- Joined
- Mar 27, 2024
- Messages
- 53
- Reaction score
- 19
- Location
- Wiltshire
- Hive Type
- Other
- Number of Hives
- 3
You can get a gizmo with a ceramic heater and fan fixed together and a digital thermostat both running on 12 volts. (that Chinese place beginning with t)I have an old computer fan that is going to sit on the top of the stack and draw the warm air up through a hole in a crownboard, although it may be sufficient just to let natural convection do the job - I've not yet tried it with a stack of full supers. The heater has a built in thermostat and with it set at about 3/4 the aluminium tray gets to just over 35 degrees. With an empty super as the first one in the stack I reckon that should be warm enough to warm the combs ... time will tell.
My dad reckoned I should have been named Heath ... I've had form for making things out of nothing almost since I could walk.
I built a surround about 50mm wide of 50mm kingspan two layers deep on a langstroth size board and fixed these to the base with the heater inside and control outside, then stacked two supers on top, ( would have been as many as needed) set at 40c with a slice of foam on top for a couple of hours. perrfik. cost about a tenner and a couple of hours build. didn't need a drip tray as the frames were nicely capped.