Special shallow super with 8 or 9 frames of 48 x 15 cm

01 · THE SIZE

48 × 15 cm: Langstroth and Dadant US, not Blatt

The frame has a 48 cm top bar, the Langstroth and Dadant US length, and is 15 tall, one less than the house’s standard shallow super. It is a size of its own: the frames do not swap with the 16 cm ones or with deep frames, so if you buy several, all the same. The box is fixed-apiary, finger-jointed 25 mm pine, with the family footprint, about 51.5 × 43 cm outside: on a thin-walled body it leaves a step and robbing gets in there; measure your body before ordering. No good for Dadant Blatt, which takes a 47 top bar.

02 · EIGHT OR NINE

And the spacer bar that sets the distance

With 8 frames in the room for 9 the bees draw thicker combs, which uncap in one pass; with 9 you get more frames per super. What keeps the bee space in both versions is the galvanised spacer bar, which is included: the straight frame does not self-space. Choose one and keep it across the whole set, so as not to mix combs of two thicknesses in the extractor.

03 · WHEN IT PAYS

Short flows and harvesting by bloom

Being low it fills in a short bloom and comes off ripe without waiting to complete a full super, and full it weighs what one hand lifts. It stacks on the body, with or without excluder, and arrives assembled with the wired frames inside: only the foundation in the special size is missing. It is fixed-apiary: it rests by gravity and has no migratory fastening.

04 · BEFORE YOU BUY

The 48 × 15 foundation sheets are a different size from the standard shallow ones: order them for this one.