What have you done today bee-related?

[Jim Norfolk]

Nigel, as I understand it the water content of honey is determined by the relative humidity of the air it is in contact with. Data in Food Safety Management: A Practical Guide for the Food Industry by Yasmine Motarjemi & Huub Lelieveld, shows the relationship which is not a straight line. Basically to get honey down to 18% water relative humidity needs to be less than 60% RH. Your honey at 22% needed a RH below about 65%. Maybe there was so much moisture from the rape nectar the bees could not keep the humidity down.

I don't know what sort of humidities are typically found in supers in UK but the broodbox is around 50 to 60 % according to Arnia https://www.arnia.co.uk/hive-humidity/. If that air cools in the supers then RH will rise making ripening difficult. The bees must presumably re-heat that air in the supers to lower the relative humidity, which suggests any help from insulation would be useful. It may be analagous to the winter where bees in uninsulated hives can keep warm but just need to respire more to do so compared to bees in insulated hives.

[NigelP]

Yup, that is another good possibility Jim. But knowing what happens won't change it happening.
I just think in summer any consequences of honey ripening rates in wood vs poly supers are so marginal it's not worth worrying about. I think an issue has been created where one never existed previously......And it will need real hands on experiments to convince me otherwise.

[Chrisbarlow]

Setting up some hive stands in an apiary.

[Patrick]

Moved a colony in back of other car before work that was supposed to be a temporary lodger in a friends garden and managed to stay there several months last longer.

Bit Captain Chaos with just grass stuffed in entrance last night and no hive strap just stapled. Hardly textbook but at least remembered to grab beesuit before left.

[Chrisbarlow]

Moved a colony in back of other car before work that was supposed to be a temporary lodger in a friends garden and managed to stay there several months last longer.

Bit Captain Chaos with just grass stuffed in entrance last night and no hive strap just stapled. Hardly textbook but at least remembered to grab beesuit before left.

nothing wrong with a cavalier approach now and then Patrick, I take it no stings then

[AdamD]

Poly hives come into their own in the spring, as their heat retention allows a faster production of eggs and larvae as less bees are required to generate the necessary heat. When I conducted back to back experiments in spring over a couple of years bees kept in poly vs wood there was an obvious difference in frmaes of brood. Although the numbers are low (about 15 poly vs 15 wood ), the consistent result I saw was an average of 3-4 frames of bees in wood vs 6-7 in poly. at first inspections. As I recall your wooden ones where on 6-7 frames about the same time as mine wooden hives were on 3-4.....illustrating micro-climates quite nicely.

With my inspections of just a few of each this week,
Wooden nucs : 2 frames of brood.
Poly nucs : 3 frames of brood.

[Jim Norfolk]

Weighed my hives. Hive weight loss 1 to 1.5 kg per week. I have never recorded such a large weight loss. Presumably due to the high number of bees, the large amount of foraging in the warm weather and the need to keep a lot of brood warm as well as feed it.

I would advise anyone who hasn't done so yet to heft their hives. A long spell of cold and they may well run out of food.

[NigelP]

With my inspections of just a few of each this week,
Wooden nucs : 2 frames of brood.
Poly nucs : 3 frames of brood.

Good to see further confirmation of the "poly" effect.

[Jim Norfolk]

Actually its not the poly but the insulation. I used to put expanded polystyrene sheets over the crown boards but the bees usually made a mess of them. I prefer foil faced PIR as the bees don't chew it.

[Patrick]

Moved a colony in back of other car before work that was supposed to be a temporary lodger in a friends garden and managed to stay there several months last longer.

Bit Captain Chaos with just grass stuffed in entrance last night and no hive strap just stapled. Hardly textbook but at least remembered to grab beesuit before left.

nothing wrong with a cavalier approach now and then Patrick, I take it no stings then

No all went fine thanks Chris, but not an approach I would be suggesting to anyone else to emulate!

Having said that, the use of a standard staple gun way to whack together floors and hive bodies etc quickly has never let me down yet.