opinions..

[garlicpickle]

Last year I used a pillowcase stuffed with straw wrapped in one of those space blankets, inside an empty super. I left the mesh floor open but covered the hole in the crownboard with a tile. The pillowcase didn't get damp and the hive was lovely and warm when I opened it up to put on the oxalic.
This year I have kingspan cut in readiness.

 

[pargyle]

Last year I used a pillowcase stuffed with straw wrapped in one of those space blankets, inside an empty super. I left the mesh floor open but covered the hole in the crownboard with a tile. The pillowcase didn't get damp and the hive was lovely and warm when I opened it up to put on the oxalic.
This year I have kingspan cut in readiness.

Your pillowcase worked because it had the opportunity to breath with the straw inside it and the space blanket is a great inulator and moisture barrier.... but towels placed on top of one another wouldn't work. Kingspan will be much better though, I think.

 

[For want of a better word]

Last year I used a pillowcase stuffed with straw wrapped in one of those space blankets, inside an empty super. I left the mesh floor open but covered the hole in the crownboard with a tile. The pillowcase didn't get damp and the hive was lovely and warm when I opened it up to put on the oxalic.
This year I have kingspan cut in readiness.

​

For me that is a good enough reason NOT TO OPEN UP THE HIVE WHEN IT IS COLD!

​

and as for dribbling sugary oxallic acid over the poor bees in mid winter...... well that should go in the same box as matchsticks.... are you doing this because your bees are infested with varroa because you did not treat with Thymol during the Autumn??? or because doctine dictates it....
Over to Oliver!

How did that song go?... I'm a Troll and I live in a Hole!!!

winter MUST be coming!!!

 

[pargyle]

​

For me that is a good enough reason NOT TO OPEN UP THE HIVE WHEN IT IS COLD!

​

and as for dribbling sugary oxallic acid over the poor bees in mid winter...... well that should go in the same box as matchsticks.... are you doing this because your bees are infested with varroa because you did not treat with Thymol during the Autumn??? or because doctine dictates it....
Over to Oliver!

How did that song go?... I'm a Troll and I live in a Hole!!!

winter MUST be coming!!!

This was a bit viscious Icanhopit ... GP has a mentor and follows his practices as many beekeepers do. She insulated and got her hive through winter and got some honey this year so it worked for her.

I would agree with you about Oxalic and opening the hive and you know my thoughts on treatment only if necessary, which mirror yours ... but a slightly less robust bedside manner on this occasion may be called for ! I don't think she warranted quite this spikey a response ... I know her.

 

[Luminos]

Your pillowcase worked because it had the opportunity to breath .

Pargyle, pillowcases don't breath. They don't. Really.

 

[DanBee]

Is this from "The Complete Guide to Beekeeping" by Jeremy Evans?

It's not a good book, IMHO one of the 'bandwagon' publications in recent years. He wrote it as a relative newbie - IIRC at the 3 year point that is often associated with an over-abundance of confidence. It's not all rubbish, but there's enough that's wrong, poorly relayed, or lost in translation between his mentor and the page that I would not recommend it.

You would be much better off referring to the 'Haynes Bee Manual', by Waring & Waring, as a guide.

 

[pargyle]

Pargyle, pillowcases don't breath. They don't. Really.

!!!

 

[DanBee]

Well ... I wouldn't top ventilate a hive under any circumstances but I would not be surprised if there aren't a few beeks lurking in the shadows muttering ....

Some people take an awful lot to change ... "What was good for my mentor 40 years ago ... is good enough for me" ....

Probably still call the radio a Wireless as well ...

So speaks the voice of experience...?

What of those re-discovering Bielby's Catenary Hive from 40 years ago - are they misguided too?

 

[garlicpickle]

This was a bit viscious Icanhopit ... GP has a mentor and follows his practices as many beekeepers do. She insulated and got her hive through winter and got some honey this year so it worked for her.

I would agree with you about Oxalic and opening the hive and you know my thoughts on treatment only if necessary, which mirror yours ... but a slightly less robust bedside manner on this occasion may be called for ! I don't think she warranted quite this spikey a response ... I know her.

I only come on this forum when I'm feeling thick skinned Philip don't worry

You can't trust these mentors anyway. He doesn't treat for varroa, he doesn't insulate his hives and he uses matchsticks and drinks his own pee after imbibing fly agaric.

I treated with thymol in autumn and admittedly I wasn't sure whether to use oxalic in midwinter because as icanhopit has so rightly pointed out, I wasn't sure it was a good idea opening up a warm hive in cold weather. Maybe it wasn't necessary but as it was my only hive at the time, I wanted to give them maximum chance of overwintering and building up well in spring. So maybe I was guilty of blindly following doctrine. But in my defence I was so desperate to build my colony up enough to split them and become a 2-hive owner that I would have done anything, anything to make it happen.

 

[garlicpickle]

Pargyle, pillowcases don't breath. They don't. Really.

I didn't see it breathing but I think I saw it twitch a little. A swift blow with a shovel sorted it out.

 

[davnig]

I treated with thymol in autumn and admittedly I wasn't sure whether to use oxalic in midwinter because as icanhopit has so rightly pointed out, I wasn't sure it was a good idea opening up a warm hive in cold weather. Maybe it wasn't necessary but as it was my only hive at the time, I wanted to give them maximum chance of overwintering and building up well in spring. So maybe I was guilty of blindly following doctrine. But in my defence I was so desperate to build my colony up enough to split them and become a 2-hive owner that I would have done anything, anything to make it happen.

It takes less than 5 min to open, trickle and close up again, the brood isn't exposed. I doubt it does great harm - if it did I can't see it being as widespread a practice. I would say apiguard over 4 weeks seems much more detrimental

 

[Luminos]

I didn't see it breathing but I think I saw it twitch a little. A swift blow with a shovel sorted it out.

 

[pargyle]

So speaks the voice of experience...?

What of those re-discovering Bielby's Catenary Hive from 40 years ago - are they misguided too?

A fellow Yorkshireman, who at his peak, was a champion of innovative beekeeping ... insulation was one of the bees in his bonnet, long before DerekM came along. A sad loss to beekeeping and I am sad that I never got the opportunity to hear him speak.

Oddly enough I have a copy of his book, but I bought it in a second hand bookshop in Sheffield and it's still up there and I haven't yet read it. Your post has reminded me to get my daughter to bring it down for me when she visits next week.

I looked at the catenary hive when I was 'reinventing' my hive but I figured that if the bees had the opportunity to build in a catenary within standard 14 x 12 frames then they would build in a catenary ... as it happens, they started off with catenary shapes within my foundationless frames and then filled them out.

I discounted the catenary hive for a variety of reasons ... not least of which the difficulty of putting in an open mesh floor and inspection tray into a curved structure and as I was intending using frames - how I was going to construct curved frames !! Talk about non-standard ! I wouldn't suggest that people do not try, if they feel there is a benefit, ideas that have been tried in the past ...

I never suggested that everything from the past was bad ... I was merely suggesting that to blindly follow ... without thinking... or questioning .... is not always the best way.

You can knock my experience as much as you wish ... but I do think about what I am doing, I take what I consider to be the best from whatever information I can find and plough my own furrow. I'm not an evangelist looking for followers to my way of beekeeping and I accept that I am still learning ... unlike a number on here, with vast experience, who constantly pound 'the only way is my way' path.

 

[RosieMc]

RosieMc,
The problem with using old towels, or any kind of absorbent material is that they will soak up the damp. If you think about it, you use towels to dry yourself because they are absorbent. All that will happen is that your towels will draw in damp from the atmosphere and hold it.When it gets very cold you could in fact have a situation where the towels are even frozen. I would say use something like Kingspan or Rockwool even old carpet or underlay will not be so absorbent as toweling imho.
Andy

Never thought about the towels drawing in moisture from the outside, just inside. I'll try the Kingspan or Rockwool, or search out some old carpet

 

[Margaret Elisabeth]

And I use roof insulation on top of sealed crown boards. I so spoil them..

Call that spoiling them Ha, I hand made a four inch cushion out of curtain material with sheredded cardboard to absorb any condensation plus a duvet filling for more insulation. But then it was all the stuff I had available.
Very cold garden almost a foot of snow on top kept the frost out and I did not clear the snow away from the front door, lets in drafts. The Corex went in too.

Unfortunately 67 losses were reported at my local BKA four hive lost at the Botanical Gardens in Sheffield. Mine came through sheltered from the worst of the wind behind some shrubs.

 

[itma]

You can't trust these mentors anyway. He doesn't treat for varroa, he doesn't insulate his hives and he uses matchsticks and drinks his own pee after imbibing fly agaric.

Don't follow such a mentor too closely!



The Lapps go in for imbibing reindeer pee after feeding them dried fly agaric. It gets the reindeer so stoned that they can be easily rounded up. And then the herdsmen drink their animals' pee and get stoned themselves, to celebrate the round-up. Apparently, it exaggerates muscle movements, and being stoned there is the impression of flying.
Fly Agaric is the classic 'toadstool' - the red one with the white trimmings.


So. Reindeer. Flying. Red with white bits. Lapland.
Remind you of anything?

 

[Margaret Elisabeth]

HeHeHe.

 

[MuswellMetro]

Just having a little read of a Jeremy Evans book and it insists on matchsticks over winter for ventilation does anyone do this?

?

Jeremy's Book was publish 25 years ago ,prior to most beekeepers knowing anything about OMFs or Varroa, and although there are additions in the new editions, some of his views are rather dated

in the 60's ventilation debate was the reverse with older beekeepers not ventilating with match sticks and using Quilts and Cushions as had most Beekepers since the late 1800s rather than the young beekeepers who followed the matchstick methods of Wedmores 1947 new book on Ventialtion (calculations now discredited)

but on the 1990 the dynamics of open mesh floors and ventalition was revisited by B Mobus at the north of Scotlnd Agricultural college and the conclusion was insulated hives fair better , hence why polyhives have been so sucessful

 

[itma]

"Absorbing condensation"

Not a good route to go - you could have rather a lot to absorb!

Better is to reduce condensation.
You get condensation when warm moist air contacts something cold. The cold thing causes and is the location of the condensation.
To avoid condensation on the underside of the crownboard, insulate it, so it can become warm enough to not provoke condensation on it.
To avoid condensation above the crownboard, prevent warm moist hive air getting past the crownboard. Seal it up so it is airtight.



Insulation
Scraps of old carpet, towels or shredded cardboard don't provide enough insulation for your attic. Celotex and similar insulation boards are massively better insulators - twice as good as the Rockwool or glassfibre that many have in their attics.
If you are going to insulate - do it decently!

 

[Luminos]

The Lapps go in for imbibing reindeer pee

...do they Lapp it up?