Shallow Super
Lexikon
A shallow super, or half box, refers to a box that is lower than the brood box of the same system and holds correspondingly lower frames.
A shallow super, or half box, refers to a box that is lower than the brood box of the same system and holds correspondingly lower frames. It is used almost always as a honey super.
The reason is practical: a full Zander brood box weighs a good twenty kilograms when full, a half box about half that. Anyone clearing many colonies or having to watch their back works considerably more comfortably with it.
The heights follow the frame size. In Zander size, half frames of 110 millimeters and two-thirds frames of 159 millimeters are common; in German Normal size there are shallow frames of 159 and half frames of 110 millimeters. With Dadant, the honey super is generally shallow by design, at 159 millimeters frame height for Dadant Blatt and 141 millimeters for modified Dadant.
The price for the lower weight is a second comb size in the operation. Combs can then no longer be freely swapped between the brood chamber and the honey super, which would be exactly an advantage of the Zander and German Normal systems. Anyone who opts for shallow supers should do so deliberately and stick with it.