Poly usage

[victor meldrew]

We got cross jockled as they say in these parts . No pots brokken.
the thread has run its course .
time for admin to close it methinks ?
no hard feelings , we’re both bigger than that .

 

[pargyle]

No I think it's a self healing thread .... it's not dead yet !

 

[W0otz]

Maybe what's needed is mycelium hives? They grow it in moulds to replace poly packaging, I don't see why it couldn't be grown in a hive-shaped mould instead.
https://www.biohm.co.uk/myceliumhttps://www.magicalmushroom.com/packaging
Even better insulation than poly and biodegradable. Fire resistant so looks like it can be scorched for sterilising. Sounds ideal as long as it can be weatherproofed and doesn't biodegrade too fast.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

and when you've finished with it, you can slice it up and add it to an omelette

 

[Newbeeneil]

Maybe what's needed is mycelium hives? They grow it in moulds to replace poly packaging, I don't see why it couldn't be grown in a hive-shaped mould instead.
https://www.biohm.co.uk/myceliumhttps://www.magicalmushroom.com/packaging
Even better insulation than poly and biodegradable. Fire resistant so looks like it can be scorched for sterilising. Sounds ideal as long as it can be weatherproofed and doesn't biodegrade too fast.

Already been done.

 

[Erichalfbee]

And I still have Dani’s surplus polyhives, from a few years ago. Still a sort of camouflage brown but still good.

Crikey. That’s some time ago. Chocolate brown they were originally.

 

[W0otz]

Already been done.

Nice, hopefully just a waiting game before we see a commercial product. I look forward to purchasing a couple of myconucs!

 

[Newbeeneil]

Nice, hopefully just a waiting game before we see a commercial product. I look forward to purchasing a couple of myconucs!

I haven't spoken to Guy for a while but I think commercial manufacture might be a while off

 

[victor meldrew]

No I think it's a self healing thread .... it's not dead yet !

The following posts have me agreeing wholeheartedly.

 

[victor meldrew]

Already been done.

Sounds very interesting.

 

[user 20297]

Polystyrene is 98% air....just like this thread.

 

[Garry R]

Just a historical note. The first importer of poly was Hamish Robertson at Struan Apiaries, Conon Bridge Rossshire. Some 20 miles north of Inverness. He was expanding his bee farming and Bernard Mobus pointed him to poly and he then imported and sold them on. There was one size only Langstroth though with some modding they could be made to take 12 Smith top bar frames. I bought my first one in 1990 I think it was and I remember him taking me to a farm where he has the upper floor of a building which was stuffed with the stuff. I don't think at that point that Swienty were known in the UK, I certainly had never heard of them and neither Hamish or Bernard talked about them.

PH

My Bernard Mobus advice was the same as yours (Poly Hive) with a few of my Langstroth modified hives from 1979 still on the go down in Somerset and I still use the same "Langstroth at right angles" format They were from a company from Kiel in Germany and are extremely strong but try as I might I can get no information about the company. Longevity I put down to brown masonry paint on the boxes every couple of years. I guess that Bernard had connections being German. He was a lovely guy but fools were not suffered gladly!! He used, discovered after an inspection. what he called the Maud strain (a North East of Scotland village) queens all that time ago and I was lucky to have a couple of these in my apiary courtesy of Bernard who worked at the local Agricultural College in Aberdeen. Not prolific, very quiet and very productive with a not swarmy disposition. Just lovely they were. I worked about 5mins away from the college and I was well mentored by him on the joys and the methods of beekeeping. His wife Joanne was a secretary at my Institute. I guess that they now have both passed away.

 

[Poly Hive]

My Bernard Mobus advice was the same as yours (Poly Hive) with a few of my Langstroth modified hives from 1979 still on the go down in Somerset and I still use the same "Langstroth at right angles" format They were from a company from Kiel in Germany and are extremely strong but try as I might I can get no information about the company. Longevity I put down to brown masonry paint on the boxes every couple of years. I guess that Bernard had connections being German. He was a lovely guy but fools were not suffered gladly!! He used, discovered after an inspection. what he called the Maud strain (a North East of Scotland village) queens all that time ago and I was lucky to have a couple of these in my apiary courtesy of Bernard who worked at the local Agricultural College in Aberdeen. Not prolific, very quiet and very productive with a not swarmy disposition. Just lovely they were. I worked about 5mins away from the college and I was well mentored by him on the joys and the methods of beekeeping. His wife Joanne was a secretary at my Institute. I guess that they now have both passed away.

I was given to believe that the German company folded. Yes the Mauds were pretty good and I ran them for some years with up to 60% supercedure on the heather. He certainly didn't suffer fools but seemed to suffer me...LOL He set me up to take on Craibstone after he was forced to retire.


PH

 

[Jules59]

For me, one of the many pleasures of beekeeping is making hives out of wood, mostly from reclaimed timber. I enjoy seeing the bees living in something that I have made for them. I do have a poly nuc and with the optional extras but although its very good at what it does I cannot get to like it.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

I think there will be a rather predictable negative and probably island mentality "a knee jerk reaction" particularly from those with “snowflake inclinations” and from the “open toed sandal and tree hugging” brigades when they realise that for the last 40 and more years beehives don't have to be white, square or rectangular and that they have been made out of just about every material on the planet. Maybe by then we will have learnt how to recycle petrochemical products properly – you know, stuff like plastics, soaps and detergents, solvents, drugs, fertilizers, pesticides, explosives, synthetic fibres and rubbers, paints, epoxy resins, and flooring and insulating materials.

I understand wind turbine blades are currently completely unrecyclable and end up in landfill. Seems at odds with their claimed raison de etre

 

[Hedgerow Honey]

Broken hive was a Swienty, one of the more elderly in the fleet. Inside is heavily propolised and I glue & screw all the joints, which may have made the box a bit too ridged. I've strapped it both ways and it is back on its pallet now, to be sorted in the spring. Unusually it has a poly roof which broke the leading edge off. Mostly our Swientys have a MF crownboard and timber roof & floor which seems to make them extremely resilient to damage, even bees eating through thin edge is rare. One of our farmers managed to impale one with the combine head this year & I just replaced the one side.
Moving over to Paradise currently for nationals, mainly just because we sell them and I like the plastic runners, all our 14/12 & commercial are now cedar. The extra robustness helps as these are moved around a lot. We've 70 odd Mating hives and over a hundred nucs, (not many by some standards) but these are all poly as it does have its place, and hopefully by the time they are buggered someone will have worked out a recycling solution.

 

[mbc]

I believe they've already been recycling polystyrene in Germany, for at least a decade

 

[Repwoc]

I believe they've already been recycling polystyrene in Germany, for at least a decade

It's recycled in the UK too.

https://ecclestons.com/recycling-statement/
The problem is the low mass of expanded polystyrene which makes it uneconomical to collect, ie the value per m3 is low. It's not a technical issue which makes it unrecyclable.

 

[ericbeaumont]

The walls on swienty supers are too thin IMHO

Heard that Swienty no longer stock poly hives; story is that the Chinese factory that supplied Swienty (and another Euro poly supplier) stopped production.

No great loss: it had six (no, seven) significant design faults.

 

[oliver90owner]

Polystyrene is 98% air....just like this thread.

Fact check: Wrong wrt beehives - as usual.

Poster makes claims without checking (or being capable of checking?) before posting rubbish.

Some people need to realise that plastics are here and not going away. The waste in the oceans is down to humans, not particularly plastics. We have known about clothing fibres being a problem. We know plastic bags are a problem. We know the plastic cotton buds were polluting. We know that EPS, used in many ways finishes up in the oceans.

EPS is recyclable - but how much do we actually recycle? Not a lot. Humans waste materials because they are cheap - throw-away - but beehives are not in that category.

Some are like vegans, who seem to make a lot of noise compared to their numbers, and try to tar everyone, who disagrees with them, with the same brush.

While I agree that plastics usage should be reduced, beehives are really down near the bottom of the list. This will be of little importance if we continue to burn fossil fuels. Using them for limited production of recyclable plastics is, IMO, a small factor re pollution. It is the irresponsible use of plastics which which need to be got under control.

Proper polyhives have around 90% air in them, btw. 98% is an exaggeration wrt beehives. Just another piece of rubbish information banded around, by the unknowing, to be gobbled up by other un-knowing beekeepers (and others) because they ‘read it somewhere, so it must be true’. There are a lot of dimwits out there.

Do remember that, by definition, half the population are below average.