Shallow Super
Lexikon
A shallow box or half box is a box that is lower than the brood box of the same system and accordingly takes lower frames.
A shallow box or half box is a box that is lower than the brood box of the same system and accordingly takes lower frames. It is almost always used as a honey super.
The reason is practical: a full Zander deep box weighs a good twenty kilograms when full, a half box about half that. Anyone who clears many colonies or has to look after their back works much more comfortably with it.
The heights depend on the frame size. In the Zander size, half frames of 110 millimeters and two-thirds frames of 159 millimeters are common; in the German Normal Measure there are shallow frames of 159 and half frames of 110 millimeters. With Dadant, the honey super is always shallow, with a frame height of 159 millimeters 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 swapped freely between brood chamber and honey super, which would be one of the very advantages of the Zander and German Normal Measure systems. Anyone who chooses shallow boxes should do so deliberately and stick with it.