In this video recorded at the Abello open day, Laurence Edwards examines a 45‑year‑old Lyson Polysuper beehive that was brought in by Damien. He provides a detailed visual tour of the hive’s condition, highlighting its surprisingly good state despite a lack of regular maintenance. Edwards points out original design features such as Lyson’s insert blocks, noting their similarity to modern equivalents, and describes the makeshift metal runners fashioned from repurposed sardine tins—a wartime‑era solution when metal was scarce. He discusses the various repairs performed over the decades, compares the hive’s durability to that of wooden boxes, and argues that the hive demonstrates the sustainability of polyhive construction: it remains fully recyclable, can be repurposed for insulation, and can serve for many more decades. Throughout, Edwards expresses strong enthusiasm for polyhives and their long‑term viability.
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This Polysuper here is 45 years old. It has not been looked after, but it is in perfectly good shape. In this video, I'm going to give you a close look up at some of the repairs and just how well this poly has survived for 45 years. So we're at the Abello open day and Damien just brought this over and showed me and he said, this is pretty cool. Yeah, a 45-year-old Polysuper from Lyson, the original design. How much does it look like the design of nowadays? I absolutely love it. Still looks very similar, but look Look at all of the different bits of detail on here. Look at the glue, look at the repairs, look at the insert blocks that were developed by Lyson 45 years ago. I love these insert blocks here, and just look how similar it looks to the boxes now. But check this out, this is my favorite thing. Back then, there's not a lot of money available for doing things, especially for metal. You know, this is just after the war. So what Damien said is instead of making metal runners to go up here, what they did is they got the old Sardine tins, obviously saved the oil from the sardines for something else, ate the sardines, and then they peeled the sardine tins down, cut them with a scalpel, and bent them into position there. And here we are 45 years later, and they have outlasted like a lot of wooden boxes in that time. That is very, very old poly. But you look at it, it's pretty solid. Like I say, pretty solid, it's completely solid. I'm very, very impressed. And people say poly isn't a sustainable choice, But you know, this has been here for 45 years, and although it's a little bit grubby and it's been repaired, it's still fully recyclable. Like, you could cut that down, pop it in some insulation behind a wall, and it will insulate for another however many decades. So it's a sustainable solution, it's recyclable, it can be used for all of these years. I absolutely love my polyhives.
