I was late in the game on securing a nuc for our new hive and I finally found one, but they are on medium frames.
I was set on modifying the bottom of the brood box, but the local beekeeper suggested just using a medium brood box and adding the deep brood box on top of it (our area seems to recommend two brood boxes). She said we could switch the order as needed and add the flow hive on top of that.
But I’m not sure if all the equipment is interchangeable. Can I put a traditional medium brood box on the stand and stack the rest of the equipment on top of it?
Yes it will work. Give or take a few millimeters it will fit just fine. The sides might not be completely flush - that might bother the beekeeper but not the bees.
Hi, I have a related question. Over the winter given how full our 8 frame deep brood was and the desire to provide enough food/room for the colony I removed the flow super and replaced it with an 8 medium box with some built comb and some foundation. Checking after the winter the now top medium brood is maybe 60% full. Looking at splitting and also putitng the Flow Super on now as once the rains stop the nectar will flow. Is a stackk of deep, medium and then top of the flow super creating a stability issue with so much weight on top or am I just worrying too much. This is year 2 with the hive.
Great question! It is totally fine. Hive boxes are very strong and can easily bear the weight. With traditional beekeeping, I have sometimes had 5 or 6 mediums as supers above the queen excluder. With our Flow hives, I run double deeps for brood, Flow super above the queen excluder, and sometimes a medium super on top. Not a problem at all with stability. The only issue is how high can you reach and pull down a 35lb box of honeycomb?