reefer van for moving bees?

[JBJ]

Anybody out there have experience moving bees with a reefer van? A friend has offered to let us use his 40 foot refrigerated van with air vents to move bees to the Almonds. We usually use a flatbed but this option could be easier and cheaper. Loading from the end will require the use of a pallet jack, but it seems doable in theory. Any ideas?
JBJ

[JohnK and Sheri]

Don't know from first hand experience, but we did some asking around on this option and were told from several sources that it would not work due to overheating of the bees. A reefer is meant to maintain the temp on an already cold item but bees produce so much heat the reefer cannot keep up and the bees cook.
Sheri

[iddee]

Ditto what Sheri said. When I was hauling bees I asked the same question and received the same answer Sheri received.

[JBJ]

Thanks for the input. I was worried about the heat and air flow factors also; but the guy doing the driving seemed confident that he could cool down the cargo area to any temp we wanted without problem so I thought I would run it by some of you pros. We have used a curtain van before with no problems, but they have more ventilation and we only had to move the bees overnight. I wonder if it would work better if we ran a half load of bees and the rest with the equipment we are bringing? I do know some of these trailers can get down to 0 degrees relatively quickly, however I assume that is likely with less airflow?
JBJ

[JohnK and Sheri]

We wintered bees in an unheated poorly insulated building up here in Wisconsin for several years. The temps sometimes didn't get above zero for a week. Those bees put out so much heat that even with really cold temps we had to run a freezer unit to keep them cool. And if we had more than a couple warmer days, like a few days in a row in the 60s, we had to move them out because the unit couldn't keep up with them, they put out a lot of heat.
They were packed fairly tightly in there, and I suppose there must be a point where you could space them far enough apart to be able to use the reefer truck. I have no clue where that point would be, but my gut tells me that when the additional loads are taken into account they would prove more expensive than the flatbed. I sure wouldn't risk my bees on someone saying they were sure they could do it, but never had. Cooling something that is putting out major btu's is a different ballgame from just cooling something down.
Maybe there is someone on board with first hand experience with this....

I read somewhere that in past centuries German beekeepers sometimes wintered their bees on the ground floor and lived on the floor above. The bees produced all the heat they needed.
Sheri

[ January 29, 2007, 06:52 PM: Message edited by: JohnK and Sheri ]

[JBJ]

Jon and Sheri

How close is fairly tight? I suspect if we could pull it off with a curtain van then the refer van may be easier. If we load when it is cold, set the temp near freezing and open the airflow vents that it could be done. I am sure there is some equation that could calculate the heat dissipated by the hives vs. the cooling capacity of the chilling unit and the relative airflow around each hive. I know there are some bee keeping physicists out there?
JBJ

[JohnK and Sheri]

JBJ
John set the room up so I am a little shaky on the dimensions but if I remember right, they were in side by side stacks of 5 single deep colonies, on bottom boards, in ~20' long rows. There was a single row along the outer edge of the room, then an aisle wide enough to walk down sideways and get a broom down, probably about 14" wide, then a row with the colonies back to back facing that aisle and the next aisle. I think 3 aisles so 2 double rows of bees and finally another single row on the other side of the room. The room was basically packed with the bees, just the aisles as described, so it was tight.
Yes, someone might be able to do the math for you. The problem with bees is when they start getting hot they start fanning and just generate more heat if there is nowhere for it to go, so it wouldn't be a very simple math problem. Good luck.

When we brought a 1 ton truck and trailer full of packages up from Texas or Mississippi to Wisconsin in early April we put temperature probes in the middle of the load to more easily judge the temp. Even with a very well ventilated truck we could only make very quick stops for gas the first day, the probe in the middle would go up 10 degrees in 5 minutes. As we got further north into cooler daytime temps we could stop longer without worrying about them overheating. Then if it was really cold in Wisconsin (almost always in April it seemed) we would have to drive slower and slower to keep them from losing too much heat. Wow am I glad we don't have to do that anymore, lol.
Sheri

[JBJ]

Sheri, thanks for the additional info. We have had similar experience moving 400 packages at a time. It is truly amazing how much heat they dissipate. That is part of the reason I was surprised several of the guys around here were using a curtain van, albeit only 8 hours over night. The guy offering his reefer truck still seems very confident that if the reefer was set between 32 and 38 with the vents open that the unit could keep up with the heat dissipated and supply plenty of fresh air. The way our pallets stack there is some air space around each. I suppose a lot rides on the cooling capacity of the chilling unit to keep up wit the heat dissipated. Maybe it would be better to run the thing set closer to zero? Could that be better than under a bee net in the hot sun as long as respired gasses and moist air could vent out with fresh air coming in?? It would be truly tragic to see a load of cooked bees.
JBJ

[ScadsOBees]

Boy, from the title of the post I got the picture of one of the VW vans with a peace sign on the side. I was thinking that would work but not with that mattress in the back.

Ooohhh...a refigerated van...that makes more sense...
:>

[iddee]

As I said, it is only what I was told, but here is the story as I heard it.

They cooled the trailer down to 0 F. and began loading bees. before they finished loading, the front of the trailer was hot enough to melt the wax and the first bees loaded were dead.

How true it is, I have no idea.

[heartbeat]

i have hauled my bees in a reefer without any problems. i have no doubt any of my reefer trailers would keep the temps correct. i ran mine @ 36'. the biggest problem is no way to strap them down. i used rope to tie each stack together, used dunnage bags to fill in spaces, and each hive was stappled, and things still shifted.(but not bad) However, Ca. regulations state that officials have access to each hive for inspection, which you would not have in a van.
good luck
martin

[JBJ]

Yeah they use this thing to haul ice cream through the desert and produce. I just wish I knew how much dissipated heat it could handle and keep the temp low enough to keep the bees clustered and cool. The driver has offered to haul them for half the rate as last year, but its only a deal if the bees arrive happy.
JBJ

[JBJ]

Just spoke with Pat Heitkam and he advised extreme caution. Sounds like it is all about the airflow even if the unit can stay cold. Further even though it is a new rig and the air flow and temp were not an issue if a system failed there would be no way to hose the load down to cool them.
JBJ