Double-check my reasoning

[fian]

I guess most of us know that with a lump hammer and a sufficiently .....
Does that seem sane, or have I missed something obvious?

James

What if you build an insulating box? And a movable divider for a dummy board?
1. For the insulating box, remove the Hoffman standoffs from the box. Fill the interior with a sheet of insulation the same thickness as the frame. 420-2*25=370
2. If the frames have a Hoffman profile, then disassemble the frame. Replace the Hoffman sides with 1" straight sides. Now fill the interior with the sheet of insulation.
And what to do with Hoffman dividers or laterals? A movable divider for dummy boards.

 

[Darryl]

I make ekes from 100mm pallet wood. Which allows for 25mm pack of fondant and 75mm kingspan on to of CB. Gaps in Kingspan covered with 75mm aluminium tape from Screwfix. A strap made from any old strip helps with lifting the insulation out for checking/topping up the feed.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

although you do still have the occasional cuckoo who leaves gaping holes in the crownboard

If only it was only an occasional one

 

[JamezF]

If only it was only an occasional one

What was it the rest of the time?

James

 

[Poly Hive]

To say that places in the world manage fine in colder weather than us is misleading. We ask our bees to overwinter in a damp wet Marine climate not a lovely cold dry one. Huge difference.

PH

 

[Gilberdyke John]

What was it the rest of the time?

James

Holes in crownboards are depressingly common something tells me they don't follow their own principles at home by leaving the loft trapdoor open.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

was watching countryfile earlier - a young beekeeper nominated for the food and farming award with his ancient 'mentor'
Gaping holes in the crownboards

 

[Vanterrier]

And porter escapes... maybe that's why he didn't win ?

Ambitious though eh?

K

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Ambitious though eh?

I think he needs to speak to a proper beekeeper. Expanding from his dozen hives (and with what looked like a mish mash of hive types) to two hundred in 'a few years' with very little experience at the moment sounds like a massive leap to me.

 

[Sutty]

Would thick dummy boards made of highly insulating material achieve the same thing?

 

[Erichalfbee]

Master beekeeper in the making?
Hopefully as he gains experience he will achieve what he wants.
I can think of one beekeeper here in particular who, despite little knowledge to start with, seems to be making something of his business. He’s come a long way and should celebrate what he has achieved. I just wish he’d stop gilding the lily.
So there’s hope for this young man. I wish him luck.
( PS. If anybody knows him get him to join us. The old lags will put him right )

 

[Gilberdyke John]

was watching countryfile earlier - a young beekeeper nominated for the food and farming award with his ancient 'mentor'
Gaping holes in the crownboards

I refuse to watch anything connected to that transmission of nonsense

 

[plain_hunt]

Holes in crownboards are depressingly common something tells me they don't follow their own principles at home by leaving the loft trapdoor open.

That's the best reason I've heard for covering up the crownboard holes.

 

[B_north]

There’s bees in many parts of the world in wooden hives that see far colder temperatures than you or I will find in the UK.

Yes they do and most of them insulate from above and us in colder climes insulate on the outside as well.

I will note, I had a swarm set up in an uninsulated unheated shed wall in late summer. I was new and all the experts said to leave them alone. I propped up a piece of 2" styrofoam on the outside wall but the inside wall and top had none. This swarm lived thru multiple days of -30C to -40C and made it to March when a warm up saw them out cleansing. It was still a very large cluster. They went back in for the rest of the spring and died in April. IMO they died from either varroa or starvation not the cold.

That said, they can survive the cold but we put them in thin boxes with not much insulation value so insulating and not stressing them with too much cold or moisture is advisable.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I refuse to watch anything connected to that transmission of nonsense

Unfortunately SWMBO has sole control of the remote and I was just walking past when I saw the bees, so out of curiosity I watched - I didn't even know that it was countryfile until afterwards.

 

[Bluester]

I have in the past got an empty built brood frame, filled the space where the foundation would be with polystyrene and then wrapped gaffer taped horizontally across the now filled space so that all the polystyrene is covered. I cant vouch for its effectiveness accurately in terms of insulation as there are too many variables but being able to just treat them like normal frames in terms lifting them in and out makes them very easy to handle. I tended to only use them on colonies that didn’t have the numbers for a bit of extra insulation and to fill some space, they could be easily removed in the spring when inspections began and replaced with foundation filled frames. I have used polyhives for the past two seasons and have not found I needed them but on occasion use them throughout the season as dummy boards.

 

[user 6228]

try a sheet of polythene backed with ally foil lying on the tops of the frames...

 

[user 6228]

I guess most of us know that with a lump hammer and a sufficiently bloody-minded attitude it's possible to wedge twelve Hoffman frames into a National brood box. By that calculation the internal dimension of a brood box parallel to the rails must be close to 12 x 35mm, or 420mm (35mm being the width of a Hoffman side bar in the UK).

I'm thinking that I could put 25mm of permanent insulation at both ends of the brood chamber, leaving 370mm for frames, then put in ten frames and a dummy board which, given that the frames will rarely sit absolutely tight up to each other, would leave a bee space (ish) outside the dummy that the bees won't build comb in. So I'd get insulation in both ends of the brood box plus the convenience of a dummy board for the effective loss of one frame (which is fine given that frames come in multiples of ten anyhow). I could make the insulation removable, but there'd still not be space for an eleventh frame so there seems little point.

Does that seem sane, or have I missed something obvious?

James

Substantial heat loss is from the walls at right angle to the frames. This because of the circulating airflow in the comb-comb gaps. You can see it in lots of IR photographs of hives. So fill the hand holds!

 

[ldwgs]

was watching countryfile earlier - a young beekeeper nominated for the food and farming award with his ancient 'mentor'
Gaping holes in the crownboards

I heard him call the crown board a queen excluder!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I'd lost interest by that point