Why My Hives Look Like an Oil Tank

Another post about hive insulation? 'fraid so.

Having already added a layer of space board insulation beow the hive roof in December I turned my attention to the sides of the hives. My hives are single walled as are most of the hives in the UK, single walled means there's one wall between the inside of the hive and the outside world.  The now less common but more aesthetically pleasing William Broughton Carr (WBC) hives have an extra walls around the boxes the bees live in. There's a couple of reasons why he designed his hives this way but having a stack of boxes within another stack of boxes looks like quite a faff to me. However modern houses in the UK have cavity walls for extra insulation so I decided to imitate that for my bees to give them a little extra insulation especially in the light of the previous winter's months of ice and snow.

The placement of the hives means that their front wall wich faces a wall and a corner is probably quite sheltered from winds but the back of the hive and the sides get the full effect. To reduce the effect of this I built a box to go around 3 sides of the hives and boxed up the gap between the hives at the front and on top. The edges where it meets the hives have draft excluder brushes on them to reduce the escape of warm air whilst the bottom is open and it goes down a little below the hive floor. My thinking is that it should provide some insulation from the elements on the more exposed sides of the hive whilst still letting the wooden hives breathe. I'm sure it doesn't make a massive difference but I'm expecting every little helps.The edges of the outer layer reaching below the hive floors should provide some protection for the open mesh floors from the winds too.

 

You too could have hives that look like an oil tank.

I painted the outside black to help it absorb heat -although it does look pretty ugly, and the inside a gloss white to (hopefully) stop it taking any heat from the hives. There is a downside to this as the extra layer of wood also slows the warming effect of the sun on the hives so on warmer days the bees will become active a little later, this is something known to happen with WBC hives, but my hope is that this will be outweighed by the benefit of less heat being lost when it's colder.

I left the green roofs in place but to be effective insulators there needs to be air in the gaps between the particles of the substrate (soil or perlite or whatever). In the summer that's not a problem and the sections insulate the roof against the sun but in the winter when they get waterlogged they stop insulating, not a problem with the spaceboard underneath already but next year I'll have to give some thought to drainage -which will be better for the plants too.

In February I popped down to the Pearson Park Wildlife Garden to see how their bees were doing and noticed they've used straw for upper insulation on their WBC hive. Those bees should be toasty warm because as mentoned above  as the WBC hive has double walls so there's an air gap between outer walls you can see in the and the walls around the bee cluster.

WBC Hive with straw insulation

The previous winter was a particularly long one and the wildlife garden actually lost their bees so I'd expect them not to be taking any chances this year. Although it looks like there's no extra insulation on their top bar hive at all.

Top Bar Hive in the snow

I'll be interested to see how these bees have coped, although having been a mild and short winter I'd expect them to be okay. General consensus is that as long as bees are dry enough and have enough food they should be able to cope with the cold. In case anyone's wondering that rock sitting on top of the hive roof is there to stop the flat roof being lifted by the wind, it's common practice with flat roofed hives.

The Scout, the Forager and the 3H Pencil

Whilst we're having some nice warm days night time temperatures are still dropping to as low as 3 or 4 degrees Celcius so it's still too cold to be opening the hives up. I took the opportunity to take a couple of pictures as over the winter there hasn't been a huge amount to photograph what with the bees all being tucked away in the dark.

Scout Bee investigating the patio

First up was a scout bee investigating the patio. There wasn't much on it to interest her except possibly me doing a spot of carpentry. I suspect she went back to the hive to report that I need to get the power washer out. I quite liked the picture so I whipped out my sketch pad and trusty 3H automatic pencil to draw it. Why do I use a 3H? Because they don't break easy and I probably got it to mark wood rather than paper, it definitely doesn't make shading easy -it's a bit like trying to draw with a nail TBH. Anyway I was quite pleased with my scribble so I decided to scan it and replace the bee in the blog title with it.

It was meant to be a cat.

The other is a forager with full pollen baskets. The pollen is the orangey yellow stuff on her back legs.The 'baskets' are actually a collection of hairs on the hind legs that the bee uses to carry pollen. The bee packs the pollen onto them then carries it back to the hive for storage.

Got protein.

In other news I've put new foundation onto shallow frames for this years honey crop, having crushed up last years comb to get the honey out. Did that after sundown because the smell of foundation tends to draw bees to investigate and when you're holding tiny nails to hit with a hammer you don't really want a bee in your lughole.

Spring Forward

Spring is here! We've had a few days warm weather over here. The frogs have started hopping towards the ponds for their annual swinger pool party and the bees are flying again! This is quite a relief as it means my bees are still alive and, possibly more importantly, it gives me something to write about.

There's been a few dead bees appearing on the landing boards where the winter survivors have hauled out the dead and I've seen a few undertaker bees flying off carrying dead bees away for disposal away from the hive. They look quite dramatic flying towards you with a cargo the same size as themselves, you'll just have to trust me on that though because I couldn't photograph any with my phone's camera not being up to the job and the chance of one flying by as I'm waiting would be pretty slim too.

They're also going for cleansing flights. A 'cleansing flight' really means going for a fly and having a dump away from the hive. Bee crap is yellow and has, believe it or not, been mistaken for chemical and biological weapons and fallout from power stations. Haven't seen much of it myself tho so it's probably falling on the garden and winding up in the soil -that or it's falling on someone elses property. :-/ Apart from causing the odd political furore and leaving yellow dots on cars it's not a problem. If there's a lot of it on the hive landing boards it could be an indicator that the bees are ill but no suggestion of that at the moment.

As well as slinging the dead and crapping who knows where the bees have also started foraging. A while ago I planted a small prune tree in the garden, it's a strange little tree having shown no inclination to actually grow since it was planted but it does seem to be permanently flowering. It's just a few metres from the hives and I thought the bees would be hitting it's pink blossoms for nectar and pollen, but evidently I don't think like a bee because they're ignoring it completely and bringing back an orangey yellow pollen instead. I don't know wher they get it or what plant its from, maybe early daffodils -your guess is as good as mine, but the important thing is they are actually bringing in pollen which is their protein source. I assume they're bringing nectar back too but both hives also still have some fondant above the crownboards. There's stil some freezing nights at the moment so I'll leave it in place for now and remove it when those are behind us.

Here's a short phone video of the entrance to Hive2. It shows the bees coming and going through the holes in the mouse guard. Right at the beginning you can see a bee with full pollen baskets run straight into the hive.