Converting to a long hive .....

[shado_knight]

I am going to switch my hive over to a long hive set up next spring. My plan is to take my existing hive bodies, and place them on a common bottom board, without altering the hive bodies. It seems it would be easier to build a common bottom board rather than build a whole new hive. It would be 3 hive bodies long. There would be a bottom entrane on one side, with ventilation/top entrance hole/s on the opposing top side.

Thehive bodies would also have individual inner covers, but a common top cover. It would allow me to inspect all parts of the hive easily, without disturbing the whole hive at once, being that I could access one box at a time, without a lot of heavy lifting.

Will this work OK ?

Also, I want to move away from the pierco plastic one piece frame to regular wood frames with foundation strips. What would be the best way to move the bees from the plastic frames to the new frames, other than just brushing them of into the new hive? Not sure what to do with the brood/food that would be left on the plastic frames.

Vince

[Michael Bush]

>I am going to switch my hive over to a long hive set up next spring.

Cool.

>Will this work OK ?

Not really.  There won't be enough communication between the boxes.  One long box works well, but three speparate ones do not.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeshorizontalhives.htm

>Also, I want to move away from the pierco plastic one piece frame to regular wood frames with foundation strips. What would be the best way to move the bees from the plastic frames to the new frames, other than just brushing them of into the new hive?

It's easy to do honey frames or empty frames during the active season (spring to late summer) by simply taking them out and if there are a few bees brush them off.  Also feed empty frames into the brood nest to get natural comb without even a starter strip.

> Not sure what to do with the brood/food that would be left on the plastic frames.

Harvest the honey.  Leave the brood.  Work it to the outsides and remove it when the brood has emerged or put it above an excluder and remove it after the brood emerges.

[Brian D. Bray]

Changing out the frames is just a matter of rotating them out of the hive.  In a standard hive that means moving the box full of plastic frames up and putting super full of wooden frames in its place.  At some point you harvest the plastic frames.

The hive area needs to be continuous for best performance of the bees, this is one of the reason queen excluders seldom work well.  Also, with the configuration you discribe you'll probably end up with a multiple queen hive which has the potential of being a swarm generator.

[shado_knight]

Thanx for the replies !

I will scrap the 3box idea, i'll convert 2 deeps to a 30 frame long box then. Still easy enough to do. Will post some progress pics when I get started, & more questions, i'm sure LOL

Vince