Space board

In the last really exciting installment of The Hivemind and Me I wrote a bit about follower boards which provide a litttle insulation to help the bees make the most of their space in the brood box. As it gets colder the bees are going to need a little more insulation than that. Hot air rises so I think a little insulation on the top is called for. There's various options to choose from all with different rationales. For example the Warre Hive uses a cloth placed on top of the fames with a 'quilt' of wood shavings on top, whilst other people like to wrap up their hives in black insulation giving them a Pulp Fiction Gimplike look. Obviously what you opt to do depends by and large on where you are, for example a bee keeper in Kenya probably doesn't loose much sleep over winter snows, high winds and sudden drops in temperature whereas in Siberia it's possibly a little more relevant.

However I'm in neither Kenya nor Siberia but the North East of England, I can't ignore insulation but at the same time don't need to go overboard. What we normally use in our homes is a thick layer of fibreglass wool, more recently there's been various kinds of fibreglass and polystyrene insulation boards coming out too. It's a good idea to avoid added a surface which water can condense on when you're insulating a hive. I opted to use Knauf Space Board Loft Board Insulation which is a 52.5mm thick extruded polysyrene board giving insualtion equivalent to a 27cm thickness of glass wool. Part of my reason for using this is that it's good insulation but also with it being so robust I can just stick a square of the stuff on a crownboard and drop the roof back on top of it.

Knauf  Space Board.
Traditionally used by beekeepers since the dark ages.

Honest. Really.

I popped to B&Q and bought one board which was large enough to cover both hives with insulation to spare. I just cut out two squares using a long craft knife and a crownboard as size guide then cut out a rectangle in the middle the size of a chinese takeaway box. I then pulled out this smaller rectangle and cut in two pieces across the thickness so I have a removeable portion to allow winter feeding with sugar fondant which I can then place some insulation back on top of..

The problem with this stuff is when you cut it little crumbs rub off. I don't really fancy a garden covered in bits of orangey pink extruded polystyrene and don't think the bees particularly want a hive full of the stuff either. So out came the blow torch and with the lightest brushing of a flame all those little bits of polystyrene shrunk back into the main body.

I'm contemplating putting a thin polystyrene tile over the rectangular cut outs as some heat may escape from the cuts, there will be a ventilated 20mm gap between the top of the space board and the underside of the roof. In the case of these two hives I'll also be putting green roof boxes above the metal skins which will mean a little more insulation above the roof.