Lyson Langstroth Poly Hive Review

In this video, I'm going to review the Lyson 9-frame poly hive from Abelo. Now, I've spoken to someone previously about this hive, and they said that it was the same density as the polystyrene packing that you'll get maybe when you order something online. That statement couldn't be further from the truth. It's the same 120g per litre density as all of the other Abelo poly hives. The only difference with this one here, and you wouldn't be able to tell looking at it here, is that it arrives flat pack, which to some people is a huge, huge benefit. It's going to save you quite a substantial amount of money on postage, and then it's going to save you lots and lots of space if you're storing them throughout the off-season. 2 massive benefits to them coming flat packed. Obviously you can buy it ready assembled as well, costs a little bit more if you buy it assembled. For me, I'm going to show you how to assemble it today. It is super, super easy to assemble, literally takes a couple of minutes per box. And the roof, the crown board, and the floor all come pre-assembled anyway. So let's jump straight into it then, and I'll show you how to assemble the boxes, and then I'll give you a full review from top to bottom. So you can see that's what the box looks like there when it's in its flat pack form, and it's just 12 screws that go in and fix it all together. There's no glue. You can glue it if you want to glue it, but I really wouldn't recommend it because it means that if you want to go back to flat pack like I've done there, you can't do it if it's glued. So in my recommendation, don't glue it. If you do want to glue it, I would just use like a standard polyurethane glue, like a Gorilla Glue. All of the screws come with the Polyboxes, and as I said, it's 12 screws per box. So to put it back together again, you can't actually get these the wrong way because it's a rebated box. If you try and do it the wrong way around, you'll realize really, really quickly. But a good tip, tip that I found, is that if you always have the license facing the same way up, then you literally can't get it wrong. So all I do, get it on a box like that. You'll see that it pretty much balances. Get a screw, and it is as simple as that. You do that 12 more times and the boxes are put together. So there you go. You can see the boxes come together super quick and they are absolutely rock solid. I've got tons of assembled Abello boxes, tons of Larson boxes, and these are just as solid as the ones that don't come flat pack. So don't think it's flat pack, it's going to be rubbish. Definitely not. Just as strong as the fully assembled ones. Right, so let's start the review from the top and we'll work our way down to the bottom. So first up, you've got your roof, really absolutely solid, rock-solid roof, and you've got the plastic molded into the side here. So this plastic here serves 2 purposes. One, it gives you a solid stacking device so you can put the floor from underneath onto the top, and when you jiggle it about, it doesn't move. That's a really nice design. And then also it's got the integrated strap recesses here, so when you're strapping your boxes down, you can strap them down really, really tight. without actually damaging the poly on the top. What the roof also has, in a similar fashion to all of the Abello and Lyson boxes, is open entrances at the top. So you get 2 at the front, 2 at the back. Really useful if you want to open it up for them to get direct access into the supers, and even more useful if you want to, say, do like a demaray and requeen from the top box in a demaray. If you don't like them, they give you the plugs to block them up completely as well. I like the flexibility that that design gives. Worth saying at this point as well, you can either choose to have this in a fully painted version or you can have it as unpainted. I always like to get them as unpainted myself because it means that you can kind of be in charge of the paint covering that you're going to put onto it. You can choose the color scheme and then obviously it's way, way cheaper as well. I'm going to paint these up in my next video, so if you're enjoying this one here, definitely hit the subscribe button. In terms of the thickness and the density of the roof, obviously it's 120 grams per liter density throughout. But it is really noticeable in the roof. Like, if you feel that there, that is rock solid. Really nice heavy weighty lid means it's not going to be blowing off anywhere, and it means it gives you really good insulation at the top, which is where it's needed. So moving on to the crown board then, really nice simple crown board design, and I think Abello and Lyson have changed back from some of the earlier iterations of crown boards where you had loads of different holes dotted around to a single hole in the center. that can either have a vent on it if you like it vented. I'm not a fan of that, but they give you the solid plug as well, so you've effectively got a really nice, simple, solid crown board. Black rebates all the way around, and I have to say, I really am a massive fan of the rebated system. I know a lot of people aren't, but the fact that Abelo are selling way more rebated hives now that they brought that out to the market, I think the general demand is there for a rebated system. It's worth saying as well that this hive here is a Langstroth hive. It's built upon a Langstroth format with a top Bee space. So your bee space is at the top versus, say, a National hive that has a bottom bee space, which strangely means that the frames sit flat on the top. But really nice simple crown board, and I'm glad that it's not got any of the fanciness of earlier iterations. So talking a little bit more about the black plastic rebate around the edge, serves a couple of purposes. One, there's no water ingress, so water can't get in and make its way in and kind of get in the way of the bees. But it serves a bigger purpose for me, which is you can kind of hold boxes an angle like that. You can do this with like multiple boxes and I just find like when I'm carrying around my boxes and they're rebated and I'm doing that and look— I'll do that from like the bottom as well though. Just absolutely get that down to like a 45-degree angle and they're not falling off. I find when I go back to doing kind of like non-rebated poly or wooden boxes I lift them up and they just all tumble over. And okay maybe that's like lazy practice but I do get really used to the benefits of the rebated system. And I really do wish all of my hives were rebated. So you can see there, even though I've assembled this hive myself and put this box together, all of the joints there are really nice and neat. It fits together so, so nicely. And as I said before, it's really nice. You basically can't put it together wrong. So don't worry if you're not any good at DIY and you get this. I reckon my 5-year-old daughter could put this one together. So it takes a full 9 Langstroth frames, and then what you've got at the end there is just a tiny additional bit of space. That's basically what I'd like to see on every hive, that amount of space. Not really even a full bee space, but it means that you've got a little bit of flexibility to get in, get the frames out, and it means that when the frames get wet and they swell up a little bit, you're still not going to have any issues getting them outside of the frames. Now in terms of the configuration and number of the frames, they've chosen to go for a 9-frame format here, and it really is a nice format. I absolutely love it because it means that you've got a more rectangular column-style shape for the bees, and the bees really do like that. They don't work well in big, long, wide horizontal hives. I've found the horizontal hives I struggle with a little bit. They like to go into thin natural columns, and I find that the 9-frame Langstroth mimics that really, really well. And you might be thinking, okay, well, 9 frames is nowhere near as good as a 12-frame, say, national hive, but then the Langstroth frame is like considerably bigger. It's a much bigger frame, probably equivalent to maybe like 11 frames on a national I love my Langstroth. I really do wish if I'd started out again, I would have started out with Langstroth like this. Really, really like the format. Now what I've done with my iterations of these hives that I got from Abello is that I've gone with just a deep version only. So you can buy this kind of in a format with one deep and two shallows. What I've done is I bought it in a format with four deeps. Now it's going to be loads more expensive buying that, but it means that you're essentially getting one shallow and like 6 supers worth of space. Really good efficient way of doing it, and it means that you're never going to run out of space late on in the season when it becomes really critical to make sure that you've got enough space there. Now you can buy it with 2 boxes, you can buy it with 3 boxes, they'll do pretty much any variation for you, but I'm just making that point to show that I've not gone with shallows in this system. I've just gone with Langstroth deeps, and I run it on either a single brood box or a double brood box format depending on where I choose to put my queen So the floor is very recognizable from other previous Lyson and Abello floors. I really like this entrance here at the front. It can pop out, but you can take that out even when the boxes are on. You can increase the space on that so it's like full flow, so there's nothing in the way. You can put it onto mouse guard mode, and then you can turn it around and you can reduce that down to a single bee space if, for instance, you're having issues with wasps. Got galvanized mesh at the bottom, completely screwed in, and then the floor tapers round on all the edges, so any water is going to track down and make sure it goes through the mesh and not sit on the bottom of the floor. Really nice monitoring tray, probably the best monitoring tray that I've seen. Made of poly, but it feels really nice and solid. But it's very deep as well, which means that when you come to like clean them out and kind of get rid of all of the wax and crud that's inside, just much, much easier to get rid of it that way. And then obviously once you take it out, you've got the inside here. So if you want to run it without this as well, you can. Leave the board open all year round to give you the top insulation with the bottom ventilation. So there we go. I'm really happy with my 9-frame poly Langstroth box from Lyson supplied by Abelo. I'm going to be using this across a whole single apiary this year, and I cannot wait to get started.