Mann Lake Complete Bee Hive Kit, with 10 Frames, and Waxed Foundation Completely Assembled, Made in The USA

Good product

It is getting harder to find painted hive bodies and fully assembled frames -- This is a fascinating hobby, but I am not looking for extra work painting hive bodies or assembling frames. I ordered 4 of the full hive kit and another 4 extra hive bodies with frames. All arrived promptly, neatly painted, sturdily constructed. The wooden frames had plastic foundation inserts. While it was shipped assembled, some of the plastic foundation inserts did fall out in transport, but were super easy to re-insert -- no assembling frames, no clips and was foundation that easily breaks. We will see during the season how the bees react, but my previous experience with fully plastic frames with built in foundation has been good. The only downside is that this came with lots of boxes withing boxes, so unpacking took about 2+ hours. Overall, I am pleased with the construction and with the clean look. Package bees purchased locally get installed in 3 days.

Excellent speed of delivery (free). Product is well made and exactly as advertised. Bees are happy! Price was good. Only reason for not giving it 5 stars is that it only includes a solid bottom board (which was as advertised). We really wanted a screened bottom board option, which was not available. We had to purchase a screened bottom board elsewhere at an added cost of $35.

I bought this beehive deep box because it was advertised as being already assembled. Imagine my surprise when I actually saw the item. It looked like staples were misfired. There were gouges in the wood. Was this box assembled by a child? I had to go through great effort to straighten it out to make it presentable for my yard. In addition, the bottom board was a disgrace. There was no wire mesh for ventilation and no pull out tray to catch mites and other debris. I had to order a proper bottom board from another manufacturer. If this product were cheap, I would say I got what I paid for. Unfortunately, this product was anything but cheap.

I rushed bought four of these for some new special queens coming in in swarm season. The craftsmsnship is great my only drawback is the yellow frames, the bees seem to hate them, they draw out any other frames at 10 to 20 times the speed. Another drawback with the yellow is that I can't see if the Queens layed any eggs until the egg has hatched into larvae. They're also super skinny frames, so compared to regular frames I'm left with some massive gaps in the box.