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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #8946  by Patrick
 20 Sep 2020, 17:45
Ted, as you have experience of keeping bees in conventional hive set ups in your area and are a researcher you clearly already know the figures you describe are outside general experience.

You are completely right, common hive design is largely unchanged from the days of my great grandfather, revision is well overdue and many addressed it, including the perceived thermal inadequacies. No closed minds here.

I have never been quite sure why tree thermal properties are seen as the ideal, since feral tree colonies able to take advantage of them are not notorious for their prodigious performance and plenty of people have used log hives for centuries and they do not have any great reputation. If you have cracked it with your design, that’s great and well done.

To pick up on your metaphor, if you have achieved a step change I am not sure what others do matters much - tank designers did not bother about the merits of different types of cavalry horse.

Sadly my local consumers are going to take some persuasion to pay £24/lb for honey. Worse luck.
 #8947  by Steve 1972
 20 Sep 2020, 18:00
The question has been asked but i seem to have missed the answer...what hive type are you using.. ? ..

I use standard national format with a mix of Ged Marshal Queens and local mongrels..it has been a bad swarming year for me and i lost six 2019 Queens and managed to hang onto three 2019 Queens..i ended up with two laying worker colonies and two late mated virgins..

That took my hive count down to five come the summer flow at my main apiary site on the cold Northumbeland coast in the county of Alnwick..i could divide my honey crop by five which would give me an average of around 140lb per colony but this would not be accurate as some colonies both mongrel and Ged Marshal Queens brought more in than others..
 #8955  by pingping
 20 Sep 2020, 22:48
@ patrick I don't keep nationals any longer and local keepers are extreme hobbyists, so I have no direct references. It does matter what others think because adoption is actually key. Tanks were largely ignored when introduced. Thermal properties of trees are not critical as values to achieve in hives but in understanding bee adaptations and how we have morphed their behavior out of their optimum. Given that bees live in a range of places, including underground, it is widely accepted that their primary habitat is holes in living trees. If I told you that tree trunks follow the ambient temperature very closely (leaves not so - from tundra to tropics, leaf temperature is always 21 degrees because that is what chloroplasts operate at) with little time lag up to an absolute maximum of 34.5 degrees centigrade at which point all stomata are opened to prevent it ever going higher. Not coincidentally, this is the exact temperature of a brood nest, so it follows that bee hive cooling behavior is a novel adaptation to thin little boxes. I am sure you can see the implications of this for workforce deployment etc naturally vs a box. Further, a tree core temperature drops to about 0.1 degree above freezing and never below. So it follows that all our understanding of the winter cluster are the studies of largely novel behavior, and breeding for ruggedness is like trying to breed woolly mammoths out of African elephants - in just 150 years. Because before boxes, skep keeping was based on catching wild swarms and destructive at season end, with no need for overwintering. Further, I believe there is a very important acoustic element to nest selection. A conventional hive is rather like asking a Trappist monk to live inside a banjo. Everything about hive design follows from this. Follows, because as a beekeeper you know very well that we follow our bees, that they lead, so we should look at and try to follow their adaptive preferences also. And being nature with millions of years of honing behind it, it is actually very simple.

@ Steve It sound like you had a wild year but a good crop. Re the hive: insulation is really obvious and there have been many long and very large academic studies of it , but they have always hit 2 perennial problems - condensation and constipation. It isn't actually very good for bees, even though it is better than none. Condensation: High atmospheric water has a host of issues, from rotting pollen to nosema and other respiratory fungal issues, to rotting hives, fermenting stores, etc. Of course, the fibrous inside of a tree hole has no such problem. Constipation: In a well insulated conventional hive it takes about 8-13 hours for the ambient temperature to communicate itself to the bees by penetrating the hive body. This lag is not soon enough to signal to them conditions for an excretion flight given short winter days. So they don't leave for months, causing crapping problems. In a tree which moves with the outside temperature, no matter how up inside a trunk, bees will know it is reaching 12 degrees and a shite-flight is on the cards, almost in real time. And just to irritate some, mesh floors are not found in nature. The bottom of the hive is as important as the sides and top.

My work has been towards solving these problems and a number of others along the way based on a national brood frame. Double to 2.5 brood base and brood sized supers. The hive also changes the colony and brood structure so that understanding why swarming happens is quite obvious and a simple technique that prevents the right conditions being met almost completely eliminates it.

Cheap and quick build is important. I've done that. But I don't think they would be accepted because of the large amount of experience and skill invested in ones existing gear that has to be let go. Not realistic to expect. It is a new generation keeper thing, maybe.
 #8956  by huntsman.
 20 Sep 2020, 23:19
>Skep keeping was based on catching wild swarms and destructive at season end, with no need for overwintering.>

This is not how skep beekeeping worked.

Skeps had to be destroyed at season end but their replacements were not wild swarms but caught up swarms from the current years skeps. A two year cycle. So they 'were' overwintered. Besides these bees would have been Apis mellifera mellifera which would have been suitable for this practice but unfortunately you no longer have these, (thanks to Bro. Adam.)

Many good examples of old time commercial beekeepers in Germany/Austria on Youtube showing how skep beekeeping worked.

May I ask how long you have been beekeeping and did you participate in a beginners course from your nearest beekeeping association?
 #8959  by NigelP
 21 Sep 2020, 09:11
pingping wrote:
20 Sep 2020, 22:48
(leaves not so - from tundra to tropics, leaf temperature is always 21 degrees because that is what chloroplasts operate at)
Incorrect I'm afraid. Tundra and alpine leaf chloroplast have adapted to operate at lower temps vs desert plants whose chloroplasts operate at higher temps. Leaf temps are not constant as many factors influence leaf surface temperature, such as the ambient air temperature surrounding the leaves, leaf pigmentation and genetic / metabolic differences.
Last edited by NigelP on 21 Sep 2020, 15:16, edited 1 time in total.
 #8963  by NigelP
 21 Sep 2020, 09:23
pingping wrote:
20 Sep 2020, 22:48
Re the hive: insulation is really obvious and there have been many long and very large academic studies of it , but they have always hit 2 perennial problems - condensation and constipation. It isn't actually very good for bees, even though it is better than none. Condensation: High atmospheric water has a host of issues, from rotting pollen to nosema and other respiratory fungal issues, to rotting hives, fermenting stores, etc.
Even more inaccuracies appearing..... You simply don't get condensation in poly hives. And what constipation has do with them...the mind boggles.....
Last edited by NigelP on 21 Sep 2020, 15:17, edited 1 time in total.
 #8965  by pingping
 21 Sep 2020, 11:32
Hello Nigel, Huntsman
It is really very clear that you are not interested in what I am doing so why don't you just move on? You have not answered my initial enquiry but are looking to disprove something that you do not want to understand, for your own personal reasons. Everything you have written is grudging cynicism about small details and it is the very reason why new beekeepers continue to adopt knowledge, techniques, equipment that are contemporary with the traction engine. You literally kick the life out of any form of innovation. I will go further and say that this attitude, so widely found among beekeepers, is largely responsible for the demise of the honey bee - you are utterly inflexible to change

If it is too late in your lives for innovation and change, why not just accept that and take pleasure in a generation who are really excited by making improvements?

I am still interested to hear from those who can contribute positively to my questions.
 #8966  by huntsman.
 21 Sep 2020, 12:03
< You have not answered my initial enquiry>

Of course I haven't because if you knew anything about beekeeping you would not have any need for such an enquiry.

< You literally kick the life out of any form of innovation.>

What innovation? Neither Nigel or I have a clue as to what you're doing other than blowing your own trumpet.

So I'll put it to you again, how long have you been beekeeping and did you participate in a beginners course or better with your local association?

I would say you are about four years beekeeping and no course.
 #8967  by AdamD
 21 Sep 2020, 12:55
Gentlemen, please be civil...

I do have a question relating to this:-

"My work has been towards solving these problems and a number of others along the way based on a national brood frame. Double to 2.5 brood base and brood sized supers. The hive also changes the colony and brood structure so that understanding why swarming happens is quite obvious and a simple technique that prevents the right conditions being met almost completely eliminates it".

National brood frames I get. Brood sized supers I get - although I am not convinced that would make any significant difference apart from lifting them. (I can lift 2 supers, so I could use a brood box for honey although my extraction would be a pain as the frames would have to be done tangentially).
Swarming is reduced when there's enough space for the queen to lay in - that's a given - so I usually use two brood boxes. However I don't understand "2.5 brood base". Can you explain?