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Yet another day of continuous rain, and so my thoughts have turned to the small-footprint tall-stack hives I'll be installing into a converted caravan (camper) next year ...
These hives will presumably need to have solid floors which can be cleaned-out, rather than allowing detritus to fall through a mesh panel onto the caravan's floor, and so with ventilation in mind I thought it might be useful to consider an already proven design of 'bee-house beehive' - the A-Z.
Apart from it's front entrance, the A-Z hive is ventilated during the active season by mesh panels at it's rear:


... and regulated via flaps fitted at both top and bottom of a rear door.

Now I've seen quite a few videos of internal A-Z bee-house operations, but none have shown any evidence of this mesh having been propolised - which I find intriguing, for if that mesh was located directly above the frames I'm sure it would become propolised very quickly, and I'm really surprised that at least the upper area of the rear mesh panel doesn't become propolised, even after many years of use.
Can anybody throw any light on this ?
That's my principal reason for posting, but there is a secondary issue: in many videos I see beekeepers inserting a pad of insulating material into the cavity between the mesh panels and the outer rear door. It appears than this pad covers the mesh, and insodoing would block any ventilation which the mesh provides - that is, unless the pad were permeable. Again, can anybody throw any light on this one ?
Many thanks
LJ
These hives will presumably need to have solid floors which can be cleaned-out, rather than allowing detritus to fall through a mesh panel onto the caravan's floor, and so with ventilation in mind I thought it might be useful to consider an already proven design of 'bee-house beehive' - the A-Z.
Apart from it's front entrance, the A-Z hive is ventilated during the active season by mesh panels at it's rear:


... and regulated via flaps fitted at both top and bottom of a rear door.

Now I've seen quite a few videos of internal A-Z bee-house operations, but none have shown any evidence of this mesh having been propolised - which I find intriguing, for if that mesh was located directly above the frames I'm sure it would become propolised very quickly, and I'm really surprised that at least the upper area of the rear mesh panel doesn't become propolised, even after many years of use.
Can anybody throw any light on this ?
That's my principal reason for posting, but there is a secondary issue: in many videos I see beekeepers inserting a pad of insulating material into the cavity between the mesh panels and the outer rear door. It appears than this pad covers the mesh, and insodoing would block any ventilation which the mesh provides - that is, unless the pad were permeable. Again, can anybody throw any light on this one ?
Many thanks
LJ