Cheap insulated hive ?

[BeeJayBee]

edit,
After watching the threads here about the bees in africa where they didn't have a saw or power tools this type hive would be great.
make some mud blocks and dry them in the sun add a few plastic/bamboo frames a bit of tin sheet and bingo you have a long hive with a comb honey harvest.
Easily made with what they have at hand.

Until it rains - and boy, does it rain!

No different from cob cottages, surely? As long as they're whitewashed, or similar, and have a decent roof, the weather stays out.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

No different from cob cottages, surely?

big difference I would say between a hive made of mud 'bricks' and a properly built clom cottage - especially with the rain they gt out there. Probably a lot les faff building timber ones

 

[pargyle]

No different from cob cottages, surely? As long as they're whitewashed, or similar, and have a decent roof, the weather stays out.

The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting - By Ethel Eva Crane Pub 1999 - \p268

"In Madagascar hives made of mud bricks were found in the Central Highlands where there is a shortage of timber although this may be a recent innovation"

On the money it seems BJ !

 

[Nige.Coll]

I may have been being naive but I thought in some areas in Africa they live in mud huts or used to.
It was a random thought serves me right for typing after beer lol.

 

[pargyle]

I may have been being naive but I thought in some areas in Africa they live in mud huts or used to.
It was a random thought serves me right for typing after beer lol.

A lot of them still do .. I've sat in a mud hut in Africa eating goat stew with a traditional African family ... the mud is often reinforced with animal dung, twigs and anything else they can lay their hands on. The roofs tend to overhang the walls quite considerably so the upper portions don't weather too much ... the bottom sections next to the ground suffer when it rains and these parts are sometimes protected with either a facing of stones or what we would describe as wattle. Of course, what happens is the mud washes away in time and then they set to and slap some more on .. usually the women have to do this as it's not considered a man's job !

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Still a lof of 'mud' huts where I was in Lesotho even though the Irish influence from king Moshoeshoe's time (1850's) meant there were a lot of stone built huts both round and resembling Irish cottages. As Pargyle said They were more wattle and daub than mud bricks with large overhangs and most had the first few feet lined with stone on the outside
I think that in some places long hives are made by this method (wattle and daub) - woven withies then mud but then again there are myriads of designs - a lot of hybrids incorporating traditional methods with newly introduced ones.
I'd have just thought (especially in lesotho, Uganda and its neighbours) just using simple dried mud blocks tp build a hive would be both cumbersome and hard to maintain

 

[Erichalfbee]

I found a picture of me putting the finishing touches to one

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I'm guessing that would be Lesotho seeing the ladies with blankets wrapped around their lower halves

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Here's a few pics - of a 'square ' stone house and a traditional rondavel with mud walls and a stone 'splash guard' at the base. You'll notice the metal cap on the straw roof designed to stop rain leaking in the ridge - you could also buy conical ones for the rondavels, unfortunately they have a lot of lightning strikes out there in the most impressive of thunder storms, they now believe that an old car tyre put on the peak of the rondavel roof prevents lightning strikes.