Loulac, to answer your question about bees, I have been a beekeeper since I was 10 years old, as of today, that makes 47 years of beekeeping. Trachea mites wiped out my bees in 1988, I rebuilt by getting Buckfast queens. Varroa mites wiped me out again in the winter of 1993/1994. I started again with a single swarm that I split into 3 colonies with purchased queens. In 2004, I found a queen in a swarm I caught that had a modest but useful amount of varroa resistance. At that time, Purvis Apiaries had developed queens with decent varroa tolerance. I purchased 10 Purvis queens and used them to produce drones that were mated to queens from my varroa resistant queen. The combination was effective giving me two traits for varroa resistance, mite grooming and Varroa Sensitive Hygiene. I maintained them since then totally without varroa treatments of any kind. For several years, I lost colonies to varroa. The survivors stabilized so that by 2010 I was no longer losing bees to mites. I brought in some outside stock in 2012 with proven varroa resistance in order to avoid inbreeding.
The traits my bees carry are:VSH, Mite Grooming, shutdown egg laying when nectar is unavailable, expand rapidly in spring and fall for the major flows in this area, and are extremely sensitive to any strange odors in the hive. Their only major negative is an extremely strong tendency to swarm which I spend too much time in spring preventing.
I was using Langstroth deep equipment until this year. I decided to switch over entirely to square modified Dadant equipment. My reasons for changing were that Brother Adam said this is the best hive to use and that I figured out how to use them in a horizontal 2 queen system that should be very productive. This is pretty close to the equipment I am using.
https://www.imkertechnik-wagner.de/s...lett-1052.html
I built my own frames starting in 1976 and figured out early that I like 31.5 mm frame end bars in the brood nest. I can put 14 of them in a square Dadant hive body. This is equivalent capacity of 18 Langstroth deep frames. By placing a divider in the center of the box, I have 7 frames on each side giving egg laying capacity of about 60,000 cells for each queen. I am now going into winter with 24 hives several of which are set up with 2 queens for winter.
Interior dimensions of the hive bodies are: 18 5/16 X 18 5/16 X 11 5/8
Frames are 11 1/4 inches deep and made to provide top bee space.
I am using Killion deep bottom boards to increase ventilation, an adaptation for my climate
Here are a few pictures:
