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Long Hive Design Issue

3K views 7 replies 6 participants last post by  mrobinson 
In the wild, bees always go for enclosed spaces: trees, eaves, walls, boxes. These spaces have one or two small openings. They're able to regulate the internal temperature because the space is closed. (Sometimes they hang-out outside, "bearding.")

Although we may do it with the very best of [human ...] intentions, when we leave the entire bottom of the hive open, we make the internal temperature and humidity impossible for the bees to regulate. That quantity of outside-air is going to overwhelm any of their attempts at control. While bees sometimes do live in "branch hives," building combs in places that are not fully enclosed, it is comparatively rare.

My own hTBH's are rudely-built affairs made from found wood, generally according to the suggested dimensions, sealed with one coat of Thompson's Water Seal, and covered with a similarly-sealed top made mostly of plywood. Now in their third season. The bees keep the insides quite tidy, bottom to top. The hives sit in the middle of a pasture, on concrete blocks, under a stand of hardwood trees which afford them shade throughout the day, with late-morning and late-afternoon direct light. Even on a hot summer day, when you stand underneath those trees it is noticeably cooler.

If you don't have trees, I'd put the hives under a sheet-metal roofed pole shed to block the worst of the sun. On a directly east- or west-facing side, buy a few wooden shipping-pallets and nail these up to form an open wall that will effectively block direct sun.
 
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