My hive setup is four hives on a one square meter pallet. For moving my hives I can put a pallet on top of the first four hives. This picture is just a demonstration setup. There are no bees in the hives, and the setup is hand done, But in real I use a forklift to handle the pallets. The hives are polystyrene hives. Each super (I prefer to have all boxes same size) is with box and 10 langstroth frames 4.5 kg. A total for button 2 boxes and lid is around 12 kg. I winter my bees in two boxes. In spring I remove the lower Box and clean the button. I then put on a new box with only foundation with a peace of newspaper between just to limit the space for the bees to warm up. when they need the space above they will just gnaw the newspaper away.

The inside of the lid have a 3cm thick polystyrene plate as insulation. If you take a closer look you will find that the bees have starting to gnaw through it to try to expand the hive. So I have to cover it with a sheet of plastic to avoid this gnawing. This had lead to consistent use of a plastic sheet put on top of the top Box. The bees then propolize it all around and to the frames too. This have the benefit that when I lift the lid I am not getting the bees in my head, but have plenty of times to judge if it is needed to use a lot of smoke or not. By the way I am always knocking at the door with a puff of smoke through the entrance before I am lifting of the lid.

If needed I can put a nuck on top of a hive. E.g. if I need to isolate the queen for some purpose.

The next two pictures is from Canada showing Five frames wintering hives in British Columbia. They are polystyrene hives. The beekeeper is killing of his production hives when honey flow is over. Before that he has made up his wintering nucks with a new queen. Those are then transferred to British Columbia for wintering. On this spot he had around 500 Five frames hives.

This has nothing to do with bees. It is only my spot for thinking in my garden

Some of my garden friends.