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  • When was the national bee hive invented and by whom? Any ideas?

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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #1897  by Chrisbarlow
 10 Feb 2019, 21:13
Can any one shed light on when the national hive was invented and by whom?

Dave cushmans site suggests 1920 with a pre cursor of a hive called the simplicity hive
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/nat.html

but on another page it references frames for the national hive being developed as early as 1882
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/hist.html

Now if the frames were developed in 1882, that does imply that there was a box for them to go in.
 #1905  by Chrisbarlow
 11 Feb 2019, 20:31
No I havent, thankyou.

Do you know the type of frames it took or if it was linked to the national hive?

This is a post from the same question I posted on a FB group.

As I understand it, the Woodbury hive was the forerunner of the national, developed in the 1860s. Many variations existed, the most popular being the simplicity hive - most of which took BS frames. The simplicity (and close variants) were standardised into the national in 1920 by the ministry for agriculture.

Quick plug for BBKA/SBA module 8 which covers all of this stuff
 #1906  by Chrisbarlow
 11 Feb 2019, 20:38
thewoodgatherer wrote:
11 Feb 2019, 19:55
Have you seen this

1880 Cowan HiveImage
On the Cushman history page. It mentions the Cowan hive as dated 1866. It comments about not having any pictures of the hive as well. That's appears to have just changed.
 #1921  by Chrisbarlow
 13 Feb 2019, 17:38
Another couple are the economic hive and simplicity hive. I think the economic hive had short lugs though and might be more of a precursor to the commercial hive. The trouble with the simplicity hive is there might have been an American version and then a different UK version.
 #1924  by NigelP
 13 Feb 2019, 20:50
Off top of head...I have notes somewhere....... but whole thing started with a UK Beekeeping magazine trying to get acceptance for a standardised frame size. WBC, Simplicity and the Economic hive all used similar sized frames. Min. of Ag. adopted the Economic hive as the original "National" (I think). This changed in the thickness of the wood used during the war years to become the Modified National . Same internal but slightly different external. I have the details somewhere if any geeks require exact dimension changes....basically modified national was thinner.
Of course not everyone agreed on using universal frame sizes ....what a surprise!!

The designs and dimensions for Langstroth and Dadant came from USA beekeepers importing Italian queens that required a much larger nesting area than that needed by the already imported UK "black" bees.
 #1926  by NigelP
 13 Feb 2019, 21:58
It was the same dimensions internally as the National hive but used thinner wood.
WBC's only take 10 frames....And the original design was for overwintering with the gaps between the lifts and the hive body being filled with insulating material such as cork chippings. Something few with WBC's do today.