Abelo vs BS Honey Bees Poly Hive Review

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. In this video, I'm going to compare 2 brand new polyhives to the UK market, the Abello 12-frame polyhive and the BS Honeybees polyhive. So we're going to go through these hives component by component and compare them to one another. I'm going to talk to you about the features, I'm going to show you inside both of the hives and then I'm going to let you know which one I think's the best at the end. So we are so spoiled in the UK having manufacturers like Abelo and BS Honeybees who put the effort in and put the money in to come up and design brand new polyhives to try and improve the beehives that we have within the UK. Seems like forever since a new polyhive came onto the market and in a matter of about 3 or 4 weeks we had 2 brand new options onto the market and these are 2 Very, very different polyhives. You may think at first glance they're very, very similar, but they really do have unique and individual features to both of them. The Abello has some features that the BS Honeybees doesn't have, and then vice versa, the BS Honeybees has some features that the Abello doesn't have. So I'm just going to pick out those features in this review. We'll go through it component by component. We'll just talk to you a little bit about how much I like both of these polyhives. So as always, we'll cover every single component in here. I'm not going to cover the feeder for the BS Honeybees review because the Abello feeder isn't out yet. So we're going to limit this to the roof, the crown board, the super, the brood box, and the floor. And we'll compare both of those components in this review. Right, so we'll start off with the Abello roof then. And as we discussed in the Abello video, the roof comes with 4 entrance blocks. So you can use this for vertical splits. And I really like entrance blocks. I think they're a good feature and a good piece of added functionality that you add into a polyhive. So the BS Honeybees polyhive doesn't have entrance blocks in the roof and it doesn't have entrance blocks anywhere throughout the hive. So if you're looking for a hive with entrance blocks and you want a market-leading one, the Abello hive is the only one on the market that has that in the moment. Then the Abello roof is just a flat roof, no branding, so nowhere for mess to kind of gather. And it has a hive strap. And you know how I feel about hive straps. I'm kind of neither here nor there with them. I don't think it's a huge amount of functionality added in. I can do without it. So not too fussed about the hive strap. And then on the inside you have this internal rebate. And obviously the Abello Hive is a rebated system. So you've got a full rebated system on the Abello Hive and the BS Honeybees Hive. There's no rebate system in place. And it means that when you put the roof on top like that, You've got about 65-70mm of depth in the roof to feed fondant either directly onto the frames if you take out the crown board, or you can feed it on top of the crown board as well. So you have that functionality within the Abello roof in order to feed fondant directly on the frames if you want to. So then moving on to the BS Honeybees poly roof, you've got a completely flat roof. No hive strap, no branding, really, really nice, really simple. Nothing that can go wrong here, nowhere for anything to collect or get grubby, really nice, basic simple roof. Now this is a very different roof to the Abello roof because it's not got a very deep rebate on the inside. We'll discuss that later on why it hasn't, but you've effectively got about a 12mm internal rebate. So if you were to remove the crown board, if you were to remove the feeder, and you were to put this roof on over the top, you've got about 12mm, so pretty much 1.5 bee spaces on top of the frame. So if you wanted to feed like a pollen patty or roll some fondant up really thin, You can do that with the BS Honeybees roof. But what you can't do with just the roof alone is feed a lot of fondant. And the reason that you can't do that is because that functionality is built in downstairs into the crown board. On the inside of the BS Honeybees, you've got the branding on the inside. Nice that it's not on the outside where it can collect dirt and grime. And then obviously the BS Honeybees roof is a telescopic roof. So you can see here, these are 2 very, very different systems already when you're starting to talk about Comparisons. You've got a rebated design here on the roof where it just sits onto a rebate, and that's where you get your water ingress protection on from this hive. And then the BS Honeybees, they go about it a completely different way. They go for a telescopic roof, which means that the water can't get in that way. Both ways are very, very effective. Right, onto the crown board then, and again, 2 very, very different designs. Both of them give you the ability to feed fondant. The BS Honeybees crown board integrates the depth and the space for feeding fondant and doing any varroa treatments into the crown board, whereas the Abello integrates that into the roof. If you combine the roof and the crown board together for both of these hives, they are very, very similar in that you've got space to feed fondant above the crown board, you've got space to flip them, and to feed fondant either under the roof on the Abello or to flip the crown board round on the BS Honeybees and to do it that way, 'cause there's no rebate here, so you can turn stuff upside down if you wish. What both of these hives do have, and it's something that I really do like, is black plastic mating faces. So on the Abello hive, you have the rebated mating faces, and then on the BS Honeybees hive, you have the flat mating faces. Now the BS Honeybees has the party trick in that it can split into 2 And it therefore has 2 feeding holes. And I do like that 'cause it means that you can access both sides, turn it round to access where that cluster is, and put the fondant over that cluster, which I do think is nice. But then if I was gonna feed fondant, I'd turn it up that way anyway, and I'd just give them a full area to go and get that fondant just to make sure there's no isolation starving. Now the Abello crown board, very similar in terms of the depth of the polystyrene. Obviously you've got increased density on the Abello, so the Abello is 160g per liter versus the 120g per liter for the BS Honeybees. I wouldn't read too much into those densities. They're both going to give maximum insulation and they're both going to be really, really durable, so I wouldn't read too much into it. You've got the rebate, obviously the clicking rebate, all the way through the Abello Hive, and then underneath you've got what is effectively a top B space design. So the Abello is a top B space, the BS Honeybees is a bottom B space. Now the Abello, it works with the little plastic feeder that you've seen there. Now I'm not going to compare that to the big poly Ashforth feeder on the BS Honeybees because I know that Abello are developing a big poly Ashforth feeder to work with this hive. So it's a little bit of an unfair comparison because they're not the same thing. However, it does integrate into this crown board here. So if you do have their little plastic polyash forth feeder, that fits on top and you can feed directly into your brood box. What the Abello crown board also has is an internal mesh there which you can block up with the plugs that you get. So you can turn this into a completely solid crown board if you wish. And if you wanted to do that on the BS1 as well, you could just put a little bit of Correx over the top and that would double up as a solid crown board. So as you can see, 2 very, very different designs. When I saw these both first come onto the market, I thought these are really, really similar, and they're not. They're like chalk and cheese, but both very, very good in their own right. It's a difficult comparison to make because the features are so different in both of these hives. Right, so let's move on to the supers then, and we'll start off with the Abello. As we said before, the Abello, you get an entrance block. So all the way down every single box, you get an entrance block. So if you want to do vertical splits, you have the ability to do that in the Abello Hive. The Abello Hive is a top bee space hive, so that means that the frames don't sit flush with the top of the box. You got the bee space on top of the frames. You got your black plastic mating faces all the way around with the rebate, and then Abello, they integrate their plastic runners into that design as well. It's a really nice design. It's tried and tested. It works well. And it's really, really strong and robust. Now the Abello 12-frame hive, obviously it takes 12 frames, whereas the BS Honeybees takes 11 frames. Both hives, and this is a really important one for me, you've got the frame spacing above the lugs of the box underneath. We've spoken about this before, really important. If boxes don't have that, it can cause a right mess. So always good to have that. Handhelds on all 4 sides. You've got 2 deep ones here and then 2 shallower ones here. But you can access that from any direction, no problem whatsoever. So overall, the Abello Super, really, really good design, lots of nice unique features in there. So then moving on to the BS Honeybee Super, and at first glance it looks quite similar, but there are a few key features that are different with the BS Honeybee's design. So as per the Abello, you've got handhelds on all 4 sides, you've got your black plastic mating faces all the way around, but they're not rebated. It's got an integrated metal runner, so it's embedded, it's fixed, but it's not plastic, so it's metal, maybe slightly more durable. It's a bottom beespace design and it takes 11 frames. You also have this slot down the middle there, which means that you can split this hive up into 2 separate colonies, and we'll discuss that later in the video. But again, overall, really, really good quality super. So before we move on to the brood boxes, I just want to talk to you a little bit about queen excluders and wooden national compatibility. So this is a standard 460 by 460 National Queen Excluder, and on the BS Honeybees box you can see that fits perfectly all the way around. Perfect fit. Bottom bee space, so if you wanted to use a wooden framed wire excluder on here as well, that would work. This hive is designed for full compatibility with the wooden National, so it's 460 by 460 external dimensions, and then it's a bottom bee space hive. And if you've seen our review of the Abello 12 frame, it is in fact compatible with the wooden National as well. There's a little bit of tweaking that potentially needs to be done with the supers and the frame rests to make it a bottom bee space. And it's something that Abelo are going to issue out very, very soon. But this same 460 by 460 excluder sits directly on the rebate like that. So if you had this brood box and you wanted to buy just brood boxes and wooden national equipment, you can just pop that queen excluder on, you maintain your bee space, and then you can just go wooden supers all the way up as high as you want. So as far as I'm concerned, both of these hives are fully compatible with the Wooden National. The Abello takes maybe a tiny little bit more work, and there's a few intricacies in there in terms of compatibility with floors and roofs, but it does work. They're both fully compatible. I'd say the, the BS Honeybees one's a little bit closer to full compatibility though. So if you were to take a Wooden National like this, it just sits directly on the top like that. Exactly the same dimensions, works fine. And then the same with the Abello. If you were just to put the Wooden National on like that, cuts in a little bit because of the rebate system. But in terms of the frame spacing, it does actually work. And if you were going to put this on top of another Super, you just need to make sure that you amend the Supers to bottom B space and then everything works together well. And then as you can see, if you take the Abello roof and you place that on top like that, that sits nicely on top. You'd need to put something on the top though to maintain the space. And the crown board does that just fine. So the crown board sits on there as well. So they've thought about this. The compatibility, in my view, works really, really well. No problem whatsoever. The only difference that you're going to get is obviously on the Abello, you get this stepped-in, stepped-out effect, which I don't think looks too bad. On the BS Honeybees one, everything's going to be perfect dimensional fit. So then we move on to the brood box, and there's a really big difference between these 2 brood boxes. So the Abello brood box is very, very similar to the Super. You have your entrance at the front, so if you're doing any vertical splits or you want to do like a Demaray, move that up, you can do a vertical split with this box. You've got your black plastic mating faces all the way around, rebate embedded. It's top bee space. You got the plastic frame runners. This one takes 12 frames, and then you got your nice handhelds on all 4 sides. Now the BS Honeybees polybrood box has a bit of a party trick, and we discussed this in the other video, so I won't go into too much detail. But it is an 11-frame box. And then when you take out that 11th frame, you can put a Dibond aluminium excluder in. And you've got the ability on this hive to split it into 2 separate colonies in a horizontal fashion. So you do a vertical split on this one with the entrances here, and then on this one you do a horizontal split with an integrated Dibond aluminium board. Similar functionality, very different features. Other things to say about the BS Honeybees poly brood box, obviously flat mating faces all the way around, no rebate, takes 11 frames, no entrances on any of the sides, but you do have your 4 handhelds and it's a bottom bee space design. Right, onto the floors then. 2 very different floors, completely different designs. So the floor on the BS Honeybees is designed to work with that 2-way system. The BS Honeybees poly hive is a 2-in-1 Polyhive. Very different from the Abello. You have your entrance at the front and your entrance at the back. You can use one at a time or 2 at a time in a single colony, and then if you're using it as a split colony, you have both of them open, one out of the front, one out of the back. Spoken before about the entrance reducer, really nice design on both of these hives for entrance reducers. Very similar, you have the ability to close it fully up, fully open, mouse guard operation, and then a closed ventilated option. And they achieve that in 2 very different ways. So on the BS Honeybees, when it's closed, you have the ventilation on the bits that are coming across and closing. On the Abello, you close it up and you have ventilation either side at all times. The BS Honeybees, you have a Dibond board, just about enough space to get it out with the detritus. And then you have your 4 legs all the way around the corner. Nice stable floor. Now the Abello floor, a little bit heavier, a little bit bulkier. You have a really good quality plastic tray. I do like this plastic tray. I do think it's very, very good indeed. Nice solid varroa mesh, the beginning of that black plastic rebate, and then you've got the nice entrance reducer at the front with similar functionality to the BS Honeybees one. So that's the comparison of both of these hives complete. Now I'm going to talk to you a little bit about which one of these hives I think is the best hive. And as always, I'm really sorry, but it's going to be a complete cop-out, and I'm going to rank both of these hives as a draw. And the reason that I'm going to do that is because I just think they're a little bit too different The features that both of these hives offer, the way they go about their business, is so different that I think it suits different people's needs. I've given you my overview of the BS Honeybees polyhive, and I've given you my overview of the Abello polyhive. And in my mind, these 2 hives here are miles ahead of the, the rest of the polyhive market in the UK, especially some of the ones you, you see in the background here, naming no names. The features, the functionality, everything that they've cram-packed into these hives, it is just so good, and it's just going to make beekeeping so much easier, kind of for bee farmers, for people at home, for everybody, because the features are packed within the hive. So no longer am I going to have to amend feeders by putting little rims on them because the design's backward. No longer am I going to have to have dummy boards in hives where I don't want to have dummy boards in there because the spacing inside is incorrect. No longer am I going to have to go and address a hive a certain way because there's only 2 handhelds on it. No longer am I going to have to have a separate multi-purpose crown board that I make myself because there's no integration either in the roof or the crown board to feed fondant. Like, these are niggles, and these are things that I have to deal with on a pretty much day-by-day basis in my beekeeping operation. And these are all issues that have been resolved on both of these hives. Nothing's been left behind on either of these hives. And there are a few distinct differences between the 2 hives. So the Abello, it's got entrances in the roof, it's got entrances in the super and the brood box. It's got an integrated rebate system with plastic mating faces. It's got an additional frame, so it's a 12-framer. However, some people don't like the rebate system. Some people don't like the fact that it's a different exterior dimension to a wooden National, although it is compatible with it. And some people aren't keen on the floor. Whereas the BS Honeybees hive, it's got this unique feature that you can split the hive into 2. It becomes a 2-in-1 poly hive, and it means that you can overwinter in a 2-in-1 configuration, which gives you massive amount of possibilities in terms of splits, early year splits, and managing your bees for increase and managing your bees for numbers. It also has the identical exterior dimensions to a wooden National, and it has bottom bee space frame spacing. So if you're looking for something that is effectively a version, poly version of a wooden national, this probably is a slightly closer fit. Although I do think the Abello is a good compatible option as well. So that's the reason that I'm ranking these two as a draw because beekeeping is always subjective, and I've got a video coming up later on in the year which is what is my perfect poly hive. And as I'm putting together this video and I'm doing it bit by bit, I've just come to the conclusion that. Perfect is too subjective a word in beekeeping because my perfect polyhive doesn't have a landing board. Neither of these hives here have a landing board. So if I say this is the perfect polyhive or this is a perfect polyhive, somebody else, Stuart York, could say it's not my perfect polyhive because it hasn't got a landing board. So as with everything in beekeeping, it's very, very subjective and it's all about understanding the differences understanding the nuances in the hive, understanding the features and the functionality, and then fixing that back to your requirements as a beekeeper. So you might not have any interest at all in these entrance blocks up here. You can block them up if you don't want them. You might see these entrance blocks as a waste of time, and you might see a telescopic roof and the ability to split horizontally like the BS Honeybees as the greatest thing ever. Therefore, you'd go with the BS Honeybees hive. Now, you might get really fed up with water ingress on plastic mating faces, and you want a solution that's going to give you maximum water ingress protection, and you want the additional frame that you're going to get from the 12-frame National Poly. So then you might go with the Abello Polyhive. It's all about finding out what you want from your beekeeping, finding out the best product on the market for you. But if someone comes to me the next day, or until another polyhive comes out on the market, And they say, what is the best polyhive on the UK market? I'm going to point to these 2, and I'm going to point to both of them and say, this is what's good about this hive, and this is what's good about this hive. Check out the comparison and see which one fits your requirements. So I'm really sorry, I'm not going to commit. I'm not going to say this one's better, and I'm not going to say this one's better, because I think they're both really top-drawer polyhives in their own right. And what's best for me? Might not be best for someone else. In terms of buying polyhives, I am going to buy some of these polyhives and I'm going to buy some of these polyhives. I genuinely can't split these 2 at the moment, so I'm going to run them throughout the year, maybe come back in a couple of years' time once I've had a couple of years under my belt and I've really learned and understood absolutely everything with both of these hives, and then maybe I'll commit to a favorite in the future. But I hope that video was useful. I've had a number of people pestering me for this video saying, can you compare the 2 in a single video? and can you commit to which one's your favorite? So I've done the first bit, I've done the comparison, but I'm not going to commit to which one's my favorite. So I hope that was useful. I hope you found it enjoyable. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.