep Langstroth super
filled with honey. That is indeed too much for this small body size. But I don't lift the entire honey super anyways. I have a method that works fabulously.
I have a big wheelbarrow that I bring in the apiary with me when I am removing honey frames. The wheelbarrow contains an empty super with a sheet covering it, the sheet is light as the wind and if I pick it up and drape it, it floats down onto the super and covers it entirely, no bee from outside the hive can have even the remotest chance of slipping in. When I get the honey frames I pick up each frame, remove the bees and lift the sheet, put the frame in the empty super, put back on the sheet. No bee gets in. I do this for the entire honey super, replacing the honey frames with new frames of course. Now I am left with a super on top ready for the bees to fill again. This works for me really well.
when I leave the apiary and bring the wheelbarrow up to my house, I lift this lightweight sheet and any bees that managed to sneak in on the frame fly home because they are full of honey and want to bring it home. I lift the sheet a couple of times and by that time all the bees are full of honey, leave this honey super and have returned home, happy as can be. This is fun. It may seem a little bit archaic, but this is the way that I do it and will probably carry on so.
I like to have the deeps for honey because then it does not matter what goes where, they are all the identical size. Great day. Cindi