Brushy Mtn English Garden Hive

For Melanie, the hive I chose to use comes from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm in North Carolina and is called the English Garden Hive. The hive is an 8-frame hive whereas the standard tends to be 10 frames per box;.Also the setup favors the use of medium boxes (6 1/4" frame) throughout for a standard size whereas a more usual hive employs deep hive bodies (9 1/8" frames) and a combination of medium and shallow (5 3/8") supers for honey production. Overall I like the hive a lot, it's easy to work with and not only do Brushy Mtn have a good selection of 8-frame equipment more and more catalogs provide it too.

This does mean it's easier to move boxes around however it does one significant drawback, if you see an advert for someone selling nucs don't get excited that you can fill your new hive with ready-made bees. Most people are still using the deep hive body combination and so most nucs out there for sale are going to have 9 1/8" frames and so they aren't going to fit into the medium supers in the garden hive. I guess until there are enough people doing things this way starting such a hive will be by package or by swarm.

The picture shows an 8-frame medium with the Brushy Mtn black superframe, a wax coated plastic foundation. Again I like the black for hive bodies as it makes eggs and larvae nice and easy to see.

Hope that helps