Polystyrene Hives

[GRIZZLY]

M B hives are top bee space and the Q excluder they supply is a soft floppy plastic thing. The best solution is to frame the excluder on the top face ensuring that a batten is included at right angles to the slots to support the centre of the beast and prevent sagging. I used to use M B hives but quickly changed over to Swienty poly hives as these are completely interchangeably with my wooden national bits and don't cause me with compatibility problems.

[Black Comb]

I have used MB polynucs for several years and think they are good.
However, I would not use the full hives as they have a "lip" which makes interchangeability more difficult (as grizzly says).
Also, the bee space seems to be half way between top and bottom.
Plus, the supers take dadant depth frame if my memory is correct.
Agree with grizzly about the QE.

[Mellifera Crofter]

I am planning to start beekeeping with MB Paradise Langstroths ...

To add to what Grizzly and Blackcomb have said: If you do choose to use the MB Langstroths, I would suggest that you do not use their Langstroth frames.

The top bar is one depth throughout - that means the lugs are the same depth as the main top bar, and that in turn means that the whole frame is lifted a fraction thereby losing the Langstroth top bee space for something in-between: half top and half bottom. If you then want to change to the usual kind of frame, you might have a bee-space problem.

There is no removable wedge in the MB frames to help secure the foundation as in the more common Langstroth and National frames. The foundation simply fits in grooves between the top and bottom bars, and is secured with frame wire. It could be that I wasn't very good at fixing the foundation to the wire (I used the spur embedder) - but I've had foundation flopping out before the bees managed to secure it.

And finally - the last lot of frames I bought from them were really, really lousy. I might have been unlucky.

Kitta

[prakel]

I am planning to start beekeeping with MB Paradise Langstroths but so far have been unable to find anyone local to visit. I don't want to be totally isolated with no one to ask if something specific to these hives goes wrong. I note that Prakel lives on the Jurassic coast and so do I - Owermoigne, near Dorchester - Although in his last post in July last year he had no experience of MB hives, I do hope that numbers are growing and he or someone else may have a suggestion or two.

Hi Richard, nice to see you here.

I still have no experience of these Paradise boxes and to be honest, that's probably the way it'll stay... If I was going to invest in polystyrene then I'd need either:

a) a high level of compatibility with wooden hives or
b) a good price for the kit to make it worth having them as stand-alone hives. At present I believe that the individual boxes from MB (I'd simply have to make my own floors because I can't see the point of paying +/-£20 for an insulated floor with a mesh covered hole in the middle) actually cost more than the equivalent 'Swienty' langstroth boxes from Paynes bee supplies.

As things stand, I doubt very much that I'll venture down this poly hive route simply because my bees seem to thrive in their existing wooden boxes, also while looking at the various poly options (none of which were a perfect match for my existing hives) I asked myself "what hive would I use if I was starting again totally from scratch" my answer: commercial (16X10). There aren't any commercial poly hives at present, so that made me really think about what it is I actually want from a hive.

Good luck with your own bee adventure.

[robin118]

I have got 20 mb poly Langstroths. I have used them for 4 years and would not recommend them. If i could go back I would probably go for swienty Langstroths but have no experience of them.

M.B. Langstroths are neither top or bottom bee space making them incompatible with other wooden and poly langstroths. They have a lip on the top of the boxs that fits into a groove on the bottom of the box above. This makes them secure when strapped for moving but makes it hard to put boxes, roofs, feeders on without squashing bees. The feeders only have the lip on three sides so they let in water if left on over winter and because the lip is only on three sides the feeder can not be upturned to feed fondant. If you use a perspex crown board sold by mb dont put it on top of the feeder because of the three lips there is a gap just big enough for bees to find their way in drowning a lot and also causing robbing. They are made from high density poly though and even though they have short comings my bees do well in them and this has not put me of using poly but if going for a full size hive ( I have not used the m b nucs but have heard good thing about them) I would choose another manufacturer.
I hope this makes sense and helps.