P**nes Poly Hives

I'm a big fan of the P@ynes national hives, especially since they redesigned the feeder. Never had a problem with robbing between supers, nor problem with burrowing wax moths.

It's quite rare for me to want to put supers under a brood, but if I did want to clear some frames that way I think I'd simply use another full size box under the brood box rather than a shallow.

I sometimes put shallows under in the autumn for the bees to take up any uncapped stores. I'll have to have a look at making some sort of eke.

... or use a wooden 'super' for that purpose. (As it is only a temporary measure.)

Doh!!!!!!

Cut those lugs off the floor and you can do what you like. Better still make a floor that's less bulky and doesn't have lugs..

I only have a few "bought" floors, preferring to save a little money by recycling spare/waste timber into floors. The same goes for roofs. Two of my bought floors are Paynes poly and they are working out OK but the lugs are a little annoying. All the floors I have made to run with Paynes poly hives and with offerings from Bee Hive Supplies (14x12) have been simple flat floors and are interchangeable.

roche said:

Well - after nearly three seasons with the Paynes poly national, I have come to the conclusion that they are OK as a sort of large nuc.

The mould indentations leave quite serious weak points in between supers, which allows robbing to occur far too easily.

The lack of interchangeability between the supers and brood make manipulations difficult - can't put a super on the poly base...

There are some blind holes in the roof that wax moth love - in fact they ate a stored brood box as well.

We will be using them as a brood box only, for smaller colonies. We aren't giving up on polystyrene, the bees do seem to do better, we just haven't found a poly box yet that meets all the design challenges.

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The Paynes boxes are cheap, and for that I'm prepared to use a bit of filler on those holes. But yes, the moulding quality could be better.

Want to put a shallow box underneath? Just put an Apiguard eke on the floor, then your poly shallow! The eke is enough to lift the box above the corner lugs.


BHS and Paynes share the same sizing - standard inside and 500mm square outside. So they should interoperate just fine (with an Apiguard eke on Paynes floor). I have a BHS roof and floor (used with Paynes boxes). Love the roof, hate the floor. The mesh area is tiny (so varroa counts are … even less reliable). The entrance reducers get seriously propolised (lift the brood box to shift it) and mouseguarding is similarly awkward. And that floor is expensive!

joctcl said:

...
Mods I have done are got the dremel out to make recesses for crown boards on roofs and bases of supers to accommodate QE.

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No problem if you want to reduce the thickness (=insulation) of the roof, but regarding cutting away the bottom of boxes, isn't that going to mess up your beespace?

Hive Stand

One of the things that I didn't like about the Paynes Poly Hive was that the inspection board is close up against the underside of the hive floor so, when you slide the floor out, it scrapes along the bottom of the floor and the debris on the board is rubbed off. This can be remedied by removing some of the material from the lugs that it slides on but I prefer to have a bit more space between the underside of the mesh and the inspection board.

This is the hive stand I've built for my second Paynes Poly Hive ... the first one was very similar but this one is better. I used two 2.4m lengths of Wickes Studwork timber (38mm x 63mm), One 1.8m length of 30mm x 18mm and a few bits of pallet timber. Total cost just over a fiver ... now I've got the design sorted it only took a couple of hours to make from start to finish. It stands 41cm off the ground although with a bit of clever cutting and less splay on the legs I could get it up a bit higher but it works for me.

The inspection board now sits about 3" below the mesh floor but it can be put in the original slot to seal up the bottom of the hive if I wanted to. A couple of timber blocks locate in the two slots on the bottom of the hive floor so that it can't move about on the stand.