Abelo Poly Hives Comparison - Shallow, Deep and 12 Frame

Hi, I'm Lawrence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. You can probably guess what this video is going to be, but I'm going to review the 3 different versions of the Abello Polyhive. So we've got the original Polyhive up here, we've got the shallow roof version here, and then we've got the 12-frame Poly National version here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to compare the features, talk about the differences between each of the components of this hive, tell you which one I think is the best. So the first thing to say is thanks to Damien. He sent me these a while ago when he sent me the 12-frame polyhive to review, talk to you about the features, and to run some bees in them throughout the season. So thank you to Damien for that. Next thing to say is just well done to Abelo for actually taking the time to move through the iterations of polyhive design. A lot of manufacturers, they pay for the moulds, which are very, very expensive, and then they don't make any changes, they don't make any tweaks. Abello, they must have spent so much money on these hives. A full poly hive version up here, second iteration here, and then a third iteration here. So you got the deep roof, the shallow roof, and the 12-frame. So it's just really good to see that Abello actually take those constructive criticisms on, change the hives and the molds. So we're going to run through the features one by one, do a bit of a comparison component component, and then I'm going to wrap it all up at the end and tell you which one I think is the best. So let's start off with the original Abelo Polyhive, and this is the deep roof version. So the deep roof version is a telescopic roof. It sits directly on the hive, protects the hive from water ingress, which is an issue in one of the later models. It's 160 grams per liter density, nice big deep heavy roof. It's got an internal rebate of about 40 millimeters Plenty deep enough to get a good slab of fondant directly onto the frames if you use it without a crown board. Now in the second iteration of the Abello hive, they moved over to a shallow roof, and I think that was more for aesthetic looks. It reduced the exterior footprint of the hive down a little bit, and it was the first glance that we got of this kind of rebate system. So they did dabble with a little bit of rebates with this. You've got a rebate here that interlocks with a positive rebate in the crown board on the shallow version. What that means is when you use it with the crown board, you can not only get a good feeder, so a little plastic Ashworth feeder in, but you can also feed a huge amount of fondant underneath. They moved over to an integrated hive strap, which I'm not fussed about, but it's nice to have. Keeps that strap nice and straight. Now, the problem with this setup is that they've had issues with water ingress. Now, I do not think for one second if they didn't have these issues with water ingress, we would've seen this 12-frame poly hive, 'cause it must have cost them so much money. This is a new, mould from top to bottom for the floor, the brood box, the super, the crown board, and the roof. So they've invested a huge amount of money in this to fix this water ingress issue. So in terms of a roof, this is absolutely fine. I've got a couple of these hives and I've never had this water ingress issue, and I put it down to the fact that I strap my hives up quite tight, so I don't think that water's getting in. But I'm not sure. I've not seen it personally in any of my own hives. Another feature that they added on this second iteration, so the shallow roof, is they added some roof entrances and these just pop out. You get 4 roof entrances so you can do it on a mega flow. If the bees are really busy, you can run these with all the entrances open or you can use it for doing vertical splits. It's a nice design feature and something that I do use. So then we move on to the roof of the, the Abello 12-frame version and it is identical to the shallow roof version. Absolutely identical all the way through. There is no change whatsoever. The change you see on the rest of this hive is further down. They've added a rebate system in. So if you're comparing all of these roofs, you've got 3 different roofs here. You've got the Abello original, which is a deep telescopic roof, no hive strap, no entrances, and no rebated edge. And then you've got these 2 later models that have the rebated edge and the entrances, and then a nice deep area to hold a plastic Ashforth feeder. So then we move on to the crown board. And I always used to think this was a really strange design crown board because of the 5 holes. Like, I use polyhives and I like 'em because you have a solid crown board. I don't like holes, I don't like the mesh, I don't like any inserts up here. So although they gave you bungs to fill these in, I always just put them in like that. So for me, I use this as a solid poly crown board. And in that sense, it's a really good solid poly crown board. You've got your black plastic mating faces, and then you've got the ability to go round and to place fondant above any of these holes here. If the colony needs it. It was an okay design, but it needed tweaking, and they did that in the second iteration, and they made it so much better. So the second iteration on the shallow roof, the crown board's completely different. They introduced this black plastic rebate just for the crown board only, and then they put this positive indentation in here where you get your plastic Ashforth feeder can sit. So your feeder sits directly in there, and then they've got a poly Ashforth feeder that works as well. You've got a single block in the middle where you can put your bungs, and then you can feed fondant over that as well if you wish. So a really versatile crown board and a really big design change from the second version. And then in similar fashion to the roof, the difference between the shallow version of the Abello Polyhive and the 12-frame version— there is no difference other than size. It's exactly the same. So you've got your black positive rebate all the way around. You've got your indentation for the plastic Ashforth feeder, and then you've got your 2 bungs. So you can feed syrup, you can feed fondant. You've got all the spacings correct. The only difference is that you have a bee space all the way around on the underside. And that bee space isn't to let bees move, that is to lock into the rebate of the box underneath. So at first glance, it looks like there's no change whatsoever, but there's a very slight change, and that is the introduction of a rebate underneath. So it appears a little bit deeper. And that change is huge. Like these 2 polyhives here, they look identical from the outside apart from one being ever so slightly bigger than the other, but they really couldn't be that much more different. This one here is a top bee space hive. This one down here, the shallow version, that is a bottom bee space hive. And this one here has a fully rebated system all the way down. So if you take this one and you shake it around, you'll see this in previous videos. If you turn it like that, the boxes don't slide off. Now if you do that on either of the other versions— I'll leave that in just so you can see how reckless I am— they slide off. And that is the big feature change here, is that it gives you that stability. And I'll do it again just so you can see. You do that and it just slides off like that, whereas this one You can literally tip it 45 degrees and it just doesn't come off. There's no cheating here. That is how stable that is. And that's a really nice design feature. We've touched on this in previous videos and reviews, saying that I didn't want to lose compatibility with the wooden National, and we'll cover that later on in the video. But the fact that you've got that additional stability in there really does make things a lot easier. Makes it so much easier when you're carrying boxes around, when you're manipulating them, and And I think when you're managing the bees as well. So I definitely see that as a step in the right direction. Right, so we'll move on to the supers then. And in terms of the supers and the brood boxes for the, the deep roof version and the shallow roof version, there is no difference. So they are exactly the same. You will get sent out the exact same boxes, same bee space, same dimensions, same number of frames, 11, same entrances on the front. Everything is exactly the same. There is no difference between the two. But they are very, very good supers. They're the same exterior dimensions as a wooden National, and they can be used completely interchangeably with a wooden National. So if you were to take a wooden National and put it on top like that, you can see exactly the same. There really is no difference whatsoever. The only difference as you move further down, and this is the deep roof floor, is there's a couple of very small differences. So one is on the deep roof, you get a slightly extended landing board. And you get a slightly different varroa monitoring tray. Now, my personal opinion is they've improved the floor on the shallow roof version, so they've really trimmed down the landing board, which is something that I like. And then they've taken it into a plastic molded varroa tray with holes for drainage. They've improved, in my view, both of those areas of the hive in the second generation. So that pretty much covers both the features and the components of the deep roof Abello hive. And the shallow roof Abello hive. Both very good in their own right. People have had issues with water ingress on the shallow version, so they've been moving back towards the deep version to try and protect from that water ingress. My view, and I've run both of these hives for a couple of years now, I don't have any water ingress issues with either of these, but I have seen a lot of photos of people with this issue, so I definitely can't discount it. And that leads me to the changes that they've made with the Abello 12-frame poly hive. So they've brought in this full rebate system for a number of reasons. Obviously, firstly is to completely eliminate that water ingress issue. Also to give you that stability that I showed you previously. And then in terms of everything else, there's really not that much difference. So instead of having 11 frames in the deep roof version and the shallow roof version, you have 12 frames over here. Instead of having bottom bee space in both of these versions, this is a top bee space version, but they are bringing out adapters to make it bottom bee space if that's what you want. They're going to be very cheap. You've still got your one entrance at the front, and then you've got deep handhelds there, shallow handhelds there, handhelds on all 4 sides. And across all of these hives here, you've got your spacing above the frame lugs. That's something that's really, really important. So then we move on to the brood box of the new 12-frame poly hive. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but in terms of queen excluders, you can use just a standard 460 by 460 queen excluder across any of these hives. They're all fully compatible with just a flat queen excluder. So as you can see, just fits nicely over the top like that. It's a top bee space brood box, so when you put this queen excluder on here, you've got the bee space sitting above the frames, and then you've got your queen excluder. So what that allows you to do is pick up any brood box, wooden national, or any of the other boxes down there, and pop them on the top like that. So as you can see, that works absolutely fine. And then if you wanted to go and pick up an Abello Either deep roof super or shallow roof super, they're exactly the same. Put that on top, that works fine as well. Now you can even do that without the wooden version in there as well. So just remember you're working top bee space here, then you're putting a queen excluder on. So you've got bee space, excluder, bee space, and then you've got your frame sitting on there. And that works fine, no problem whatsoever. So what you've got there is the 12-frame new rebated version with one of the older versions on top. So that's the standard deep roof version or shallow roof version. Then what you can do if you wish is you can take the new 12-frame crown board and that can sit directly on top. Now what there is an issue here is that that will crush your bees. So because you're not maintaining the bee space correctly, if you put the new crown board on here, you've got no bee space whatsoever. So that will crush bees, but it's not really any different from like a plastic sheet. So you see that on like the Maysmoor and the Paynes, that's what they do. If you just smoke around like that, get all the bees out the way, that will work. I wouldn't recommend it though. So what I would recommend is taking away the crown board and just going straight for the roof like this. So as long as you put some sort of kind of plastic sheet over the top, then you can just go directly on with the roof. So as you see, all of these boxes do fit together. You do need to understand them a little bit though, because there's different bee spaces at work here. And you can get yourself into a little bit of a mess. So you just need to think through exactly how it's going to work. Now I've never been a fan of crown boards. I've always either used a feeder, upturn feeder, or something like that as my crown board. But I do have numerous crown boards knocking around. So this is just like an insulated crown board that I had made ages ago. And you've got a V-space on one side and then it's smooth on the top. So any regular crown board would work for this. So if you're going down the route of mixing and matching these, and you want to have the Abello 12-frame floor, the Abello 12-frame brood box, and then you're thinking, oh, I want to put an Abello normal super on, or I want to put a wooden national super on. The configuration that I would work with is like this. So, 12-frame floor, 12-frame brood box, standard wooden national queen excluder, and then either a wooden national or one of the older Abello supers. And then take your crown board that has your integrated bee space and Pop that onto the top. In this setup here, all of your bee spaces are working. You've got a double bee space between this box and this box, but you've got a queen excluder in the middle, so they should respect that bee space. And then all you do is you take your 12-frame roof that obviously comes with the hive, and that sits on top like that. And in that setup, you should have no issues with any water ingress. Nothing's overlapping the wrong way around. Everything should just track down Like that, it'll come to here and then it can't get up and over that rebate and into the hive. That is a really, really good setup. And if you are the kind of person that's got loads of loads of wooden kit, wooden National kit, and you want a poly hive to add the roof, maybe the crown board, maybe the brood box on the floor, but you want to use your wooden National supers and excluders with it, this is the setup that I would go with. So then finally, in terms of the floor of the 12-frame National, exactly the same as the shallow version. So you've got the new updated plastic monitoring tray, And then you've got your entrance block at the front. It's got a nice slant running around all the corners there, really good for tracking any water away from the hive. It'll just track nicely down the front like that, so it shouldn't pool anywhere. And that's about it for the comparison of the video. I'm going to put all of these hives back together again now, and they're going to go in my apiary, and I'm going to use them throughout the year. I just wanted to do this video though, just to show you the differences between these 3 hives. Beekeeping is a complex hobby, And especially for beginner beekeepers, they go onto the Abelo website or any beekeeping website and you see a deep roof, a shallow roof, a 12-frame, a 14x12, a Langstroth. It's really difficult and it is really confusing in terms of what's what and what do I need and what are the differences and what works with what. So I just wanted to do this video to show you the differences between the deep roof version, the shallow roof version, and the 12-frame version. Now Now I know you're going to say which one is best, and always I kind of cop out a little bit on this video, but I'm not going to on this time. I think the 12-frame is definitely the best version here. I covered it in my detailed review of the Hive in that I was worried about compatibility, and I always thought you really can't improve on the deep roof version or the shallow roof version because I didn't have the water ingress issues, and it was such a nice neat match for the wooden National kit, which I've got lots of. And I was worried that this new rebated system was going to cause issues with that compatibility. And having played with it, having tested it, it doesn't have any issues whatsoever. So you get all of the additional benefits and functionality of that rebate system, great water ingress protection, and great stability so it's not falling over like we saw earlier in the video, with all of the compatibility maintained. So in my view, there's a clear winner. If I was starting again, I would buying all new kit, I would go down the 12-frame Abello version if I was buying from Abello. And also, if I was the person who had a lot of wooden national kit, I would definitely try out this hive. Have a go, see how it works with your kit, see if you can come up with a system that works, because I really do think this is a superior hive to the, the other 2 versions here. And I'm not saying that because Damien's told me to say that. Like in all of these videos, I'm allowed to say whatever I want completely free free to say what my thoughts are on the products, and it is my genuine opinion that of all of the Abello hives, the 12-frame poly hive is their best offering at this moment in time. We know how Abello love to tinker. No doubt there'll be a 4th version coming out very, very soon, or something different that we can all take a look at. But at the moment, definitely, if you're looking to buy an Abello poly hive, I can highly recommend the 12-frame version, and that is the version that I would say is the best poly hive on the Abello website. So I hope you enjoyed that video. I hope you found it useful. I hope it wasn't information overload. Please hit the subscribe button so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.