Laurence Edwards dislikes external landing boards because they add 15-20% extra volume to hives, making them harder to stack and transport. He prefers internal landing boards that sit within the hive's footprint, which let him insert foam for moving hives without the space penalty.
In this video, I'm going to tell you why I really, really do not like beehives with landing boards. So I've said this on loads of videos that I've had previously, that I really do not like landing boards, and there's a couple of big reasons why every single colony and beehive and nucleus that I have does not have a landing board. So a landing board is simply just a bit of wood that goes on the front of the beehive like this, that the bees can use to come in, land on, and walk into the colony. So bees don't have landing boards in the wild, they just have like a hole in a tree or something and they just land on the vertical face of the tree and walk up into the cavity in which the nest is in. And a lot of nucleus colonies are like that as well, in that you just have a hole with like a disc and the bees will just land on the disc or they'll just fly directly into that hole. I understand beekeepers why they like landing boards, and don't get me wrong, this isn't like a witch hunt, this isn't saying anybody who's got a landing board is doing something wrong. There's nothing wrong with them at all. I just don't like them. And I do understand it from a beekeeper's perspective. If you've just got like this colony here in your garden, one or two colonies in your garden, and you just want to keep bees for the love of bees and to watch them going in, then landing boards are great. They really are good for beehives in the garden where you're watching. And I'm looking at this colony here now. I know I'm tempting my luck, and it's really nice to see sit there and watch the bees coming in through the landing board, and they kind of congregate on that entrance like that. And in the nice warm sunny days of summer— and like this weekend is probably the 2 days of summer that we're getting in North Wales at the moment, and it's still a bit gray and dreary— but to watch the bees going in is really nice. So if you've got 1 or 2 colonies in your garden, then why not have a landing board? It makes sense. But the main problem that I have with them, and the reason that I really, really do not like them, is Simple reason, probably doesn't apply to you, but it does apply to me, and that is take up a huge amount of space when you're moving them around. And it is as simple as that. They take up probably an extra 15 or 20% of the space in my truck, and it means that you can't stack your nucs or you can't stack your beehives properly because you've got a landing board in place. It's as simple as that. However, there is a little halfway house that I've introduced into mine, and not for the reason of looking at your bees, Just for the way that the design kind of sorts itself out, and it's actually a function of another part of the design that means that you end up with what's called an interior landing board. So this one here is what I would call like an exterior landing board. It sits outside the footprint of the hive. So you have the footprint of the hive and then you have a landing board outside it. Whereas on my underfloor entrances, you have a landing board that sits underneath or within the that footprint of the hive, and I call that an internal landing board. Now, I've not put that internal landing board in on that design so I can watch the bees going in, although you can, and it does mean they've got something to land on. I put that internal landing board on so that I can put a piece of foam in between to bung them up to move them when I want to move them, say, up to the heather. It's a really nice, neat way of moving them, and then you get that internal landing board footprint as well. So there we go. Landing boards, I absolutely hate them. I understand why people like them. I don't like an external landing board. I like an internal landing board, but not for the reason that most people think.
