QUOTE=Neils;17822]I don't disagree with you regarding preference for bees going vertically, indeed, it's one of things I like about the 14x12 over the commercial or langstroth boxes. I don't think it's entirely co-incidental that the vast majority of box hives don't go much wider than 10-12 frames horizontally and it's one of the frequent criticisms raised against KTBH and Dartington boxes for that matter, especially in our climate, that even with oodles of spare space horizontally it's quite rare to get a colony that will make use of that all that space where they will quite happily fill a much larger space vertically.

Quite right, in the days of old when knights were bold and feral colonies built combs in roof spaces, they had a penchant for building vertically and not often was there more than ten combs in width. The height/length of the combs might well be a couple of feet, this was in areas where there was unlimited space for comb building in any direction.
Another fact which I always found interesting was the bees in attic spaces often abandoned their old combs and built anew nearby. Waxmoth dealt with the old combs and I often thought the whole process was a precedent for shook swarming/Bailey frame change.