Choosing Your Hive Setup

🐝 Choosing Your Hive Setup – Pros & Cons

Choosing your first hive can feel overwhelming, but it really comes down to two simple steps:

Step 1: Choose Your Brood Configuration

This decides how much space your bees have to raise brood. Each option (1½ Brood, Double Brood, or 12×14) has its own pros and cons depending on whether your focus is honey production, colony growth, or easier inspections.

Step 2: Choose Your Hive Type

Once you’ve chosen the brood setup, decide on the style of hive you prefer: National, WBC, Commercial, or Langstroth. Each has its strengths in terms of practicality, availability of spares, and how easy they are to work with.

👉 Work through these two steps below to find the best hive for your beekeeping goals.

🐝 Choosing Your Brood Configuration

1. 1½ Brood (Deep + Half Brood Chamber)

✅ Pros:

• Fills quickly → ideal if you want honey production in your first season.
• Only 11 deep + 11 shallow brood frames before adding honey supers.
• Lighter shallow brood frames are easier for beginners to handle.

⚠️ Cons:

• Brood is spread across two box depths → more fiddly inspections.
• Mixed frame sizes mean some management complexity.

2. Double Brood (Two Deep Boxes)

✅ Pros:

• All brood on deep frames only → tidy housekeeping and simpler frame management.
• Best for beekeepers planning to expand their apiary → easy to make strong splits once both boxes are full.
• Excellent for larger colonies or prolific queens.

⚠️ Cons:

• Slower to fill before honey supers can go on.
• Twice as many deep brood frames to inspect.

3. 12×14 Jumbo National (Single Large Brood Box / Commercial)

✅ Pros:

• All brood in one large box → only 11 frames to inspect.
• Reduces the need for brood-and-a-half management.
• Simple, clean setup.

⚠️ Cons:

• Colonies are slower to build up to full box strength.
• Splits are harder to manage compared with double brood.
• Heavier frames → more lifting effort.
• Large frames can be awkward to handle, making inspections slower.

👉 In summary:

• Pick 1½ Brood if your priority is early honey production.
• Pick Double Brood if you want easy splits and expansion.
• Pick 12×14 if you prefer simpler inspections with fewer frames but the frames are very large so are not the best beginner hives.

🐝 Choosing Your Hive Type – National, WBC, Commercial, or Langstroth

Once you’ve decided on the brood box configuration (1½, Double, or 12×14), the next choice is the hive type. Each has unique strengths and considerations:

1. National Hive (Our Standard Hive — available with or without bees)

✅ Pros:

• Most popular hive in the UK → easy to source spares, accessories, and nucleus colonies.
• Straightforward single-walled design → practical for beginners.
• Long frame lugs make inspections simple and secure.
• Only hive type we offer with live bees included (ready-to-go colonies).

⚠️ Cons:

• Single-walled → not as well-insulated as WBC.

2. WBC Hive (William Broughton Carr Hive)

✅ Pros:

• Double-walled design → warmer in winter, cooler in summer.
• Traditional “storybook” hive appearance.
• Available in 1½, Double, or 12×14 brood setups.

⚠️ Cons:

• Expensive due to the outer lifts.
• Lifts make inspections more cumbersome (more parts to remove/replace).
• Can’t be positioned on beams for easy sliding during splits.

3. Commercial Hive

✅ Pros:

• Larger brood box, similar in capacity to 12×14 National.
• All brood in one big box → fewer frames to inspect.
• Sturdy, simple design.

⚠️ Cons:

• Shorter frame lugs make handling more awkward than Nationals.
• Spares and accessories are less widely available than Nationals.
• Buying nucleus colonies on Commercial frames can be harder.
• Frames are heavy when full and difficult to handle for beginners

4. Langstroth Hive

✅ Pros:

• International standard → widely used outside the UK.
• Similar advantages to Commercial and 12 x 14 National: large brood area in one box, fewer inspections.

⚠️ Cons:

• Shorter frame lugs make handling more awkward than Nationals.
• Slightly smaller capacity than a Commercial or 12×14 National.
• Same as Commercial: spares, accessories, and nucs harder to source in the UK.
• Not as common in the UK → fewer local suppliers and beekeepers using them.

👉 In Summary:

• Nationals are best for beginners (widest support, easiest to expand, frames are easy to handle, live colonies available).
• WBCs are beautiful and well-insulated but less practical and more expensive.
• Commercials and Langstroths offer big single-brood setups but are less supported in the UK. The National 12×14 gives the same large single-brood benefits as Commercials/Langstroths, but with the added advantage of UK-standard equipment, accessories, and nuc availability. The frames are harder to handle due to their size.