3rd year beekeeper, I have ran with Apimaye from day one. My Boyfriend is more practical than I am so we “Tried” Wood Langstroth hardware when our hives grew to larger numbers. We lost two hives to the winter weather and two weeks ago, we had our first bear attack. Our Apimaye hives protected our hives in the winter, and protected our hives from our first black bear attack, twice in one weekend. The wood hives did neither. I had no expectation that I would ever need to defend my hives from anything bigger than raccoons, but I can tell you this, every hive I own is in a Apimaye hives now. Maybe if our bear had been a Grizzle, or he brought some friends along, We may have lost our Apimaye protected bee colonies.
I can tell you without any reservation, if you run 10 hives or less 100 yards from your back door in Mid Missouri, you will never regret paying for Apimaye hives.