Why I Prefer the Layens Beehive (and you might, too)

why would anyone choose to use a hive design that's not as commercially available doesn't have as many experienced beekeepers to Mentor new beekeepers and is not compatible with the current standard hives that's the question I want to talk about today if you have seen beehives anywhere in the US chances are what you've seen are langth hives The Familiar boxes a small rectangular box stacked on another stacked on another stacked on another length STW hives are the de facto standard in the US and are used by the vast majority of Keepers in fact I have three langstroth hives right here behind me but I have a strong preference for the horizontal layan Hive like that one right over there before I get into discussing my preferences I want to get into a very abbreviated and somewhat incomplete history of beehives to give a background of the langstroth and the lons hives both the langstroth and the lons hives use removable frames but before that the more common hives are pretty much any cavity that could be used to house bees one of the more popular which some people still use today are skeps which you've probably seen at least pictures of them they look like an upside down basket and the bees live inside another traditional type of Hive was the gum which is basically a hollow log used to house the bees I don't know why it's called a gum but I think it has to do with the log in some parts of the country animal traps that were made from Hollow logs are also called gums both of those types of hives do not have removable frames and so harvesting honey from them required at least an extreme disturbance for the bees to tear apart their comb at worst it meant killing off the colony in order to get the honey in the early days that was seen as a small sacrifice because it was assumed that another Colony would eventually move into that Hive Reverend Lorenzo langstroth who lived from 1810 to 1895 patented his Hive in 1852 langstroth who in addition to being a beekeeper was a preacher and a teacher gave us a lot of the conventions that we still use in beekeeping today he didn't discover bace but he leveraged it in his Hive design and he popularized and standardized the removable frame Hive which allowed beekeepers to inspect their colonies and harvest honey with less disturbance to the bees in his writings langstroth argues in multiple ways for man's Mastery and dominion over the bees one of his quotes is that the Creator intended the bee as surely as the horse or the cow for the comfort of man now lth original design apparently used thicker walls about 2 in thick which is closer to the environment that bees would seek out for a natural Hive but current versions of the lth hive use 3/4 in Lumber and and their size to be easily transportable for commercial beekeepers four hives can fit easily on a pallet and so langstroth Hive design being particularly beneficial for migratory commercial beekeepers has become very popular and is widely adopted by backyard hobbyist beekeepers as well George delans who lived from 1834 to 1897 was a French botanist and apic culturalist his work followed shortly after langstrath but his philosophy was quite a bit different rather than talking about the Mastery of man over the bee Lan's approach was more bee Centric and focused on using local bees in hives that were well suited to their nature one of my favorite quotes from George Delan is we cannot improve beekeeping by going farther and farther away from bees natural tendencies instead pick the hive model that's best matched to your local populate it with local bees and the results will speak for themselves although Dean's approach had a lot to do with working with the nature of the bees I think there's a lot about the hives that's beneficial for The Beekeeper too for example in a typical Lan's Hive you only have one box to deal with you're not dealing with supers to stack on top or stacks of equipment that you have to store when you're working with the Lan's Hive you're dealing with individual frames at a time you're not having to lift boxes of frames to get in and inspect the hive as you work the hive you also have a consistent working height you can set the Hive on a stand so it's always at a good comfortable level and one other area where I think the Lan's Hive makes things really easy on The Beekeeper is for over wintering and this is really what sealed the deal for me before I started keeping bees I went to Dr Leo sharashkin seminar in the fall when he was preparing his hives for winter at the time I was uncertain about the hive type I was going to use and I was actually not leaning towards Layin although I was looking at other horizontal Styles but as I was researching beekeeping at that time in the fall I saw conversations online in which new beekeepers were discussing and asking questions about how much honey to leave in the hive and how to prepare their hives for winter and so on and it all seemed so complicated and then I went and watched Dr Leo prepare his Hive for winter and getting that Hive for ready for winter was so easy in large part because it was really the bees who did the preparation the keeper just leverages the bees nature when honey bees move into a cavity and start building comb they start building one piece of Comb hanging down from the top of the cavity and as that piece of Comb grows they'll add another on next to it and then another on next to it and as they add comb next to each other that array of comb or a horizontal array of comb that they're building vertically as soon as they have cells that are deep enough to raise brood the queen will begin laying in those cells and as that comb grows down that brood area will also grow with the comb but as that comb becomes longer that brood area will eventually migrate downward and the bees will be begin backfilling the top of that comb with honey now the exact size shape and number of combs will vary depending on the cavity in which the bees are building their hive but in any case that comb is going to be a continuous sheet from top to bottom and throughout the spring into the summer the bees will continue building out that comb and raising brood and producing more bees and the hive will grow as winter is approaching that comb that the bees have already back filled at the top with honey is ready for the bees to form their cluster where The Brood once was to survive on that honey that's at the top now they don't just store honey at the top of the comb as that Colony grows out horizontally The Brood will usually remain close to the entrance and the bees will store excess honey on the comb farther out so then over the winter they have the Honey at the top of the comb for the cluster to eat and they have honey on the outer fringes that will be accessible to them as they go into spring and and then the colony will move up the queen will start laying again and the whole process will start over the laying Hive gives a good environment in my opinion where the bees can produce comb in the same way they would if left to their own nature in other words they build continuous comb top to bottom and although a hive is built for a certain number of frames for example this Hive is built to hold a maximum of 20 frames the space is adjustable to provide only the number of frames at the bees need as they're building out so we can take a divider board if we have a small Colony now we have a hive of three frames and as that Colony expands and needs more space just as they would build comb in a natural enclosure we can add more frames for the growth of that colony in other words like a natural Hive we have a horizontal array of vertical comb the laying hives that I prefer to use have insulated thick walls there is plywood on the outside and the inside with 1 and A2 Ines of insulation in between this thicker more insulated space better approximates the thick walls of a hollow tree that the honey bees tend to prefer in nature Tom cely has documented that honey bees prefer a well insulated space that's not drafty and just has a simple small entrance at the bottom and that's how I build my my hives besides the insulated walls and insulated floor which it's debatable whether the floor really needs insulation I also insulate all of my Lids so inch and a half of insulation on the sides and 3 in on the top the only ventilation on the hive is on the entrance and I only use one entrance at a time per Colony I also believe that the design of the layons hive provides less disturbance for the bees during inspections the solid top bars of the frame provides a continuous ceiling or a hive within a hive in other words when I lift the lid off of The Hive I'm not immediately exposing the bees except for those that might be in this empty area instead as I go through inspections I'm only exposing a frame or a couple frames at a time as I work through the colony and to be honest when inspecting the hives during the Spring flow a lot of times all I'm looking at are these in frames to see if I need to add more space for the bees to expand I find that comparing inspections of my Lan's hives to my lth hives the bees and the layons hives tend to be much more calm and less defensive while I'm inspecting the hive lth beeke keepers are probably familiar with the sight when you take the lid off of your L Troth Hive and those frames don't touch so the bees can come up in between and you see rows of guard bees popping up at the top watching your every move in the L's Hive the bees that are working over here in The Brood area are virtually undisturbed and may have little idea that anything's going on now I want to do a comparison of how that comb building and Hive building happens within a l Troth Hive and those of you who've been keeping lth forever this is nothing new to you and you're Pro might be getting ready to write me an angry comment that I'm criticizing the L Troth Hive but if I'm going to share what I prefer about the layons I have to be candid about the downsides I see in L straw so let's start out we've got a bottom board here and we're going to build our Hive on that so we'll start with a deep brood box and we'll put the bees in here and let them fill out this box the box is filled with frames that are about 9 in deep so we have basically a horizontal frame uh that's not all that deep so it won't take long if it's a strong Colony for them to build up this box with brood and some honey but there's not a lot of space for that so then if it's a really strong Colony we might add another deep onto this or if it's an average Colony or we're doing single brood box management we might want to put a honey super on that but before we do that we're going to put on our Queen excluder to control where the bees do and do not put brood and then we'll put our honey supers on top so we'll start with one and we'll keep on going if we have a good honey flow they fill up this but get this box nearly full and we'll put another one on top and so on and each time we do this we're expanding the space by the volume of this box all at once if we went to two brood boxes we'd be doubling The Colony space all at once rather than expanding it gradually as the colony grows so we get our boxes stacked up here of course we're going to have our lid on top and we have our Hive so as our Hive was constructed rather than the bees building comb from the top down as they would naturally we forced them to build and populate comb from the bottom up the end result is effectively the same but we as beekeepers put the management of that on ourselves rather than letting the bees manage it at the same time rather than having that continuous comb from top to bottom as they would build naturally we now have segmented comb each of these boxes has 10 frames in it and between those those frames there's a gap so instead of having our horizontal array of vertical comb we have a vertical array of horizontal comb throughout that process we've taken control over where the bees can and can't put brood rather than letting them naturally put brood close to the entrance and then expanding out into the honey frames one other issue with the typical L stroth boxes is that as we have these boxes stacked since there's not a perfect seal and you can see my boxes are kind of chipped out at the corners here rather than having a snug insulated enclosure we've got a thin walled box with gaps and places for drafts to come in and so the bees are going to be required to seal that up with propolis overall we're putting more work on ourselves and on the bees and now when I inspect this Hive if I want to inspect the brood see how things are going down there I've got to deconstruct this Hive completely to get there does that mean the lth Hive doesn't work obviously that would be a false statement because people have been keeping successfully in the lth hive for almost 200 years now but I just want you to understand some of the comparative differences I do want to address some of the concerns and downsides that I've heard about the Lan's hives one of the primary ones is about portability the layan hives aren't as welld designed to be moved around or used for commercial purposes as the lens Troth and yeah the L tro hives are particularly designed to fit for to a pallet as I mentioned but I've started standardizing my hives using the 20f frame insulated Hive design that you just saw and I've moved several of these to remote locations and it really hasn't been a problem I have started adding handles to the ends of my hives to make them easier for a couple people to pick up and move but if someone wanted to use these for commercial purposes moving them around I don't see any reason why you you couldn't stack Lan's hives on a pallet I'm not saying they're as well suited for commercial purposes but it is a possibility one thing about the layan hives is you can make a hive as long as you want to hold as many frames as you want so if you end up with a behemoth like my Taj mahive right here that holds 30 frames and is built in an oversized box this thing isn't going to be moved around easily but the portability of the hives themselves is going to depend on the overall size that you're using one benefit for portability is that with the Lay's Hive you have a single box you don't have to worry about pulling off supers in order to then move the brood boxes instead you can just pull out any excess frames to reduce weight secure the frames that are in the hive in place and when I move hives that's what I do I'll put a bar up against my divider board and just a couple screws to hold it down and then take the hive where you need it to go a lot of people also have concerns about extraction the layons frames do not fit in extractors that are built for the length stroth frames I use an saf Riata extractor which when I got it that was about the only one on the market but a couple others have been added since then hilco now has a Minimax model for the layan frames the lysen large frame extractor can also be used for layan frames some people will say that these extractors are more expensive but the fact is if you look at what the extractors are the size of the extractors is equivalent to a 9f frame radial extractor for Leng stroth shallow frames in fact the saf Riata extractor that I use uses the same tub as the saf Natura which is a 9f frame Leng stroth extractor and you can actually exchange the baskets and use the extractor either way but if even if you you only have a layons extractor you can use those layons baskets to extract length stroth frames of any size so when you look at the Layin extractors and the prices for them you need to compare apples to apples and understand that what you're looking at is basically the equivalent of a 9f frame Lang stroth extractor and when you do that you'll see that the prices are very comparable equipment availability is also a big concern now I'm fairly handy with woodworking tools I'm not going to by any means claim to be an expert woodworker but even with that I've still been able to build the majority of my own hives I also have a video on how to reuse old langth boxes and make them into a Lan's Hive but it's true that you're not going to go to a typical beekeeping store in the US and find a lot of Lay's equipment it's also true that a Lay's Hive is going to cost more than a l lth Hive up front but considering that a lth hive is just a pine box whereas the layan hives like I use are layers of wood with insulation there's a lot more to the hive except you don't have all the extra boxes and equipment that you have to store in the offseason as the hives grow in popularity the availability of equipment will grow as well another concern is the incompatibility of Lan's hives to langth equipment and that is a problem for a lot of people if you're buying bees in a l drth nucleus colony and trying to move those bees into a Lan's Hive you've got to do some sort of conversion and there are methods out there that will take the L stroth frames and turn them on in and use an adapter frame to put them into the Lay's Hive I'm not crazy about those because the bees build their comb with an orientation the cells will be angled down towards the center of the comb and so when you turn that 90° now they're not angled down anymore they are sideways you can also cut the frames which I've advised a few people to do so you can take your Lang stroth frame cut out the middle section where you have most of your brood and resources and screw that inside of a lay in's frame and that way you retain the comb in its orientation and don't have to use a special spacer frame but that's just another approach my Approach is that I built a conversion Hive this wooden Hive you see right well all my hives are wooden but the one that's unpainted which will hold both langth and Lanes frames side by side using adapters for the layan portion and I did a whole video series on that Hive and a video on how I built it I actually have a colony in there now a swarm I caught put them in a l stroth box and then am moving them onto Lan's frames it's worked really well for me for the most part concerns that I've heard people having about the layan hives really haven't been a big problem for me when it comes down to it the choice of a hive design as much or more than just being a matter of the form factor is about a philosophy of beekeeping having kept bees in both langstroth and layan hives I find that my lth hives require a whole lot more work on my part to manage the hive whereas the layan hives require me to let go and let the bees manage the Hive I've heard from several people who have converted from langstroth to lons and said that at first they just hated it because they tried to manage their layons hives in the same way they managed their langstrath meaning they tried to take control over every aspect of the hive and while the Lan's Hive is not entirely hands off you still have to inspect the hive check on your bees make sure things are going well add frames as needed prepare them for winter there's also a certain aspect of the Lan's hive that requires that we as beekeepers let go of the management of the hives and instead turn that over to the nature of the bees I hope that this video has been helpful for you in understanding the reasoning of why people like me prefer to use the layan hives if you've watched the video this far you might as well go ahead and give it a like before it wraps up and if you're just getting started and want to know a great place to get bees check out this video about how to catch swarms for yourself if you've already watched that one here's another one that YouTube thinks you'll really like thanks a lot for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: Suburban Sodbuster

Views: 30,719

Keywords: honeybee, honeybees, beehive, beehives, beekeeping, beekeeper, natural beekeeping, layens, hive, treatment-free, bees, layens horizontal hive, langstroth hive, langstroth beehive, georges de layens, lorenzo langstroth, is the layens hive better, layens hive beekeeping, why use layens hives, why I prefer layens hives, best type of beehive, beekeeping 101, horizontal hive beekeeping, honey bee

Id: xy192a-OWII

Length: 21min 38sec (1298 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023