Scott, I worked for a commercial beekeeper this summer, and some of the hives were eight deep frames in a ten frame deep super. Some of the hives had a plastic feeder frame left in eight or nine deep frames. Heavy as hell. Add that to being fully protected from bees or ventilation in a new beekeeping suit and a sunny day in the middle of acres of blueberry fields and anything that makes the lifting easier the better. Too much room and there is the chance for weird burr comb, or frames that have extra deep combs, (wait, is that a bad thing...). As far as I can gather bees don't really care how many frames, as long as the nest as a whole is keeps an appropriate beespace between combs? Weight is the biggest inconvenience I can see with using deeps. I bought ten frame deeps and my hives don't move. I extracted frames exactly like cindi did, and found it to bee relaxing and fun. Running commercial hives on pollinating contracts means mostly working as fast as possible with not all that much time for each hive, using a air blower to clean bees off of frames, forklifting pallets of supers. I enjoyed working for a commercial beekeeper, but I can see how labour intensive it is working deeps for eight hours a day... :shock:If you don't want to move your hives or stack them too high, then, deeps are great. I had crazy brood explosion early spring, and had ten frame deep boxes six high. Not something I ever want to try again. I had to get a step ladder to remove the top super. I will be making splits till the cows come home from now on. I didn't have bear proof space to take frames and make splits this year, and so I kept the nest going till it was three deeps big. :mrgreen:Rambling, rambling, my two bits...