Concrete beehive

[colinc]

Bees do indeed thrive in wooden hives!!!!!

I am aware of that. It is shelter that they need, my point was that poly is better for insulation but most definitely lighter. I hope my back thanks me. But an experiment in concrete for one colony in one hive only proves survival. Bees will adapt to living where they must if they are able.

 

[JamezF]

Can I use concrete supers with my poly brood boxes?

James

 

[colinc]

Can I use concrete supers with my poly brood boxes?

James

There may be a niche market for bee pizzas.

 

[user 6228]

To return to the initial topic, those concrete walls looked to be about 4cm thick, with the perlite in the concrete mix their insulation properties may be similar to a wooden national hive. It would be interesting to know the R-value of a perlite-laden concrete.

conductivity of cedar about 0.1 concrete is 3.0, modified concretes can be as low a 1.0 so I've read. I remeber on Granddesigns some one mixed in crumbled expanded polystyrene.

I spent a part of my career at the Lytag plant in Tilbury. The product was a lightweight aggregate sintered from power station fly ash and the pellets contained a lot of distributed air space. Apart from its weight advantage over natural aggregate it had an insulating value (not very much if I can recall correctly but I don't know the R value of Lytag concrete). Doncaster Racecourse stand and the British Sugar silos at Newark were built using Lytag because the canopy weight was critical and the sugar silo foundations weren't so heavily loaded. Maybe a Lytag beehive would be easier to move than traditional concrete?

aircrete blocks and the like are 10 to 30 times better at almost dry cedar i.e. 0.11 levels , but it has to be kept dry to get that. So a bit of pva both sides or just out side and propolis on the inside. 2mm correx cladding would also work. The issue is making the joints air tight and not thermal bridges so ordinary cement is out. Mastic beading on a roll is a candidate.


P.S. I have a artificial tree hive on thermalite blocks and they have propolised the block just under the entrance.

 

[bobba]

The old lady in "Honeyland" kept a hive in a hole in an old stone wall. So I dont see why concrete would not work.

BTW, if you have not seen Honeyland, its a must watch docco.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/documentary-carries-macedonian-beekeeper-out-of-poverty/1711669

 

[Ian123]

The old lady in "Honeyland" kept a hive in a hole in an old stone wall. So I dont see why concrete would not work.

BTW, if you have not seen Honeyland, its a must watch docco.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/documentary-carries-macedonian-beekeeper-out-of-poverty/1711669

Honey bees the world over make frequent use of holes in the ground.

 

[Antipodes]

Over the many years of evolution of honey bees, they don't seem to have evolved to be bothered to chew off bits of leaves and bark etc. to fly them back to the hive and propolise or wax them onto the walls of the cavity that they live in to thicken them and insulate the cavity further.
What they seem to do with any softer or rotten wood in a timber hive, is to chew it away and then remove it from the hive completely. They'll also promptly chew any soft polystyrene too. They seem to detest it even though it is insulative. In one old hive I worked, they had thinned the rotten wood down so much, one could nearly shave using the remaining incredibly thin crust, and in some spots, had chewed parts of the walls away completely. This photo shows this. Actually, they've propolised heaps on it but haven't added insulation.

 

[user 6228]

Over the many years of evolution of honey bees, they don't seem to have evolved to be bothered to chew off bits of leaves and bark etc. to fly them back to the hive and propolise or wax them onto the walls of the cavity that they live in to thicken them and insulate the cavity further.
What they seem to do with any softer or rotten wood in a timber hive, is to chew it away and then remove it from the hive completely. They'll also promptly chew any soft polystyrene too. They seem to detest it even though it is insulative. In one old hive I worked, they had thinned the rotten wood down so much, one could nearly shave using the remaining incredibly thin crust, and in some spots, had chewed parts of the walls away completely. This photo shows this. Actually, they've propolised heaps on it but haven't added insulation.

Unfortunately not that simple. They do leave, at least in the nests seen by myself and and one arborist, a layer of foam like material. of delignified wood. As regards the foam polystyrene, there a picture of honey bee making comb in thhe middle of a polystyrene sheet, in hole they have chewed. The facing sheet of recticel they will not chew but newpaper and cardboard yes. The criteria of chew not chew have not been investigated. Is it the hardness or tensile strength that limits the chewing? Is it the type of fungus in the wood? The behaviour has only the barest mention in the literature, in contrast to the energy the bees can devote to it, which is considerable. I suppose because you dont see it much in wooden hives it isnt worth investigating, which i think is a shame. One could hypothese that they need to attach the comb to material that is strong enough to support the comb, but how do they do that?

 

[bingevader]

I'm afraid concrete would fair worse than polystyrene in terms of sustainability for me!

 

[user 6228]

I'm afraid concrete would fair worse than polystyrene in terms of sustainability for me!

Becareful of generalisations when it comes to things like lifetime CO2 footprint. They can bite! You have to do the numbers, accounting for all of the sources for the given amount of "output" . In the case of bee keeping that could bee per: kg of honey, colony years, hectares of pollination. The sources of CO2 include the material, making, transport, the bees metabolism. If you do that you can come up with surprises for poly and thermalite hives.

 

[Poly Hive]

There was a concrete hive at Craibstone which was "invented" in the 1950's when the material was fashionable and people were experimenting, dams and houses and so on.

Total and complete failure as a bee house. Nosema was rampant and despite considerable expertise being applied colonies just died.

PH

 

[user 6228]

There was a concrete hive at Craibstone which was "invented" in the 1950's when the material was fashionable and people were experimenting, dams and houses and so on.

Total and complete failure as a bee house. Nosema was rampant and despite considerable expertise being applied colonies just died.

PH

Exactly How bad it was would be down to details in the concrete, the design. e.g was there a crown board?was it sealed? how big was the gap to the "roof"? was the concrete water proofed? and the location. But starting off with a conductivity of 6 times greater than wood, when wood can be close to the edge of survivability is not a good place to be.

 

[user 20297]

Exactly How bad it was would be down to details in the concrete, the design. e.g was there a crown board?was it sealed? how big was the gap to the "roof"? was the concrete water proofed? and the location. But starting off with a conductivity of 6 times greater than wood, when wood can be close to the edge of survivability is not a good place to be.

Derek, last week someone, who shall not be named , postulated that regardless of construction material, with a beehive having a permanently open door the ambient air temperature inside will quickly equalise with the external. How do we repond to that criticism? I am a dedicated fanatic of insulation for bees but the best I can come up with is that any heat develeoped by the bees is lost more slowly in a better insulated hive. But I know that it is the cluster that is being heated and not the hive.

 

[user 6228]

Derek, last week someone, who shall not be named , postulated that regardless of construction material, with a beehive having a permanently open door the ambient air temperature inside will quickly equalise with the external. How do we repond to that criticism? I am a dedicated fanatic of insulation for bees but the best I can come up with is that any heat develeoped by the bees is lost more slowly in a better insulated hive. But I know that it is the cluster that is being heated and not the hive.

hot air balloons have a permanent open door but they trap hot air because hot air is buoyant and it gets trapped by the balloon canopy, because the opening is at the bottom. The hottest air is the top and the coolest at the bottom. Unfortunately hot air balloons are not insulated so they have to keep topping up the hot air. A hive with an entrance low down is just like this. The bees heat the air, it rises and get trapped by its own buoyancy provided there is no top vent. Working against this are heat losses through the walls of the hive. In an insulated hive the cavity can fill with warm air and start to spill out the entrance. In a high heat loss hive the air can cool too fast and prevent it filling.
Its been argued that the air movement in the vicinity of the entrance change all the air any way. That only works if the resistance of the opening is low and the cavity is small comparatively. The resistance of the opening is related to it width and length. Length here means how tube or tunnel like it is.

 

[Erichalfbee]

hot air balloons have a permanent open door but they trap hot air because hot air is buoyant and it gets trapped by the balloon canopy, because the opening is at the bottom. The hottest air is the top and the coolest at the bottom. Unfortunately hot air balloons are not insulated so they have to keep topping up the hot air. A hive with an entrance low down is just like this. The bees heat the air, it rises and get trapped by its own buoyancy provided there is no top vent. Working against this are heat losses through the walls of the hive. In an insulated hive the cavity can fill with warm air and start to spill out the entrance. In a high heat loss hive the air can cool too fast and prevent it filling.
Its been argued that the air movement in the vicinity of the entrance change all the air any way. That only works if the resistance of the opening is low and the cavity is small comparatively. The resistance of the opening is related to it width and length. Length here means how tube or tunnel like it is.

How does a bee space slit underfloor entrance behave especially with a solid floor?

 

[user 6228]

the increased vertical distance between the heatsource and the opening can enable an increase in temperature if the cavity is insulated, i.e. it can hold more buoyancy pressure.

 

[Ian123]

[QUOTE="derekm, post: 858164,
when wood can be close to the edge of survivability is not a good place to be.
[/QUOTE]
So what’s the edge of survival….Are you suggesting bees in wooden hives are on the edge of surviving?

 

[user 6228]

[QUOTE="derekm, post: 858164,
when wood can be close to the edge of survivability is not a good place to be.

So what’s the edge of survival….Are you suggesting bees in wooden hives are on the edge of surviving?
[/QUOTE]

 

[Ian123]

so again what is the edge……. Are you suggesting bees in wooden hives are on the edge of survival?

 

[pargyle]

so again what is the edge……. Are you suggesting bees in wooden hives are on the edge of survival?

Give him a chance .... he probably hit the post reply button by accident - he's hardly had time for breakfast yet. Less of the agressive questioning please.