Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => EQUIPMENT USAGE, EXPERIMENTATION, HIVE PLANS, CONSTRUCTION TIPS AND TOOLS => Topic started by: derekm on October 24, 2011, 07:02:22 pm
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My bees are in my new hive, the night time temps are zero c but the floor level temp is 18c, the top of the hive temp is 34c at 7am. The colony is only a moderate size,they are accumulating stores from the ivy and gorse, when the temp gets up to 9c there is quite a bit of activity even though the hive is shaded. is this a problem ?
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You’re in uncharted waters my friend! Who knows! That’s the fun in experimenting.
My biggest concern would be to make sure you don’t have any wax moths in there with the bees; especially if you’ve got a small colony and it is that warm.
It would be interesting to weight this hive from time to time to track its food consumption vs time vs temperature. It will also be interesting to see how long they keep brooding.
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Have you checked for eggs lately in your super PU hive? Are you doing any kind of feeding?
Since the temperature in your hive is above the cluster temp, I would guess the only significant energy the bees are generating is to keep the brood warm. If you have a smaller colony, there might not be much brood this time of year. That would require just a small patch of heater bees to keep warm and hence the wattage output from the bees might be on the low side?
How do you decide when to open ventilation (top?) to prevent overheating? Or are you leaving that completely up to the bees (via evaporating water)? I use adjustable top vents in my super PS nucs for that purpose and basically guess how much ventilation to give them. It's a guess based on how active the bees are vs the outside temps.
Have you back calculated how many watts the bees are making based upon the temps you are reading?
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Doing anti varoa treatment at the moment so expecting a hiatus, but we saw larvae, this weekend didnt look especially hard for eggs. lots of sealed brood...
Deciding to do top ventilation based on floor temp. if it goes above 21c , ventilate. Dont seem to get bearding, or much fanning. remember they have a slotted floor and a fairly large entrance 30 sq cm.
No feeding in the original PU as they are packing plenty way.
Only have two temp probes in this hive it was put into operation rather quickly, as usual.
Dumped the last of the wooden parts in the first hive. They are now on PU roof ecke and super with bought Polystyrene brood box. Seemed to get a fairly rapid increase activity. Taken a month to gradually make the conversion.
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I don't have any temp probes in the insulated nucs I built this fall...that would be nice info to have.
But I have been peering into the entrance tunnels (bottom) for the last 2 days to see what I could see.
These are 5 frame nucs, very similar to Bluebees, 2" polystyrene.
Yesterday was 45F and in each I could see 2-3 bees fanning inside the hive a few inches back from the entrance
Today's max was 36F, in the stronger of the 2, again a few bees fanning.
I decided they are holding too much heat and opened the top entrance to 1/4" X5/16". Depending what I see tomorrow I may well do the other as well.
I also observed a "drinking" like behavior that I have posted separately on in the general forum, as I really am not sure what that was about.
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OK, I checked my foam works tonight; about 12 midnight. It’s literally freezing out there! Frost on the pumpkins AND hives. 31F / -0.5C.
Here’s what I found. Bees guarding the entrance to every single hive and nuc! Good girls, don’t let any frozen wax moths in :-D They came out challenging me when I got my IR temp sensor too close. The air temp reading at the entrances were 55 to 65F / 18C.
Popped the top of one of my 1.5” (3.8cm) foam nucs (the PV=nRT nuc) and found the temp to be 64F (17.7C) inside as shown in the photo below. This nuc has about 5 frames worth of bees in it right now. Had fresh eggs as of Oct2nd. Haven’t looked for brood lately since we’ve had cold cloudy weather.
(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j365/MichiganBee/Eight%20Frame%20Foam%20Nucs/Foam_Nuc_Oct28th.jpg)
Here’s a midnight photo of one of my Dadant like full sized hives with a top entrance. Wintering in a single box here. Note the frost on the top of the hive and bees at the entrance!
(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j365/MichiganBee/Extra%20Deep%20Hives/DadantHivewithFrost.jpg)
Hives look to be about 30F warmer than the outside temp due to all the insulation, even with a top entrance in the full sized hives. The bees are not clustered yet. Probably won’t happen until it dips down to the low 20s or teens here.
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Windfall, I found my bees fanning last night at the door when it was 31F outside. However it was only 64F inside, so I don’t know why exactly they were fanning. Maybe they saw my flash light and that triggered them to scent the entrance? I don’t know. I do know it wasn’t too hot in the hive.
Unless you’ve got a lot more bees and brood in your foam nucs than I do, I can’t imagine they’re really overheating in Vermont at this time of year. My hives are running about 30F above the outside temp and unless it gets into the mid 60s here again (unlikely), I’m not going to open my top vent any further.
I’ve got the top vents in my nucs open to about 12mm x 3mm + any imperfections in my construction. Really a pretty small vent. I just want it big enough vent to water vapor + CO2 and draw in needed fresh O2. Too big and you start defeating the benefits of the insulation.
Sounds like you’ve opened a top vent with an area of 48 sq mm. That is close to what I am using. Your bees might still be raising fall brood (based on the report of them sucking up water) and hence I would be cautious about cooling them off too much.
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Thanks for the feedback bluebee,
My thinking was not so much that they were overheating but that they should be in cluster. I assume if they stay too active they are going to burn through their stores quite a bit faster?
I was also wondering if the fanning might be about trying to reduce interior humidity? Although it really didn't seem very wet from what i could see...at least not compared to reports of dripping hives I have read.
This nuc was PACKED when I transferred them a few weeks ago, the other was less so and I left it closed up on top. I was thinking of leaving the stronger one open on top as is untill the cold really settles in and then closing it back up.
I know Robo keeps the winter nucs without venting but those are the 1"foam....
Probably I should just leave them the heck alone, but I get so darn curious.
Where did you get that little IR probe? And what did it cost?
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Windfall, I got the IR thermometer at Harbor Freight a couple years ago. It was about $20 at the time.
We need to put one of our hives on some scales to get data on winter consumption at warmer temps. If the bees aren’t generating heat to stay warm, are they really going to be burning through the stores? I doubt it, that’s not what I have seen. Making heat is what takes a lot of energy. Discounting brood consumption, Stores consumed = Energy generated in the hive. Insulated hives require less watts. If the hives are above clustering temps and the bees are not rearing brood, they really aren’t making much heat.
Just as an aside; the main reason I’m using a screened top on my foam nucs is so I can observe how to bees are responding over winter in these super insulated hives. It sounds like you, I, and Derek are the only ones on this forum admitting to using super insulated homemade foam nucs so there may not be a lot of hard data for us. The screens can be a good way to collect hard data regarding their behavior.
You can also gauge hive strength with a top screen and you can feed all winter with a top screen if you want. If anybody else makes any of these super insulated hives, you might want to consider using a top screen on some of them.
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Thanks for the feedback bluebee,
My thinking was not so much that they were overheating but that they should be in cluster. I assume if they stay too active they are going to burn through their stores quite a bit faster?
I was also wondering if the fanning might be about trying to reduce interior humidity? Although it really didn't seem very wet from what i could see...at least not compared to reports of dripping hives I have read.
This nuc was PACKED when I transferred them a few weeks ago, the other was less so and I left it closed up on top. I was thinking of leaving the stronger one open on top as is untill the cold really settles in and then closing it back up.
I know Robo keeps the winter nucs without venting but those are the 1"foam....
Probably I should just leave them the heck alone, but I get so darn curious.
Where did you get that little IR probe? And what did it cost?
Research was done with clusters to see how much food was consumed with temperature... This research was done with different sized clusters to see exactly what happened, ans why and when bees clustered. Food requirements decrease with increases in temperature. The research was published in 1958!
OBSERVATIONS ON THE TEMPERATURE REGULATION
AND FOOD CONSUMPTION OF HONEYBEES
(APIS MELLIFERA)
BY J. B. FREE AND YVETTE SPENCER-BOOTH
Bee Research Department, Rothamsted Experimental Station.
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Bluebee, your point regarding needing less heat (fuel) overall due to heat conservation is well taken. What I don't know is how Bee physiology is affected by temp.
For some creatures that are able to run their bodies at different internal temperatures simply being warmer puts them into a higher metabolic state, and they will burn more calories. Not to generate heat, but simply because their physiology requires it at that temperature. Basically the warmer they are, the higher their idle runs. I don't know if this is true for bees, or if their calorie consumption is purely dictated by physical activity like flying or "shivering".
My goal (I think) is to find a balance of insulation and ventilation that keeps the bees from working hard to stay warm enough to survive but does allow them to spend most of the winter in cluster at "low idle".
If they are so warm that they are fully active inside the hive, don't we just imitate a 6-7 month warm weather dearth? Well that may be a poor comparison since they are not flying but hopefully you get the point I am trying to make.
Derek, your post went up just as I was finishing this. It does not surprise me that food consumption went down with increase in temperture when in cluster. Does this research show that to remain the case once the bees are warm enough to break cluster? That is the crucial point to know it would seem.
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this paper shows that clustering is also a group behaviour thing not just temperature related. However the food consumption does go down all the way with temp going up to the roof.
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I agree with your points Windfall. My plan for this winter is for my bees to run at low idle too. I DO want them to cluster on cold nights. My foam design is good for about +30F temperature gain inside the hive. As with Vermont, it gets a lot colder than 20F here in the winter. So when it dips below 20F, the temps in the hives should be in the 50s and the bees will cluster.
Derekm is doing some extreme beekeeping! It will be interesting to watch over winter. Will the bees over rev and float their valves or will they leave us in the dust? Time will tell.
Derekm, I’ll have to see if I can google that paper, thanks for the reference. We can also verify or deny that ourselves if we can set up a system to track our hive weights vs temperature vs time. For a fuller data set we could add electric heat to get data at more points.
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maybe I sholud have asked Prof Tom Seeley this question (who I met yesterday here in the U.K a very interesting chap)
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I bet the professor would be very interested in your super polyurethane hives.
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I just finished reading the paper you referenced. Interesting data! It seems to confirm what you have been saying, as the temps go up, the bees consume less stores. Less stores are consumed all the up to 35C!!!
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Windfall, I found my bees fanning last night at the door when it was 31F outside. However it was only 64F inside, so I don’t know why exactly they were fanning. Maybe they saw my flash light and that triggered them to scent the entrance? I don’t know. I do know it wasn’t too hot in the hive.
Unless you’ve got a lot more bees and brood in your foam nucs than I do, I can’t imagine they’re really overheating in Vermont at this time of year. My hives are running about 30F above the outside temp and unless it gets into the mid 60s here again (unlikely), I’m not going to open my top vent any further.
I’ve got the top vents in my nucs open to about 12mm x 3mm + any imperfections in my construction. Really a pretty small vent. I just want it big enough vent to water vapor + CO2 and draw in needed fresh O2. Too big and you start defeating the benefits of the insulation.
Sounds like you’ve opened a top vent with an area of 48 sq mm. That is close to what I am using. Your bees might still be raising fall brood (based on the report of them sucking up water) and hence I would be cautious about cooling them off too much.
the magic 18c temp again ... if they can, it appears they will regulate peripheral areas to 18c..(my bees do exactly this). thats the temp of the outside of swarm clusters(i will dig out the paper). my guess (guess only) is a box with the floor area at 18c is in good shape. 18c is not a random number. but they are fanning , try increasing the lower entrance size rather than top venting. a larger bottom entrance gives the bees more control. I would only use/increase top vent if the entrance has to wider than 30 sq cm to hold 18c at the floor.
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Despite the 1958 study, I would be willing to bet that energy levels and food consumption goes up if the bees starts buzzing and fanning in the warm top layer of a foam hive. I’ve noticed this happening in my double decker foam hives (5D+5M) but not my single story 8D nucs. I think the tall foam hives are promoting more temperature stratification and maybe it is getting too warm at top. A lot of bees tend to congregate at the top of the hives and I was reading 79F / 26C up there with my IR thermometer yesterday when it was 45F / 7C outside. My casual observation is the bees are usually much calmer when the temp in the hive is around your magical 18C number. I can easily observe what they are doing since I am using screened inner covers.
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found the paper
THE MECHANISMS AND ENERGETICS OF
HONEYBEE SWARM TEMPERATURE REGULATION
BY BERND HEINRICH
Department of Zoology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405.
it appears that the 18c is bees on standby temp, hanging around the lobby waiting for something to happen temp...
Again it seems chilled out for a bee is 18C ...
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Derekm, you noted earlier in this thread that you treated your hives for varroa. Was that just a precaution or did you have a high mite count?
What did you use for treatment? Did you consider heating the bees up to kill the mites? With a super insulated hive, this seems like an ideal way to treat for mites in the winter when the bees are broodless (assuming it works that is)
I’ve read a few posts on the bee forums now that heating broodless bees (mites on the bees) to about 46C for 10 minutes has been found to kill most if not all the adult mites. What do you think? A good experiment for your super PU hive?
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Derekm, you noted earlier in this thread that you treated your hives for varroa. Was that just a precaution or did you have a high mite count?
What did you use for treatment? Did you consider heating the bees up to kill the mites? With a super insulated hive, this seems like an ideal way to treat for mites in the winter when the bees are broodless (assuming it works that is)
I’ve read a few posts on the bee forums now that heating broodless bees (mites on the bees) to about 46C for 10 minutes has been found to kill most if not all the adult mites. What do you think? A good experiment for your super PU hive?
just using the std thymol treatment... a much lower varroa count for the PU hive, which may be an artifact of the floor contruction. These bees arent broodless at the moment...
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I don't think the nuc I have been talking about is going to provide much useful data this winter.
Yesterday warmed up a bit and the bees started hauling out dead with DWV, and I can now see 8-10 varoa on the bottom of entrance tunnel.....ah well. On the bright side none of the other hives are doing this yet.
I was planning to attempt no-treatment, but must admit a have been reading up a bit on oxalic....now I may have to look into Bluebees heat suggestion! Since I don't have electric heater I suppose I could just point a heat gun in the entrance for a spell :shock:
I may still learn something useful to share from the other weaker nuc.
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I read about using heat to kill varroa on another forum, probably beesource, I can’t recall. There might be some references here too. If I recall what I read, the idea may have originated in central Asia, one of those ex Soviet countries above Afghanistan. Believe it was also studied in New Zealand or Australia.
The idea is that all creatures have hot and cold limits for survival. We all know you can kill wax moths by freezing them. Turns out you can kill them with high heat as well. Same supposedly holds for varroa. Supposedly about 116F for a short period of time (I recall 10 minutes) kills all the varroa and has little to no affect on the bees. I have NOT tried this personally, so this is hearsay and dependent upon my memory recollection.
Not sure how to best experiment with this. I think you would want a setup which can warm the hives up to 116F fairly rapidly and then cool it back down fairly quickly. My existing cement bee heaters have a thermal time constant of about 1 hour and hence they would seem like a bad choice. On the other extreme, un regulated high temp from a heat gun could be a disaster. I’m thinking some sort of modified hair drier.
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well cooling down is a piece of cake this time of year. I suppose if I really wanted to pursue it, I could build a small cardboard tube and tape it to the entrance. Then use heat gun or hair dry, mixed with ambient air (venturi style) to get the temp you want/need.
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If I have any varroa this winter, I hope to run the high heat experiment. Should be relatively easy to heat up our already super insulated hives and like you say, it will be REAL easy to cool them back down this time of year.
This high heat approach may be relying on the thermal mass of the bugs for a selective kill. A mite has a much smaller mass than a bee and hence high heat will get to its innards faster than it will to a bee.
I suppose we could start a whole new debate among beeks rather or not the insulation value of the mites exoskeleton affects the flow of heat into the bug…… but I’m all debated out for this month :-D
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The other colony I have has Varoa real bad with DWV evident. although this has a larger number of bees, its not looking good for this one. This was wood until a month ago... I the more I learn, the more I see of the PU hive bees, the more I think thin wooden hives are a really bad idea for the bees... time will tell.
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here is a link to the heat treatment study...done right here in VT it turns out.
http://mysare.sare.org/mySARE/ProjectReport.aspx?do=viewRept&pn=LNE96-066&y=1997&t=1 (http://mysare.sare.org/mySARE/ProjectReport.aspx?do=viewRept&pn=LNE96-066&y=1997&t=1)
They use a plexi box with a heater element and cage, and shake the bees into that....eliminating the thermal mass of the comb and stores.
pretty labor intensive but interesting nonetheless.
sorry for the thread drift derek.
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Once again Robo has us beat. He’s got a 1991 patent up on his website that talks about killing mites with high heat and a forced ventilation setup. See the patent called “MethodAndApparatusForRemovingParasitesFromBees.pdf” on his website.
Here’s Robos site: http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/beekeeping/patents/ (http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/beekeeping/patents/)
The patent is for an in hive heater, or more specifically an on-hive heater. It heats the bees inside the hive.
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Windfall, thanks for the link to the Vermont study. I read it tonight and thought it had a lot of great information in it. While I would try to heat the bees inside the hive, the info in the report should make in hive heating attempts get off to a better start. Not sure what I would do about the queen. Finding her in a big hive would be pretty difficult and probably impractical.
I’m surprised I haven’t read more posts about heat treatment for mites in the various ‘organic’ bee keeping forums. Maybe they’re there and I missed them? For people who want to avoid chemicals, this seems like a productive avenue to pursue. I’m not opposed to chemicals, but if something as simple as heat can be effective AND I already have super insulated hives, heat would seem like a good route to try.
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I also came up with a company called Varoa-Blaster, making a heat/humidity controlled hive like chamber that you load frames into with the bees for 2 hours...but they of course were just advertising with little hard info.
I will check out Robo's link later when the kids stop crawling on me. Go figure: the 3 year old just is not quite as fascinated with all of this as I am....but she does like the pictures.
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I haven’t done it, but I just don’t like the idea of pulling frames of bees from one hive to another in the winter! While I haven’t tried heating a hive to kill varroa yet, I have used electrical heat to heat hives last year. When the hives get too hot, the bees tend to leave the combs and cover the walls and top.
Now imagine moving frames of fairly calm bees from a winter hive and cooking them in a separate unit for 2 hours. Once heated up to 35C+, they’re going to be more than a little active. I would fear you would end up with bees hanging on the walls and top of the cooking box. That would make it difficult to get the bees back into your winter hive. If you try to shake them some will fly and perish in the cold.
Besides my vivid imagination of a catastrophe, I’m too lazy to go to all the trouble of moving bees back and forth in the winter :-D
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Derekm, if your countrymen are any indication, your bees might to be too super insulated for your climate!
I finally got a copy of Brother Adam’s,”Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey”. He talks about his experiments with super insulation on page 56. He constructed super insulated boxes having a 4” floor, 6” sides, and 8” top. He then wintered 4 hives in each super insulated box. He reports those boxes came through winter bone dry and not a sign of mold anywhere. That was great, but the bees lacked the desire to build up in the spring! He says his unprotected bees did much better.
A quote from his book:
“A trial was now conducted on a total of 168 colonies and in two divergent localities (in England). The outcome proved absolutely identical to the tests made in the first instant (at Buckfast Abbey). In short: this form of wintering did not only prove a complete failure, but in actual fact had a detrimental effect on the well being of the colonies”. Brother Adams, page 57
Brother Adam seems to suggest there may be something in the bee’s physiology that is triggered by cold and without that trigger they fail to build up in the spring. While he found extra protection in the winter to be detrimental, he did postulate that extra protection in March and April would probably be beneficial to the spring buildup.
What’s your take of Brother Adams?
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I’ve been reading more from Brother Adam! I’m enjoying his little book since my bee keeping has been trending toward the way he kept bees at the Abbey. Maybe you should trade in Democracy for the Abbey? :)
Brother Adam says winter condensation is one of the great problems in your moist UK climate. He says he experimented with a number of techniques to mitigate this problem and found a TOP VENT worked best for him. I had to chuckle when I read that.
You’ve definitely got a very innovative hive design; it will be interesting to see how they make it through winter and the spring buildup. I think Brother Adam would be skeptical, but also very interested to see how they do.
Any new updates on the super insulated hives?
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they've laid stores and are now reducing their brood floor temp still at 18c, The high probe is now down to 28c.
I think a key difference is this isnt a colony I just super insulated for winter. These bees including the queen have been born in this environment. I havent mucked them about and the almost constant 18c means the bees are following a behavioural path, which is means something is happening that bees are suopposed to do. Bees are keyed by photo-periodism(how else do they know to startup build up in Feb) and temperature. It seems these bees know what season it is inspite of being warm in the in the hive.
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Yeah, I was a little surprised with Brother Adams report. My climate gets so cold in the winter that even with my 2” of foam, my bees are going to get cold enough to spend plenty of time in cluster. Here the foam is just going to prevent them from experiencing severe cold (-20C) and reduce their winter food consumption.
Brother Adam reported his super insulated hives were “bone dry” in the spring. I saw the same thing in my electrically heated nucs last spring. As I’ve noted before, my small electric nucs did not build up very fast in the spring. I was befuddled why. Got me wondering if maybe they were TOO dry? If so, maybe your open bottom screen and closed top design will prove more productive when combined with a super insulated hive; the bees will have access to more water via condensation inside your design.
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BlueBee,
Did Brother Adam reference brood chamber size and over wintering?
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Bluebee you are right. insulation plus top vent = dehydration. isnt that what everyone wants?
Bees have a repetoire of behaviours for managing temperature and humidity, I think all we need to do is ensure the environment is inside their control range. if we give them enough insulation so they can be mobile most of the time (so they control their environment) and then have sufficient entrance/floor slots so that they can drive the temp and humdity as they want. Top vents in winter take heat and humidty away but in not a bee controlled manner. Bottom slots and entrances mean that if the bees want to do something, they get a work party to do it.
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Rail, Brother Adam said his hives held 12 Dadant sized frames. As for wintering, he wintered in normal wood boxes. He used bottom entrances and shimmed the lid with 1/8” sticks in the winter for ventilation. Sounds like 1 stick over each set of frame ears. That’s probably a vent area of about 1/8 x 19 x 2 = 4.75 square inches. Really a pretty large sized top vent area! (mine are 0.56 sq inches)
Brother Adam believed that bees need a good chilling in the winter to build up properly in the spring; hence he did not insulate, wrap, or otherwise protect the Abbey’s hives. He did live in a maritime climate and was not subject to the prolonged bitter cold we get in the Northern third of the USA.
Sounds like his biggest winter problems were Nosema and weak hives going into winter. Evidently collecting late season nectar from heather plants on the moorlands in the UK can be very lucrative and/or very hard on the bees (cool, misty conditions). So some years when the moors were bad, he would go into winter weak.
insulation plus top vent = dehydration. Isn’t that what everyone wants?
:) That does seem to be a goal of bee keepers doesn’t it :)
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Today checking out the hives. I found both my foam nucs to be fanning again into the evening, at least 3-4 visible in and along the entrance "tunnel". They are the only hives doing this.
We have had a couple warm days..mid 50's and even mid 60's and lots of activity. Today was cooler (although still unseasonably warm), low 50's and windy. None of the hives flying.
The stronger nuc has a small (1/4 X1/4") top vent, it is actually moving enough air that I can feel a slight in-draft at that vent. This hive was also bringing in pollen during that warm spell.....no idea where they are finding it. None of the other hives are.
I still don't have any way to pull temps but will soon I think.
Shall we keep adding observations here or start a new thread?
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Windfall, don’t worry colder air is on the way!
Brrrr…it’s cold out there. I checked my hives with my IR temp sensor a shade after 5pm today. 33F outside.
1.5” foam nucs are reading on average about 50F at the bottom entrance. 17F over ambient. I didn’t pop the top to look inside. It’s cold out there! There are a few bees that fly when it’s sunny and 45F outside. However they’re not even making a dent on their stores yet. As long as they’re not all flying or flapping I would argue they aren’t burning many calories.
My full sized Dadant hives (single box hives) are reading 58F to 68F at the top entrances. 25F to 35F over ambient. Those have 2” foam on all 6 sides.
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Both hives now have PU feeding eckes (shims?) with perspex (lexan?) bottom boards and topboards.. so I can see how much fondant (candy?) they have eaten without cooling the hive too much. I can also how they are moving about. In addition they are both now permanently on bathroom scales...
The hives are still acting ... the same as before. We are still getting a few warm days highs of 15c. If the day is bright they fly at around 8c, dull they dont bother at all.
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sounds like quite a learning opportunity -can you post pics--RDY-B
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My nucs are now in cluster. We go weeks or months at a time here without sunshine so not much chance of a solar gain or flying. My golden summer glow is starting to turn into a ghost glow :shock:
(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j365/MichiganBee/Eight%20Frame%20Foam%20Nucs/Nov20FoamNuc.jpg)
So bathroom scales? Are you using mechanical type scales or electronic?
I’m going to try to make some load cell based hive scales this winter. Probably going to go with 10lbs load cells and some low offset, low noise, fixed gain Analog Devices amps. Maybe the AD8293G80. Boost the tiny signal from the load cell with an absolute minimum amount of error and then feed that into the ADC port of a Micro.
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I would close that top vent of yours until you get 18C inside The scales are mechanical left over from my racing car days. Load cells are cheap on ebay, and so are the op amp to construct the instrumentation amplifier
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To be honest, I was a little surprised to find it 56F/13C inside the nuc with them clustered. We had been having cool nights with mean 24 hour temps about 0C/32F with no solar gains. I would have to conclude that the bees are simply not making many watts of power at 56F. If they don’t feel the need to generate more heat, the temperature inside the hive isn’t going to increase.
Low heat generation = low honey consumption = good!
My top vents are about 3mm x 15mm; not very big. The Sun FINALLY made an appearance today and I did see some bees flying in low 40s.
Load cells are cheap on ebay, and so are the op amp to construct the instrumentation amplifier
So are you going to make a hive scale from some?
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Take one of your nucs and put inside a 20W 12V light bulb. Connect the bulb up to a variable power supply measure how much heat it takes to get it various parts of the nuc/hive to 18C and 34c with both the vents open and closed. i m going to try this experiment my self
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14.6C today outside -2C
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Sounds like you might need some more insulation :-D
What do you think the temperature is going to settle out at over winter?
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got an issue with the cold junction temperature compensation in the instruments I'm using. Taking a warm meter outside in to the freezing cold is giving strange results.
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From keeping the floor at 18c at below zero they have gone down to 7c with the outside at 5c. They are sending out periodically bees.for some reason they have abruptly changed behavouir.but they are still moving around on the top. Its like they just decided to turn the downstairs heating off to save fuel. Remember this hive is well within their thermal control range for this ambient temp...they could easily have the entire hive at 34c.
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OK, so why did they turn the heaters off?
All the way down to 7C (44F), that surprises me a little. Is that 7C measured at the bottom of your super PU hive?
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OK, I just froze my butt off checking my hives. I had to pry the top off the PV=nRT nuc, it was frozen solid to the hive. We’ve been below 32F (0C) for quite some time now. My little IR thermometer read 28F outside (-2C) the hive and 55F inside the hive. As you can see from my earlier post, the bees really haven’t moved much.
(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j365/MichiganBee/Eight%20Frame%20Foam%20Nucs/FoamNucDec10th.jpg)
My full sized super insulated hives with top entrances (9mm x 25mm) were reading 50 to 55F at the top entrances.
Like you, my foam hives have the insulation capability to be much warmer than they are. I think it comes down to the temperature at which bees cluster. Below that temperature they are going to cluster and make some heat, above that temperature they break cluster and don’t generate heat. That being the case, I’m not expecting my hives to get above 60F/16C the rest of the winter unless there is some solar gain or until they start brooding. Once they start brooding, they should be making heat all the time and that’s when all the insulation will start bumping the inside temps into the 70s or 80s.
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OK, so why did they turn the heaters off?
All the way down to 7C (44F), that surprises me a little. Is that 7C measured at the bottom of your super PU hive?
Yes the 7C at the bottom of the super PU hive. They are running around at the top in the warm at above 18c. Why? I have guesses.
but no knowledge. there is now very little flying during the day, the scouts, which are still going out, turning up nothing worth rousing the colony for . The gorse is in bloom but that will give only pollen (particulary if cold). My conjecture is that if there is nothing worth flying for and the days are very short (its 50N here), they cluster to conserve energy but not for the purpose of keeping warm. They are still warm bees just in "energy conservation" or just bored.
Studies have shown that bees can cluster because they "like" being together. They dont need a thermal imperative.
The PU hive will expose their behaviour minus the thermal imperatives ( keeping the hive floor at 18 above ambient for weeks then letting it fall to ambient).. understanding it is another matter...
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Have you checked for condensation in your super PU hives this winter?
We had a brief warmup above freezing yesterday. Got up to 10C/50F. I went out to check up on the bees. There were out flying even though it was cloudy and windy. They were hauling out some dead and making cleansing flights.
My hives with top entrances were nice and dry, but my nucs with bottom entrances and only small top vents (3mm x 12mm) had a good deal of condensation under their tops. In fact there was black mold starting to grow on the underside of the foam top cover! Mold will grow anywhere won't it!
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Bluebee,
I like your screened tops for the reasons you have pointed out yourself. But this was one of my concerns in their use. It creates a space "inside" the hive that the bees cannot coat in propolis, or clean, and perhaps more important they cannot access condensation to "drink it" as many have reported they do.
Is that space the only place you are seeing condensation in the insulated nucs?
I should have taken the last warm window a week ago to peek in mine, but....well....
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Good point windfall! My foam design will probably need a little tweaking for next year.
Actually the undersides of my foam tops (on the nucs) were dripping like a monsoon! Well…maybe not quite that much…but there was a lot of water. Far more than the bees could drink IMO. We did have monsoonish rains for a few days, but I don’t think the rain was the source of the condensation.
I took a roll of paper towel out of soaked up as much as I could. Of course plenty of water dripped on the frames. The bees didn’t go running toward the water for a mid winter drink so I don’t think they were too thirsty! The only place I saw condensation in the nucs was on the underside of my foam tops.
Not sure what action I’ll take, if any. Maybe I need to open my top vents a little? The bees all looked good.
Didn’t see any condensation problems in my foam hives with a top entrance.
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Have you checked for condensation in your super PU hives this winter?
We had a brief warmup above freezing yesterday. Got up to 10C/50F. I went out to check up on the bees. There were out flying even though it was cloudy and windy. They were hauling out some dead and making cleansing flights.
My hives with top entrances were nice and dry, but my nucs with bottom entrances and only small top vents (3mm x 12mm) had a good deal of condensation under their tops. In fact there was black mold starting to grow on the underside of the foam top cover! Mold will grow anywhere won't it!
condensation? none at all .... And it has been cold and wet.
I suspect that the your small vents show the problem that the small vents are cooling the air just inside the hive.
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I can’t disagree with your logic about the top vent cooling the top surface below the dew point. That sounds very plausible to me. However I’m still not convinced of the best design for a super insulated hive yet. I have run designs with top entrances and others with bottom entrances this year and so far I’ve had more problems with the bottom entrance designs. I’m waiting until spring to see what else might go wrong in the top vs bottom debate before picking a winner for my bee yard.
So if you’re not seeing condensation on the top of your super PU hive, are you seeing it along the sides or bottom? The bees are exhausting water vapor to live and make heat, it has to go someplace.
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in doing condensation investigations the bees dont help in a warm hive cos they drink the water (they are still running around). However because I have a clear plastic loose inner cover I prevent the bees drinking from the lid, the sides is another matter. I know there is no top condensation and There is no evidence of condensation on the sides but...
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looked inside both hives - the bees have clustered away from temperature probes(typical!). in the full on PU hive they are next to roof in the middle (no super), with quite a few bees walking around on the top. in the polystyrene/PU hybrid they are still in the brood box with only the odd bee moving about.
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THEY'RE BACK ...
18C at the floor 28C at the roof 8C outside
we've just had a warm spell and some spring flowers have come..
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I don’t know what to make of your super heated bees or spring flowers at 53 degrees North in December! We will not have any spring flowers in the frozen tundra here at 43 degrees North until at least the end of February. Even then it will just be a few snow crocuses. Nothing the bees can use until late March.
I checked on my bees yesterday. The top entrance hives had bees out on their front porches watching the snow. A couple of bees were flying, but most had enough sense just to watch the snow from inside. The top entrance hives should be cooler inside than my bottom entrance hives, but the top entrance hives are the only ones that had activity at the entrances.
In my long cold gray winter climate, I would speculate that a design where the bees get out on our few mild days may be better than one where they never get out. So far, the top entrance foam hives are proving more useful in that regards than the bottom entrance foam hives.
(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j365/MichiganBee/Extra%20Deep%20Hives/SnowBeesDec27.jpg)