Hive boxes - Brood boxes and honey supers - Different box sizes

Brood boxes 

Brood boxes are boxes for the brood and food storages for the bees. 

Queen can freely walk around those boxes and lay wherever she wants. 

Honey supers 

Supers or honey supers are boxes that you want to harvest honey from. 

Brood boxes and honey supers may or may not be separated with a queen excluder. 

Queen excluder is a grid through which worker bees can pass but the queen (since she is larger) can not. Using queen excluder is a personal preference - some beekeepers prefer to use it, others don’t. 

Both brood boxes and honey supers may be in any box size (deep, medium or any other size). 

Super is not a size of a box. 

Super is not a size of a box. It’s a box you want to harvest. It can be in any possible size (deep, medium or any other size). 

Buying hives and boxes 

You can buy a complete hive (with bottom board, boxes, cover…) or you can buy all hive parts separately.

The choice is yours.

Buying hive parts separately may give you more options to choose what best suits you. 

Box sizes 

When you want to buy a complete hive, most often you’ll find a hive with one or two deeps meant for brood, and medium boxes meant for harvesting. 

Although, many use this setup it may not be the best solution. 

It’s much better to have all boxes the same size (both for brood and supers). 

Having all boxes and frames the same size, you will be able to make any manipulations much easier. 

That way, both frames and boxes are absolutely interchangeable. 

You can run all deeps, or all mediums. 

You don’t have to think if you have enough boxes of a particular size. You don’t separate what are brood boxes and what are supers. You just have boxes. And you can use them however you need them in a particular moment. The same is with frames. 

However, if you already have different size boxes, you can use them however you want. 

You can use deeps for honey supers and mediums for brood boxes, or vice versa, or you can mix them and use them in any combination you can think of. Bees don’t care. 

The only thing you should take care is that they have enough space (not too much, not too little) for the brood and food for their own use. And enough space for storing honey during the honey flow (for the harvest). 

Brood chamber 

Deeps or mediums 

How many boxes you’ll use for the brood and storages for the bees (brood chamber) depends on a colony size. 

Beekeepers are usually using one or two 10 frame deeps for the brood boxes. 

If you are using all mediums, you’ll use two or three 10 frame mediums for the brood boxes. 

Or if a colony is small you’ll start with one medium and then add boxes as the colony grows. 

One deep and one medium

The size of a fully developed colony may vary depending on different factors: your area, climate conditions, honey flows, queen and so on…

Sometimes, one 10 frame deep brood box is not enough for the brood and food for the colony but two 10 frame deeps are too big for that. 

If you have such a situation you may want to use one deep and one medium. This may make a brood chamber of a perfect size. 

Yes, we said previously that is easier to have all the boxes the same size. 

But if you are using one deep as your main brood box and deeps as your supers, and you are adding one medium just to increase the brood chamber size a little bit, you won’t have problems with manipulations. Most of your boxes will be deeps. You’ll have deeps for both brood boxes and honey supers. So you’ll be able to do manipulations with those boxes and frames, and they would still be interchangeable enough. 

Deeps vs mediums - pros and cons 

The disadvantage of using deeps is the weight. 

A 10 frame deep full of brood and/or storages can be pretty heavy and hard for lifting. 

If you are not strong enough, or have some back problems or you can’t lift heavy weights for any other reason, you may want to consider using mediums or even shallows. 

The advantage of using deeps is that you’ll need smaller number or boxes which may be less expensive and you’ll need to inspect smaller number of boxes which may be faster. 

The disadvantage of using mediums is that you’ll need more boxes which may be more expensive and you need to inspect more frames which is more time consuming. 

The advantage of using medium boxes is that they are less heavy for lifting (they can still be heavy). 

If you can’t lift heavy boxes but you still want to use deeps or you already have them

You can overcome this difficulty by bringing an empty box with you. 

So instead to lift heavy boxes, move frames one by one to the empty box. Once the box you want to lift is not that heavy, you can lift it much easier. When you finish just put the frames back in their original order. 

8 frame boxes 

Although 10 frame boxes are more common, 8 frame boxes have some advantages as well. 

8 frame boxes are a little bit less heavy then 10 frame boxes. 

Because boxes have smaller number of frames, bees build and fill them a little bit quicker. 

You won’t have a problem of one deep - too small, and two deeps - too big for the brood chamber. 

One deep should be enough for smaller colonies and two for bigger ones. 

Two 8 frame deep brood boxes are usually a good size for a brood chamber for a developed colony - it’s big enough but not too big. 

8 frame boxes can be found in deep and medium sizes as well. 

If you are using 8 frame mediums as brood boxes you’ll need up to four brood boxes for one colony. 

Note that if you want to use 8 frame boxes you also need other hive parts (bottom boards, covers…) that match those 8 frame boxes (they need to be made for 8 frame LR hives).

So what size of boxes you’ll use depends just on your own preferences and capabilities. 

And the number of boxes you’ll use on one hive in a particular moment (both for brood boxes and honey supers) depends on colony size and need in that particular moment.

Nucleus 

There is one more special box. It’s nucleus or nuc. 

Nucleus box is a box with usually 5 frames. But it can be found with 6 and sometimes 4 or 7 frames. 

Those boxes are used for small colonies, swarms and new splits. 

It’s good to have one or two nucleuses in case you need them for splitting, catching a swarm or reducing the size of a weak colony. 

Nuc or nucleus can also be in deep or medium size. Keep that in mind when you are buying them so you can match them with your other boxes. Otherwise you’ll have problems to transfer the frames to your other boxes, once the colony outgrow the nucleus. 

If you are using medium size, you may need two boxes for one nucleus to get the proper size for a small colony.