China beehives

[kellen.henry]

Hi all,

I spent some time in China on vacation recently and ran across some interesting wooden hives while hiking in a rural part of Hunan Province. I'm curious to know more about them, but Google has failed me thus far. Anybody have some intel on how these work?

Here's a photo: http://d.pr/i/3MeS

[mike haney]

Looks like its just a skep made from a barrell cut in half with maybe the ends removed
Not much better than the log "gums" i learned on

[Solomon Parker]

I agree, it looks similar to a skep, just made from a different material. I would imagine they are managed similarly to how skeps are managed.

Take a look at these old videos. They are very interesting.
http://parkerfarms.blogspot.com/2011...and-lower.html

[Mr. C]

They could be a basket type hive with top bars that can be removed. I seem to recall reading they used those in ancient Greece or something. The metal roof makes me think thats an access point to pull off top bars, but I could be wrong.

[JRG13]

This reminds me of a show I watched where a region in China currently pollinates all it's crops by hand... it's not sustainable. Somehow they killed all their bees off with pesticides or something. It did not say why they just didn't bring in more bees though...

[100 td]

China probably uses so many pesticides the bees can't survive.