The origional Scottish Wintering research

[Poly Hive]

I have this weekend been given this gem of research. I have not even had time to read it yet myself but it is the work that B. Mobus based his wintering research on.

Mobus was a serious researcher published in the ABJ which is a peer reviewed periodical. Jeffree was not that I know of published there but his work is important none the less.

Enjoy.

PH

 

[coffindodger]

Thank you. That is interesting; some real observations with numbers. Must admit my memories of Aberdeen consist mostly of shivering ;-)

 

[For want of a better word]

Thanks Mr PH ....Fascinating.

This work would presumably have been done with solid floors with top ventilation, although double and single walled hives are mentioned as being of little difference, I wonder what modern polly hives with closed tops and open mesh floors would have made?

I attended a lecture a couple of years back at West Cornwall Bit of a Do in Truro where a researcher gave a presentation on using X ray and similar radio tomography on clustering colonies bees within a hive... revelation was that bees clustered in an inverted bell shape rather than a sphere.... did anyone else here go to that lecture?

Cue Derek M !

Yeghes da

 

[Finman]

,
Colonies have been quite small in those days. 30 000 bees occupy 2 langstroth boxes. That was maximum size in summer. Yes, they swarmed they become to a certain size.

 

[Finman]

revelation was that bees clustered in an inverted bell shape rather than a sphere.... did anyone else here go to that lecture?

Cue Derek M !

Yeghes da

You see the shape when you open the hive. Often the cluster is against front wall even if the hive is double brood. Sometimes it is flat in lower parts of the frames. and against the floor.

 

[Finman]

.

In older times beehives around Baltic Sea were this kind. It kept 30 000 bees inside in summer These are from sweden. It was usual in Poland, Germany, Scandinavia and still in Eastern Europe.

Lower part, the brood box was insulated.

 

[Gas]

Sorry in advance at my digression from the topic in hand here, but they are good looking hives that I’ve never seen or heard of before Finman.

The sloping, yet still flat roofs, make sense as mine on my nationals always go rusty and whilst gabbled roofs would stop water collecting i don’t like the rocking they cause when placed upside down on the ground. ( and having anything placed underneath gabbled roofs to stop that rocking would be to aukward for regular use I feel.)

In fact thinking about rusting roofs has spurred me on to get sheet copper fitted on my roofs over winter. It’s amazing how ones mind wanders at my age......

 

[Karsal]

I'd be careful to disguise your copper roofs as some thieving so and so may relieve you of them.

 

[Finman]

Sorry in advance at my digression from the topic in hand h

In fact thinking about rusting roofs has spurred me on to get sheet copper fitted on my roofs over winter. It’s amazing how ones mind wanders at my age......

I suppose that you did not have copper for beehives after war

.

 

[Finman]

I'd be careful to disguise your copper roofs as some thieving so and so may relieve you of them.

Yes. Robbers even take copper cables from railways.

 

[user 6228]

re inverted bell versus sphere... The shape is likely to determined by the local heat flux. So that you get a different shape from a bush outside to high loss heat loss box which loses most of heat through the roof to a tree cavity which loses through the walls, is only to be expected.

 

[user 6228]

I see with the single wall / double wall experiment there is no measurent of the actual thermal conductance. Without that one cannot say whether the difference in the hive thermal conductance between the hives is significant compared ("insulation" is not a boolean) to the cluster "conductance" and thus whether the experiment is valid.

btw I have in 6 years only found two papers where the conductance has been measured, and I wrote one of them!

 

[MuswellMetro]

Yes. Robbers even take copper cables from railways.

They steel the railway track as well

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ineer-stole-two-miles-of-track-for-scrap.html