My nightmare hive is the Hedgecoe, it is a ply hive now sold by Thornes.
I saw this hive on the web when it came out, and could not figure out how one would be supposed to use it. I still can't make out heads or tails of it. There are some pictures
here.
If a rose hive is the same as national then I guess national is same as langstroth. Lanstroth is same as dadant. Oh smith is like the rose box. Oh hang on. Why aren't the frames interchangable? I guess they must be different. All this time trying to fit a frame into a skep...silly me
The thing about the Rose Hive is that it is a non-generic hive. In other words, when someone says "Rose Hive" they refer to more than just the hive. The *method* forms an important part of the identity of the Rose Hive. Personally, I would consider a hive to be a "Rose Hive" even if it doesn't have the simple four-plank construction but has a complex construction like a standard National box, as long as it takes a Rose Hive frame and is used roughly similar to the way Tim Rowe describes it.
Also, when someone says "I'm going to use the Rose Hive" then I think one must ask whether he means it literally, for perhaps he really means "I'm going to use the method that is used with the Rose Hive". If you read up on e.g. the Zander hive you'll notice some striking similarities to the Rose Hive -- it uses a shallow one-size box and the preferred method with those boxes involve swapping out boxes much like the Rose Hive does it. The Zander has short lugs (you get long-lug versions, too), and has a comb area of 200x400mm. What makes the Rose Hive an improvement over the Zander is that the Rose Hive's boxes are the same size as the National boxes, which makes sharing and mixing much more effortless.
As for the original question, I would consider the Rose Hive's combined frame-rest/hand-hold an innovation, because I haven't seen it anywhere else. If you know of a similar design (that uses a single piece of wood for that part of the hive), let me know. The
Dutch "i-bee" hive also has that part integrated, but it's made from plastic, not wood. The i-bee hive is easy to clean, light-weight, and the same size as common hives in the region.
When the designer of
the DB Plus hive started developing his hive over a period of several years, because he wanted a polystyreen hive that can be used as-is with local frames, he took the opportunity to add a number of extra innovations. The "DB" in DB Plus means "Dadant-Blatt". Sorry, all of this is in Dutch (but there's Google Translate). Another article about the DB Plus is
here, on Imkerpedia.