Problems with the 10 year old hodge-podge of wooden hive equipment
- Different vendors produced product that did not fit precisely, resulting in frames getting stuck together between hive bodies, frames falling through when picking up a hive body, etc.
- Bees were building drone comb between frames, and in every space imaginable, resulting in a lot of messy comb everywhere
- A medium 10-frame full of honey was pretty heavy to lift
- Entrance reducers were always getting lost
- Some of the 10 year old wood was starting to break up
- The oil pans were getting gunked up too much
- Mediums require multiple boxes per brood chamber, so the lowest ones rarely got inspected at all, too much work!
- Screen inner covers were always getting stuck to the top frames with wax
- Topping off the frame feeders required opening the top and letting bees fly
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The new plastic hives with real-time monitoring
All plastic, long lasting water and rot-proof Apimaye 7-frame hives
Built-in entrance reducers, upper entrance options, no-contact feeders, latches, handles, and Integrated Pest Control trays
Each hive body contains 7 Pierco plastic deep frames. The brood box will contain 6 triple-waxed worker frames and 1 drone frame. Honey supers are also triple-waxed deeps. This will reduce the problem of bees not working plastic frames efficiently, producing lots of burr comb
Dedicating one frame in the bottom brood box to drone comb will discourage the bees from putting drone comb all over the place and swapping them every 28 days will kill lots of varroa mites, giving my chickens a tasty treat every 28 days
All 7-frame Deep plastic boxes weigh less than the 10 frame medium wooden boxes when full
One complete hive with frames, before bees or drawn comb, weighs 26.6lbs and can be carried by its built-in handle with one hand!
Topping off feeders does not require contact with bees at all
Upper supers have rotating opening controls to allow bees access directly to the honey super, or ventilation only, or shut off completely
No rocks, weights, or ratchet straps required, as all hive bodies latch together with the outer cover
R7 insulation should result in less thermal stress, less bearding, less work for thermal regulation by the bees in both the summer and winter
Online real-time weight monitoring of each hive using BroodMinder equipment over bluetooth and WiFi to the cloud
Online real-time temperature monitoring of each hive over bluetooth and WiFi to the cloud
Online monitoring system produces swarm alerts in Spring, and better indication of the honey stores going into winter
Ability to share the status of the beehives over the Internet with interested people via BeeCounted.org
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