Complete Lyson Beehive Kit, Assembled, with 10 Frames, Insulated Polystyrene

Well insulated just perfect to protect the colony from winter or summer weather. Make the Bees happy! Just inform the seller if its ASAP for delivery.

I got two 'good' wooden hives last year to start keeping bees. Hot dipped in bee's wax. Just what people said I should get. After a few weeks I realized that this small collection of planks would provide absolutely minimal protection for the bees. There had to be a better option. I quickly found a variety of heavy duty polystyrene hives.That brought me to Betterbee and the previous version of this hive. I ordered and they turned up a couple of days later. I found that the contact surfaces are all reinforced with hard plastic and that includes where the assembly screws bear. This year they have also added pre drilled reinforcement for the catches. Ah yes, apart from the lack of insulation and locating features on a standard hive, they also have no way to keep them together in the face of high winds.We transferred our two month old packages into the new hive and they never looked back. By the end of a very unusually dry summer they had filled two deep hive bodies and two honey supers. We had heard that first year hives find it hard to survive. So we took nothing from them.Unfortunately we had a power failure and a bear broke into one hive while the electric fence was down. The bear appears to have dragged one frame across the fence before the power came back on. They left after cleaning only one side of one frame. But they seem to have managed to kill the queen.So we had one hive going in to winter. Today is the first warm day of spring 2021. We hit 66F. I went out to look at the hive. All we did to it was close the entrance down to the cogged side of the entrance reducer. On first inspection things looked grim. The entrance was blocked with dead bees. I fished them out with the hive tool, but only got about two cups. Surely there had been more bees than that? A few minutes later a bee emerged, she turned and gave the hive a hard stare, then flew off. Huh. A few minutes later two more did the same. Then a couple came out and stood guarding the landing area. Well hello ladies!Round the back of the hive I listened at the one vent they hadn't blocked. We only left two in place, the others we closed with the insulating plugs. The hive is absolutely humming. With no extra care the first year colony has survived months of freezing weather with night time lows down to -7F at worst. And they have thrived. Tomorrow I am going to check the food levels and then feed them to give them a really great start for next year.I wanted more bees this year, and wanted to start them in a good hive, so I ordered another 10 frame hive kit with two deep and two medium boxes. Assembling took me about 20 minutes with an electric screwdriver. Adding the catches took about the same again. I have great hopes for the nucs that I'll get in early may.Other new bee keepers we attended courses with last year have had very poor luck. Most of their first year hives don't seem to have made it. We haven't had to add food yet, and we did nothing to reduce condensation or increase insulation. I can't imagine buying another wooden hive.