The Jackson beehive is much more suited to the tropical, humid conditions found in Southern Africa where the hive was developed by the Jackson family. They’ve been involved in beekeeping and organics for over 30 years. The Jackson beehive is based on the Top Bar hive design with unique improvements.
Not much has changed with regards to the Langstroth design in the last century other than the introduction of innovations such as plastic frames, plastic queen excluders and the like. These are merely modifications of the base design. The Jackson beehive brings new concepts and a change in approach as to the management and internal workings of the bee colony.
The Jackson beehive holds 25 brood size frames in the hive. Compare this to only 10 brood size frames in the Langstroth beehive with a mere 10 superframes for honey storage. In essence, the volume of production and storage translates into 10 brood frames followed by 5 full frames from the super chamber (10 superframes divided by half to give a full-frame in the brood) and so only 15 Full brood size frames from the Langstroth hive.
The reason many perceive the Jackson beehive to be more expensive than the Langstroth at first is due to the difference in the quoted price and tend to base their decision purely on the price difference. There is a major difference in VOLUME between a single unit of Langstroth Beehives and Jackson Beehives.
The Jackson hive carries an additional 10 full-frame volume within its capacity!! Essentially, you, as a beekeeper, would need a minimum of 2 more super chambers on top of every Langstroth beehive you manage to compete with just one Jackson hive. These make the Jackson hive extremely competitive. We haven’t even considered the saving of not having to use a queen excluder which costs R115 as a Langstroth hive accessory.
Do the numbers: A Langstroth hive costs R1295 (or $80) assembled plus a queen excluder of R115 (or $8) plus 2 more super chambers at an estimated R570 each (R1140 total) in order to match up the volume for volume with the Jackson hive. Yet you only pay R990 or $80 for the Jackson hive compared to over R2490 for the equivalent in Langstroth hive components & volume.
With the unfortunate passing of Tim Jackson, the stock has run out the family has decided to not continue with the product until further notice.