In Australia there are 5 depths of supers and therefore frames and foundation. By far the most common (95%) is full depth with the other 4 smaller sizes making up the last 5%. The shallow sizes are, in descending order, WSP, Manley, Ideal and Half Depth. None of these sizes are widely used but each has some following.
Advantages
1. They are lighter to lift and handle.
2. In a light honey flow the bees seem to collect more honey into a shallow super than they would in a full depth one.
Disadvantages
1.Lots of small supers frames and foundation makes a more expensive beehive.
2.If you use full depth brood boxes and shallow honey supers you lose the flexibility of putting combs up from the brood chamber into the top super to fill with that last little bit of honey and you cannot draw all your combs in the brood chamber where the bees make thicker and stronger combs.
3. These sizes are out of the main stream. If you want more bees its unlikely you will find your particular shallow size in the second hand market and perhaps more importantly if you want to sell your bees there really won't be a market out there.
With 4 depths, 2 widths and all the other options on these shallow component pages please be careful to select exactly the right ones so you end up with precisely what you need. If you have shallow equipment and need help identifying what size it is send us an Email with measurements, we do both metric and imperial, of either the supers of frames and we will do our best to identify the size for you.
|
