View Full Version : problem ventilating
barbeebee
12-22-2005, 10:18 PM
I tried sliding thin sticks between the inner cover and the top cover, but they kept sliding in. It was too cool to take off the inner cover. I have tar paper wrapped around the hive bodies and am afraid they will be too hot! We have been going from 40 degree weather to freezing and windy cold weather, and tomorrow it might go up to 50 degrees! I have screened bottom boards, but would like to vent the top but am afraid of making a bad draft. Any simple, really non-complicating solutions? I hope they are not all dead!
Also, if I can take a look inside tomorrow would it be okay to feed sugar syrup, just in case they've eaten much of their surplus? I don't want them to starve when it gets really cold again!
Thanks for any input!
Barbeebee
Jim Fischer
12-22-2005, 10:56 PM
You can "take a look" any time without fear of
harming the bees, certainly if the temp goes
up to 40 something or 50-something.
If your sticks slide, use something gooey on
them, for example, a few drops of roofing tar.
A clear sign of "not enough ventilation" would
be a wet inner surface on the inner cover, or
a water stain on the inner cover.
As far as "draft" goes, the outer cover is
going to prevent much of a draft, as air
does not like to turn corners. Some people
have holes drilled in the front face of
an upper brood chamber as a "top entrance",
and even that does not seem to pose a
problem for the bees.
And sure you can feed 'em. Your bees are at
least 90 days away from useful blooms, so they
certainly might starve if stores are low.
MountainCamp
12-23-2005, 05:06 AM
You can open them up for a peek without any problems.
I open my hive up with temps in the teens and have never had a problem from it.
Do not do break down inspection, but an open look and see and close will not hurt anything.
I glued paint stir sticks on the inside of my top covers. (Dust tape to hold in place until glue dried.)
Hmmm...make that duct tape...
John F
12-23-2005, 09:01 AM
<Jim Fischer>
as air does not like to turn corners.
This isn't a very good explaination of anything. And it's false.
When you crack open the top the light air will come out lickity split and be replaced by new air from your open bottom. The draft inside the box depends on a few things, temperature, moisture, and pressure from wind being the highest probable causes of a draft in the box.
Ok, moist air is lighter then dry air, all other things being equal. Inside the hive the bees and their doing's can put a significant amount of moisture in the air. So, keeping temperature and pressure constant, when you crack open the top, the wet air will escape and dry air will enter at the bottom. This dry air may pick up moisture and become lighter, only to pop to the top and escape. The hive will set up a draft and keep doing this until the dry air at the bottom can no longer pick up enough moisture to be light enough to escape. At this point the draft will stop. Nothing is driving it.
The same sort of thing can happen with temperature but in general, and what I gather from other discussions here, the bees are very good and creating their own insulation. Probably such that they do not put enough energy into the surrounding air to create a convective draft in the hive.
Wind pressure is not predictable without knowing the hive positioning and wind direction/velocity. You could go out some day and check using your smoker. Even without a top entrance wind can create currents through your hive. From what I've read here though, it seems that the bees can withstand quite a bit.
So, basically what I am saying: If you had no wind, no bottom, and no top on your hive, once the temperature and moisture equalized with the outside air, there would be no draft in the hive. What wind will do is unpredictable from where I sit.
JohnF
John F
12-23-2005, 09:05 AM
Oh, and to help out a bit:
I'm not sure what you are trying to do, like, are you trying to do something permenant or is this temporary?
Anyway, if it is temporary, why not put the sticks diagnal across the corner on one end and let the top cover sit on this for awhile. It probably will only take a couple hours to vent the moisture. Which bythe way will act like a swamp cooler and cool the hive too.
JohnF
I use the paint stir sticks too, but I cut them into postage stamp size squares and glue them to the corners on the bottom of the inner cover. That leaves a thin opening all the way around the inner cover.
Good Luck!
Pat
kenpkr
12-23-2005, 07:07 PM
<...but I cut them into postage stamp size squares and glue them to the corners on the bottom of the inner cover. That leaves a thin opening all the way around the inner cover.>
Does this leave enough room for bees to pass and do you use this even in winter?
No, the gap isn't wide enough for bees to get through but it does allow moisture to escape. I make sure the outer cover is on even so air can escape all the way around the top. I plan on trying screened inner covers this summer. Have you ever used them?
You can go a step further and glue spacers to the top AND the bottom of the inner cover. This leaves a tiny space under the lid and also under the inner cover. This combined with screened bottom boards seems to equal a healthy hive in summer and in winter, at least it does here in Wisconsin where it can get very hot or very cold. We use postage stamp sized pieces of cork sheet or sample formica chips whichever we happen to have on the corners. In the summer we also open the 3/4" auger holes in the fronts of the brood boxes.
barbeebee
12-26-2005, 09:10 PM
Thanks everybody!! Do you think that an imrie board would help if I placed it between the top of the inner cover and hive top cover?
Next question:
Does anyone find that their honey crop is crystalizing particularly fast this season? Mine did! The moisture content looked perfect on the refractometer at 18.1 or something like that! I feel that the more I work with my little bee friends, the less I know!
All of us, execpt those in the Tupelo region!
Michael Bush
12-27-2005, 07:38 AM
>Thanks everybody!! Do you think that an imrie board would help if I placed it between the top of the inner cover and hive top cover?
Of course.
>Does anyone find that their honey crop is crystalizing particularly fast this season?
Before I got it extracted.
Dan Williamson
12-27-2005, 08:06 AM
>>Do you think that an imrie board would help if I placed it between the top of the inner cover and hive top cover?
I cut down some old boxes that had some rot started at the ends. I cut them to about 2" which gave me a frame in which I drilled 3/4" holes and screened all but one. I placed this below the inner cover but had a problem with them building comb. I moved it back above the inner cover and it worked great. On a cool morning I could put my face up to the screened holes and feel warm air blowing out. I have no doubt that it worked as a great ventilator(in addition to the sbb) this past summer. I did take them off before winter as it would have been too much draft.
>Does anyone find that their honey crop is crystalizing particularly fast this season?
What is particularly fast? I extracted most of mine Aug 6th and it is just starting to get tiny granules (just looks slightly cloudy). It still pours and bottles well from my 5 gal containers though without warming of any kind. Most of my honey came from wild blackberries and is amber in color.
Is there a standard time indicator of honey that is slow ( or fast) to granulate? 6wks? 6 months?
Obviously if it granulates on the comb then your honey granulated quickly but how do I determine if I have fast, normal, or slow granulating type of honey?