Equipment when you have thirty hives

Standardize or pay forever

One frame size, one box size, one closure on your jars. Mixed sizes are a minor irritation at four hives and a permanent tax at thirty, because every mismatch is a decision you make again every time you touch it. It also destroys your ability to move frames between colonies, which is how you fix a weak hive.

All-medium operations trade a little efficiency for never lifting a full deep and never sorting frames. Deep-and-medium operations get more brood nest per box and a permanent two-category inventory. Either works. Running both because you bought whatever was on sale does not.

What to buy once and well

Spend on the things that fail in the middle of the one week you need them: the extractor, the uncapping setup, and whatever you use to move full supers. Full supers are the thing that ends beekeeping careers. A medium super of capped honey runs roughly forty to sixty pounds depending on how well it is filled, and you will lift it repeatedly on the hottest day of the year.

Spend less on anything you can make, borrow for a day, or do without. Stands, covers and most storage fall in that category.

Storage is the hidden cost

Thirty hives generate supers that live somewhere for nine months of the year, and wax moth will find them if that somewhere is warm and dark. Drawn comb is the most valuable thing you own, because it represents honey the bees already spent rather than honey they will have to spend again, and losing it to moths sets you back a season.

Plan storage before the harvest that fills it. This is the requirement people discover in September with a truck full of wet supers and nowhere dry to put them.

Where to stop upgrading

Equipment solves throughput, not skill, and it is easy to buy your way past the symptom of a problem you have not diagnosed. A bigger extractor does not help if your bottleneck is uncapping. A better suit does not help if your colonies are defensive because they are queenless.

Before any significant purchase, time the actual step. The bottleneck is usually not where it feels like it is, and it is almost never the machine that is most fun to shop for.

References