Something About Dadant Beehive

     The Dadant hive is a kind of hive that is designed by Dadant in the United States to imitate Quinby's comb size and has been modified several times. This type of beehive is second only to Lang's ten-frame beehive in the number of adoptions around the world, especially in Europe.

     The size of the frame of the initial Dadant beehive is 470 mm × 286 mm (width × height), which is 22 mm wider and 54 mm higher than Lang's frame. In 1917, Dadant changed the width of the hives to be the same as Lang's hives, but the height was still 286 mm, in order to make the beehives adapt to the use of subsequent hives to produce honeycombs, and each box contained 11 hives. The distance between the spleen of the Dardan type beehive is 38 mm, which is 3 mm larger than that of the Lang's beehive (35 mm), that is, the bee path between the frames in the box is 11 mm. The inner diameter of each frame of the Dardan-type beehive is 428 mm×254 mm, the useful area is 10.87 dm², each box has 11 spleens, and the total area of the frame is 120 dm², which is 34 dm² more than that of Langstroth beehives, equivalent to The area of 14 Langstroth nest boxes. Except for the size, the other parts of the Dardan hive are the same as the Langstroth hive.

Compared with Lang's ten-frame beehives, Dadant-style beehives have the following characteristics:

• First, the volume of the beehive is large, so there is no need to add a feed box in winter, and the next box can be postponed in early spring. The Dardan type beehive is larger in size, and its total area of spleen is 120 dm², which is 34 dm² more than Lang's hive (86 dm²), which is equivalent to the area of 4 Langstroth honeycombs. The area can not only store more feed for the bee colony to overwinter, but also store honey on the upper and both sides of each hive, so that the bees can congregate in the relatively gentle place near the upper beam of the hive frame in winter,and there is no need to add a feed box for overwintering.
  .The Dadant-style beehive is larger in size, and the bee colony has more room for growth. It can be postponed in the early spring when the climate is severe, so as not to suddenly expand the beehive and affect the bee colony heat preservation.
• Second, the bee path between the beehive frames is large, which is beneficial for bees to gather and keep warm in winter, and it is beneficial for ventilation in the colony in summer. The distance between the spleen of the Dardan type beehive is 38 mm, and the bee path (11 mm) between the frames is larger, which can gather more bees to keep warm between the spleen in winter and early spring, which is beneficial to the overwintering and early spring growth of the bee colony. In summer, the air in the colony can be strengthened, so that the box is not sultry, which can reduce the sub-bee heat caused by the sultry heat to a certain extent, so that the bee colony can maintain a strong colony.

Generally, under the natural premise of adopting a high-yielding queen bee and sufficient nectar source, bees reared in Dadant hives can achieve higher yields than those reared in other hives. But if one of these two conditions is not met, then it is not easy to add a successor box to the Dadant style beehive. In recent years, in order to make the Dadant-type beehives more suitable for beekeeping around the world, the descendants of Dadent changed the 11-frame Darden-type hives to 10-frame ones, thereby expanding the scale of the Dadent-type beehives used.