Welcome to the forum...Just curious, why TBH's? I get the impression that using TBH's won't help your chances of beating the average...it seems to me that a fair amount of Beeks don't experience a lot of success with them. Your mileage may vary! :)
Good Luck.
Thanks everyone for the welcome. I chose TBHs over Langs for a few reasons.
1. Recently retired and living on fixed income. TBH is much cheaper to startup. I built two of my own.
2. No lifting of heavy boxes. Langs are ok for the younger people but I don't want the extra back pain.
3. Don't have to store any extra boxes during winter (I have limited space).
4. From my reading, it seems that TBHs are less stressful on the bees - eg, no need to disturb the whole hive to inspect; just take out one comb at a time
5. I'm doing this as a hobby, not commercial, so lots of honey or ability to move hives for pollination is not a goal.
On the con side; there are definitely more Lang users and support available. However, there is a group of TBH users at the local club and the number is growing, so I'm not entirely without support.
Also, I do understand that TBHs require more hands-on (at least initially) but my hives are in my back yard so easy access. And being a new beek I have nothing to "unlearn", so that my be an advantage.
From what I've read (see Kim Flottum's "Backyard Beekeeper" book for eg) the reason that most new beekeepers quit is due to the challenges of the varroa mite. This evil bug would be an issue whatever hive I went with.
car/os