In this on‑site beekeeping video, host Laurence Edwards visits Carl’s apiary to showcase a custom‑built quad hive (quad‑box) that fits within a standard national footprint. The hive is divided into four separate compartments, each acting as a mini mating nuc over winter. Carl fabricates the box (460 mm × 460 mm square) and frames himself, installing cross‑braces and runners so that each quarter has its own entrance and can hold its own food frames. By stacking a full national super of frames on top of the quad‑box, the four nucs share abundant food without the bees being able to access each other, promoting clustering and high overwintering success. The video walks through the physical layout, explains how the design allows easy feeding of individual nucs, and highlights the benefits of a bespoke, compatible system for beekeepers using national‑size equipment.
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We're in Carl's apiary again today, and I'm going to show you a really cool quad hive setup for overwintering mini mating nucs. So this is the first hive that Carl showed me in a previous video when we were remarking about how calm his bees were, and they are super, super calm bees. And I was really interested by this one because when he took the national crown board off, it wasn't national frames, national shallow frames inside, it was split 4 ways. And I said, we definitely have to do a video of that. So show me inside this hive here now, Carl, and give me a talk about it.
This is a quad box. And these are obviously the quarter hives here. If I'm needing food for any hives to set up a little colony, then I can use these frames of food.
So it's not standard frames in there, you've split it up into 4 ways, and then each of them you're producing food for your mini mating nucs.
Yeah, in the, in the wintertime I can set up 4 little hives in an empty box, so this is split into 4. So I've got 4 little hives going through the winter, keeping each other warm in this big confined space. All I need to do is put this box on the top of 4 colonies, and there's enough food there to sustain them through the winter. Don't need to go near them.
So as Carl said there, he split that up into 4. You've made this yourself?
Yep.
Using a standard national super, is it?
No, no, I've made these.
But is it of the design of a national super?
Yeah.
So 460mm by 460mm, completely square. Fits on the national floor, the national brood boxes. Carl's made them himself, and then he's got these cross braces in the middle and then just some runners for these frames to sit. I think that's really, really nice. I've seen that done a lot in America. They do stuff like that, don't they? Overwintering like 2 or 3 nucs underneath a single box.
Yeah.
What would be really useful to see is if we can just get some of the little mini mating boxes. I've seen there's a couple of spares and just kind of place them on to see what that fitting is like.
This is a box. Once you take the bottom off, You can put it on here, yeah, and that's one setup. But I use another box identical to this and put the colony in that division.
Okay, so you can see there, that's one quarter of the little quad boxes that Carl uses. And again, you make these up yourself and you make the frames yourself, don't you?
Yeah.
Okay, so everything is bespoke, and it's bespoke in order to fit inside a national footprint. So you can see there that you'd have 4, you'd have one on that corner, one on that corner, one on that corner, Obviously one on the last corner. And you say, Carl, you'll take 4 mini mating nucs and then you'll just take this entire super full of frames and put it on top, and then there's no way that the bees can get in.
No, they've all got the separate compartments. Yeah. And they've all got the separate entrances.
Okay, yes, they've all got separate entrances.
Entrances either side.
So there we go. I thought that was really, really cool. So using a national footprint, Carl has developed a quad system for making his own boxes, making his own frames. To make sure that it's compatible with all of his national kit. He uses that to create the food. If a colony, a little mini colony over here needs an additional frame, he just gives them a frame. And then he overwinters 4 of them in order to make sure they've got enough food, but more importantly that they're nice and close and clustered together. And then he gets really good overwintering success.
