I’m in Adelaide!
Currently I don’t have frames all the way down- I have a division board in place. I’m not sure if bees are getting past it- I’ll be inspecting soon.
The box looking thing in front of it is an inner cover from another hive- that photo was taken in the day I transferred the bees in. It’s just there temporarily… it came from this type of tall thin hive which I also made:
Yup- he’s a first hive beekeeper and spaced all his frames way too wide- we spent an hour trimming them down and removing all that crazy stuff. Bees seem to be gmdoibg very well in his hive.
Mine also had smaller handles for carrying and I spaced them so i can hang frames off them if I want. But my friends are more ergonomic…
My long hive is designed so I can stack shallow supers on it at the height of season and I onky used 4 flow frames- here’s my original design:
Very impressive. Oh to be young and strong! The reason why i decided on a long hive is because i can’t (and won’t) lift heavy boxes. So my hive is there to stay. Did you notice that it has no legs? We have an Aquaponic system under a plexi roof so the bees are well protected; the ants are a nightmare here so my partner had the brilliant idea to hang the hive to the rafters.
My next “idee fixe” is to make an external trap for the SHB.
Several old codgers here who have kept bees for decades have had their colonies totally destroyed by the bastards, so i keep a close eye on them.
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One of the forum experts @JeffH has a lot of good comb management ideas to deter control and stop beetles. Luckily we don’t seem to have them in SA as far as I know. They seem horrid!
I would love to do aquaponics- do you have fish, etc? If I can ever afford a house I’ll do it- big if…
If you had space, you could even store them in the freezer. If you do, it slows down crystallization, counterintuitively. 
Just get them out a day before you want to eat them.
That’s interesting that storing in the freezer slows down crystallisation. I had to cut them in segments because some of my friends want them, I certainly didn’t want them to find grubs. Although i don’t know if the comb honey would last that long, it would probably be devoured before that. 
Yes, i looked at JeffH, he certainly has a lot of experience. They are horrible things, fortunately we do have cold winters here; a very peculiar climate: sub-tropical in summer -with the occasional tail end of a cyclone, as in this year- and wonderful temperate autumn and spring and cool winters, sometimes we get frosts, which kills a lot of bugs 
Hydroponics is growing vegetables without soil, Aquaponics is growing vegetables (in clay/pebbles medium) with fish. The fish feed the veggies and the veggie beds are a biological filter for the fish water, it’s a really good system. However, be consoled in the fact that it is A LOT of work and a lot of attention to keep it all going safely for the fish; for instance with the cyclone we didn’t have power for nearly 48 hours and we had to change the fall back battery twice so the fish water could be oxygenated. The first lot of fish we ever had all died during one such blackout, we didn’t have a back up system 
But of course this is the cleanest, most organic system you can have because you have to keep everything super clean and drug free or you kill the fish.
Bees are so much easier!
Ohhh, exciting @Semaphore we can find out how well that horizontal Flow chamber works for you!!!
UPDATE: My Top Bar adaption never worked, out mostly due to the colony never building up strongly, they never even finished building comb in the top bar itself.
Some pics of giving up, and moving into a larger hive:
Did this work out for you? I am trying to find out if anyone with horizontal hives with flow frames have had success. Thanks!
Would love to know how those with the flow frames incorporated into their top bar hives ended the last season, Any successes or any suggestions on how to improve on the great ideas I’ve seen in this thread?
hi there, very nice hive, can you buy this hive ? is it cedar, and how many frames will it fit please
hi semaphore did you buy this horizontal hive, if so are you happy with it, and where can i buy one please
Hello there,
no I designed and I built it- and yes I love it. However I have only run it for a few seasons- we had one very bad year and I lost those bees over last winter (I had to move the hoive to a new location in the hills and it was a harsh dry cold winter- lost a few hives there- learned some lessons about keeping bees in an area I was not accustomed to… and this year I have been too busy to repopulate it yet. But it does work very well. I have two more complete in parts that I need to assemble. I might consider selling one- but it is fabulously complex- with so many parts- and a lot of work to assemble and hot wax dip. It won’t be cheap! I won’t have time to put them together until this bee season settles down a little- right now I am too busy harvesting- a good problem to have!
then after than I plan to make more- with some modifications learned through using one for three years. I hope for s slightly less complex design- but have a few good additions to the original I am still working on.
I enjoyed having a re-read through the topic. Would be good to hear some results positive and negative to close out some of the builds.
