The national hive I wish to re-house has double brood [20 frames]
I havent made the new long hive yet but originally planned only 25 frames long so this would be a bit tight ,
if all of the frames were moved over .
I could make new hive 3x the width of a national so say 30 frames or are there other alternatives .
As space is tight in the apiary i cant really do a split and home them
Entirely up to you of course - but I really would advise against a 30 frames long hive, presumably for ‘standard’ 8 1/2 in deep frames as these will come from a double brood Nat.
The frames are too shallow for the northern hemisphere - we are not in Africa needing to throw off heat as with a top-bar hive but in the gloomy zone where bees need to conserve heat.
I keep a 21 frame Dartington Long Standard (DLS) hive in the teaching apiary , just to show how poorly it performs versus a Long Deep with 12ins deep frames.
The brood nest in shallow frames is just too long, with too much surface area throwing off heat, which means the bees consume more honey to produce heat, reducing the surplus that can be harvested - even the 12ins deep frames would be better 14 ins deep, so that the bees could make bigger circular brood patches on fewer frames and so reduce the overall outer layer from which the heat escapes.
Pics of ‘wild’ nests built by swarms in the open air (having failed to find a cavity) suggest bees prefer to build a spherical brood nest on only 7 frames, flanked by a store frame each side, so total of 9 extra-ddeep combs.
My own compromise has been to use a Long box , twice as long as a Nat (derived in 1975 by screwing two Deep Nat brood boxes back to back. I winter of 9 Deep 14ins frames, ready for the bees to expand the brood onto 7 frames flanked by a store frame each side. Then I can add up to say 5 store frames behind the brood, spaced at 45mm as bees prefer, using slip on wide spacers. I accept that drying nectar to honey in those rear frames will not be as efficient as in frames placed above the brood, where heat rises, but in my area I only get a trickle in spring, no OSR. When the main flow is due I put on ‘supers’ (for convenience half length/weight ‘honeyboxes) over the brood . That leaves a quarter of the long box empty, ready for a nuc when splitting the colony to avoid swarming.
The double-Nat box is quite long enough for all this, and the box is short enough for two to get in my Estate car.
But as said, up to you what you do. But keep in mind, the less honey the bees have to consume to make heat, the more remains for you to harvest as surplus. I suggest a spherical brood nest is optimum - a long low nest is worst.
