In Australia we do not have a big range of sizes or shapes of bee hives. They are all standard multi-storey Langstroth style with movable frames and a standard 19 inch top bar.

There are two widths, 8 frame and 10 frame, so called from the number of frames they can hold.

The further north in Australia the more likely the beekeeper is to use 10 frame width while further south they mostly use the 8 frame width.

There are only 5 heights. Starting from the biggest they are called -

Full Depth

WSP - (Named after Mr. Wyn Pender, a famous Australian manufacturer of equipment)

Manley - (Named after John Manley, a well known English manufacturer)

Ideal

Half Depth

95% of all beekeepers use the full depth size with all the other shallow sizes spread randomly across the country through both amateur and commercial beekeepers.

Australia went to a metric measuring system more than 30 years ago but because bee space is in imperial inches and the whole basis for the dimensions of a hive is based on bee space. We as a manufacturer have never tried to "metric" the bee hive.

Below is a table of the exact inch sizes and an approximate metric equivalent for the various sizes of Australian bee supers. Frames and foundation are correspondingly smaller to allow for bee space.

         Sizes of our Standard Bee Boxes