Choosing for your back and your flow

• If you already keep National hives, or National is the standard where you live, stay with it: the secondhand market is large, any other local beekeeper can lend you a spare frame, and its shallower brood box was sized for the climate and the bee you are likely to have.
• If you are choosing fresh and lifting worries you, the eight-frame Langstroth gives the lightest full box of the three.
• If you want the fewest box changes through a big flow, the ten-frame Langstroth carries the most in one lift.

Whichever you choose, the older rule still holds: pick one system and do not deviate.