Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => EQUIPMENT USAGE, EXPERIMENTATION, HIVE PLANS, CONSTRUCTION TIPS AND TOOLS => Topic started by: Yappy on September 13, 2011, 01:05:40 pm
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I would like to hear from anyone who has used the "Automatic Hive"
There is a Video @
The Perone "Automatic" hive at the Natural... (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xkg4k1)
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Oh Boy, where to start…… Derekm, is this what they do in the UK?
1: I thought it was illegal to keep bees in the USA unless the brood frames are removable. Maybe Canada is different.
2: Wintering in 8 deeps? In northern North America? Granted that wood has almost no insulation value, but giving the bees such a huge volume of space just adds insult to injury from a thermal perspective. The only thermal benefit I could see is more solar gain on a sunny winter day due to the higher surface area. However that benefit is loss at night. If a person has a desire to keep the bees a little warmer in the winter, insulation (like in a thick tree) would seem like a better idea to me.
3: Leaving 4 deeps for the bees is 2 more than we normally leave on in the north. That’s 150 lbs+ of honey that you don’t harvest. Seems like bad economics to me.
4: This system makes them draw new comb every year for honey. That reduces your honey crop and may promote backfilling the brood chamber and generating a swarm. I can see the advantage of cycling out old comb/pesticides, but that can be accomplished in a conventional hive with ease if you want to do it. Recycling wax every year seems excessive to me.
5: Too tall. Sorry, but I don’t lift 80lbs over my head. That much height is going to be more susceptible to high winds due to the higher surface area.
6: Small entrance. A 1x5cm entrance is way more restricted than my bigger hives tolerate without excessive bearding…and I’m in Michigan! I suppose with such a tall hive, maybe the really hot air rises to the top. However you have a larger surface area for solar gains with such a tall hive and hence it’s going to absorb even more summer heat and probably be even hotter than a conventional hive. I would fear overheating, swarming, and absconding.
7: My wax moths would have a field day in such a hive. In fact they HAVE had a field day when I didn’t’ have enough bees to cover all my combs.
Conclusion: Not saying this idea can’t work in some climates, but in my climate the physics work against most of these ideas. Insulated hives achieves the same positives without all the negatives.
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Your response is a "normal" reaction; and why I am curious about other's success/fails using it.
So as far as I know:
Oh Boy, where to start…… Derekm, is this what they do in the UK?
This was introduced to UK this year.
1: I thought it was illegal to keep bees in the USA unless the brood frames are removable. Maybe Canada is different.
Same rules in Canada/USA, BUT- with prior permission, beekeepers can have "non-standard hives.
2: Wintering in 8 deeps? In northern North America? Granted that wood has almost no insulation value, but giving the bees such a huge volume of space just adds insult to injury from a thermal perspective. The only thermal benefit I could see is more solar gain on a sunny winter day due to the higher surface area. However that benefit is loss at night. If a person has a desire to keep the bees a little warmer in the winter, insulation (like in a thick tree) would seem like a better idea to me.
3: Leaving 4 deeps for the bees is 2 more than we normally leave on in the north.
That’s 150 lbs+ of honey that you don’t harvest. Seems like bad economics to me.
4: This system makes them draw new comb every year for honey. That reduces your honey crop and may promote backfilling the brood chamber and generating a swarm. I can see the advantage of cycling out old comb/pesticides, but that can be accomplished in a conventional hive with ease if you want to do it. Recycling wax every year seems excessive to me.
5: Too tall. Sorry, but I don’t lift 80lbs over my head. That much height is going to be more susceptible to high winds due to the higher surface area.
6: Small entrance. A 1x5cm entrance is way more restricted than my bigger hives tolerate without excessive bearding…and I’m in Michigan! I suppose with such a tall hive, maybe the really hot air rises to the top. However you have a larger surface area for solar gains with such a tall hive and hence it’s going to absorb even more summer heat and probably be even hotter than a conventional hive. I would fear overheating, swarming, and absconding.
Prone reports large harvests from these hive in year 3 and on. +150K(+330Lbs)!
His brood area is huge =+3 deeps and a super for the bees honey - NOT touched by beekeeper!
Swarming - is natural in healthy mature hives! Just use to start more hives.
7: My wax moths would have a field day in such a hive. In fact they HAVE had a field day when I didn’t’ have enough bees to cover all my combs.
Small entrance = bees defend easier!
Conclusion: Not saying this idea can’t work in some climates, but in my climate the physics work against most of these ideas. Insulated hives achieves the same positives without all the negatives.
Google climates, see his is almost similar too yours. just 6 months off.
I was also curious about the venting as well. But Bees are found in old steel oil drums and walls that have only one small opening.
I hope you and other's who maybe open to trying to find a more natural "BEE" centered hive would test and report on actual findings.
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This hive has a K value of 25 A comparable sized cavity in a hollow tree has a K value of around 3.6 IMHO its yet another wooden bee slum. In truth My hives and Bluebees are measurably much more BEE centred than this hive.
My hive has a K value of 0.33. I'm trying to give bees an environment they can control. Thin wooden hives however tall stress the bees , I want to get away from "winter survival mode" where a colonies survival is the key measurement. Instead it should be given that they will survive and the measurement should be how much the colony grows each spring.
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Seems more of a 'gimmick' than a new way to keep bees? Never get into the brood box? Queens live forever in here? no problems with brood? I see no redeeming value here.
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Hey guys, don't shoot the messenger!
For testing a different style of hive.
+Derekm, I was planing on 1.5" pink insulation top and sides.
How does that change your numbers?
Not forgetting to factor in the 3x brood volume when mature.
+Yockey5, Any 'gimmick' that may yield great harvests is okay with me! :evil:
This is not a new way to keep bees - but new to this area.
Brood that is in a healthy hive is well " Healthy "
The queens are naturally replaced whenever the bees want to.
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This hive is illegal to keep bees in Massachusetts 01331 USA you'r hive need to have removable frames in ALL boxer.
BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)
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+Jim 134
Same rules in Canada/USA,
BUT- with prior permission, by a inspector, beekeepers can have "non-standard hives." ie. for experimental purpose.
If it works I plan on a multi-year experiment! :evil:
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I don't see the real difference than just stacking deeps up and not touching them.
Natural
I would hate to know there was a tree any where near my home with that much void space in the center.
Not new concept my hives are close to the same natural comb left alone for the most part.
Try it I don't care but I would not think it would cure cancer or anything.
The old cross bar hives before the langs were the same just not as big you only harvested to the cross bar. never touched the brood section only got splits from swarms.
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Hey guys, don't shoot the messenger!
For testing a different style of hive.
+Derekm, I was planing on 1.5" pink insulation top and sides.
How does that change your numbers?
Not forgetting to factor in the 3x brood volume when mature.
+Yockey5, Any 'gimmick' that may yield great harvests is okay with me! :evil:
This is not a new way to keep bees - but new to this area.
Brood that is in a healthy hive is well " Healthy "
The queens are naturally replaced whenever the bees want to.
38mm of PS foam is going to be a substantial improvement. However , this hive has other thermal issues. The roof appears not to be sealed but substantially open. The convection currents are likely to be very chilling in winter (which accounts for the extremely small entrance) and demanding of high heat output and hence foraging overhead in summer. The bees will need wall themselves in winter with wax, and restrict the air flow in summer to reduce brood heat requirements.
I have as much concern about the natural beekeeping movement as I have about conventional thin wooden hives. The horizontal hives etc and this are still outrageously bad attempts at housing bees and appear to be alongside the langstroth at least an order of magnitude "off"
Sticking on a "natural" label and demonstrating "ethnic" origins does not suspend the laws of thermodynamics and aerodynamics. A design being a 150 year old or a 1000 year old doesnt make it any better.
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... I want to get away from "winter survival mode" where a colonies survival is the key measurement. Instead it should be given that they will survive and the measurement should be how much the colony grows each spring...
You are a bit ahead of me. In this early stage of my bee keeping activity I still use the "survival rate" as a kind of measurement of success, and I announce proudly that both of my two hives survived the last winter. It is possible that I will go through the "how the colony grows" and "how strong the colony is" and "how much the colony produce" stages. That time I will boast with how much honey my colonies produced in average, highlighting a few exceptional of them.
Eventually, however, my aim will be to get the maximum of profit with the minimum of work.
As Miller said in "Fifty years among the bees"
For it is not the yield per colony I care for, unless it should be to boast over it; what I care for is the total amount of net money I can get from bees.
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Who read the Perone website, don't need to waste time with this unlogical stuff of Perone.
He his far away of (any) knowledge...
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Normally, I would add my experience and observations in regards to a hive like this. But years of posting on websites, has taught me many things. Like.....
1) ***Beekeeping is local (or so I'm told). What works in one place, does not mean it will work in another place. So how could I comment on such a question for any other beekeeper beyond my own backyard?
2) *** In the end, if it works, that is all that matters. Which means combining this thought with #1, each beekeeper should try it themselves and NEVER listen to others. Their failures or successes means nothing of what your outcome can or will be.
3) To suggest anything wrong with any other beekeepers ideology, IPM, management, will usually be seen as being negative and antagonistic. Who wants to be labled that?
So I am left with praise and encouraging words about every and each type of hive and ideology coming down the road. I love the video. I loved the rationalization of their message. We should embrace every beekeepers promotion and marketing, regardless of your initial knee jerk reaction. So step out of the box, and lets get crazy!
I think every beekeeper should run out and build one of these. Ok, every beekeeper but me. I'll reserve the right to not go down that path. But you should! It's a wonderful world. And do as you please. Don't let anybody say you shouldn't.
I say.......go for it!
:)
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I followed up on some of the stuff this guy was selling, it is IMHO
an Internet INFOmercial
I got a ton of emails inviting me to watch and buy his product.
He starts out as if he has a huge gift to the Bee world, when in fact
its a gift to him self $$$
Thats my story and I'm sticking too it
Tommyt
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thought I was wrong once....
turned out..... I was,
So I was right :roll:
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Normally, I would add my experience and observations in regards to a hive like this. But years of posting on websites, has taught me many things. Like.....
1) ***Beekeeping is local (or so I'm told). What works in one place, does not mean it will work in another place. So how could I comment on such a question for any other beekeeper beyond my own backyard?
2) *** In the end, if it works, that is all that matters. Which means combining this thought with #1, each beekeeper should try it themselves and NEVER listen to others. Their failures or successes means nothing of what your outcome can or will be.
3) To suggest anything wrong with any other beekeepers ideology, IPM, management, will usually be seen as being negative and antagonistic. Who wants to be labled that?
So I am left with praise and encouraging words about every and each type of hive and ideology coming down the road. I love the video. I loved the rationalization of their message. We should embrace every beekeepers promotion and marketing, regardless of your initial knee jerk reaction. So step out of the box, and lets get crazy!
I think every beekeeper should run out and build one of these. Ok, every beekeeper but me. I'll reserve the right to not go down that path. But you should! It's a wonderful world. And do as you please. Don't let anybody say you shouldn't.
I say.......go for it!
:)
1) The laws of physics still operate in Argentina. Misunderstanding, custom and practice are local. Bees have complex behaviour related to temperature and space, just surf the the net and find out the number of professors involved in bee behaviour research.Such Extreme mucking about with the nest environment of such a complex animal should have better justification than what Perone offers.
2) if works use it? The ends justify the means? - child labour works, so does fear and terror. Is stressing bees into producing large amounts of honey ethically sound?
3) idealogy ? whatever happened to scientific reasoning or is bee keeping still in a time before Jonathan Swift and the Lunar society?
I hope your comment on not challenging others and embracing every variety of snake oil was being ironic or even better a wind up
aside from that I need to scratch that celtic itch of having a good vigourous argument :)
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FIREGUY,
Did you ever build and catch a swarm in one of these Perone hives?
--John
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Responding to a prior post of putting Pink insulation on or in the hive bodies.
If those bees get chilled the insulation will act like a refrigerator and not let the hive warm up from sun contact to the hive body.
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IMHO it is just more snake oil from a new breed of high tech salesman.
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1: I thought it was illegal to keep bees in the USA unless the brood frames are removable. Maybe Canada is different.
"I was considering a new form of box, and before I could work out the practical specs - this swarm moved in, making it difficult for me to finish the design. I'll have to cut them out as soon as I find the time... :angel:"
I despise laws that ultimately serve only to satisfy busy-bodies and control freaks. (Even though I love my removable frames anyway.)
Maybe a new honey category could be introduced: 'feral hive honey.' - nothing to stop anyone marketing it now at a premium.
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I like to keep things simple, all those signs just confuse me :) I can build two hives with less material and have a better chance of getting through the winter. By the way nothing is "automatic"... For a naturalist I guess he doesn't care about trees, I mean just think if every beekeeper started using this... just sayin.:)
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I think I saw a video or movie on Oscar Perone...I believe he has a lot of Africanized Honeybees and this type of hive...leaving it alone ...and taking honey once a year is probably best. I think he takes it at night. But I sure do like the idea of never entering the brood chamber, and leaving them their own honey supply. But I am a Newbie...so what do I know.
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I have to haul off a bunch of old tires. Or does some one want to help me design a rotating hive? :roll: ;) :) d2
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I have to haul off a bunch of old tires. Or does some one want to help me design a rotating hive? :roll: ;) :) d2
Packim and stackim. they make for a great wall for a three side storage shelter for you boxes.
John
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with what and how do you pack-em? :)d2
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with what and how do you pack-em? :)d2
lay a line of tires in the shape of the three walls you want. fill with dirt. pack the tires will wetting. then stack another set of tires offset of the one below it. pack it with dirt then reapeat to the height you want the walls. then mix some mud and fill in the holes and then you have a packed and stacked wall of tires on three sides. :laugh:
John
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Derekm,
You must be itchn' for an argument, if you did not sense the sarcasm in BjornBee's reply. his comments had so much dry humor and sarcastic tone I rolled my eyes and chuckled. Only to eye roll and laugh more when you called him out on not applying the universal rules of science.
" I hope your comment on not challenging others and embracing every variety of snake oil was being ironic or even better a wind up"
me thinks you got your hope. ;)
You said: "if works use it? The ends justify the means? - child labour works, so does fear and terror. Is stressing bees into producing large amounts of honey ethically sound?"
I hope YOUR comment comparing child labor (read forced child labor) and "fear and terror" (Terrorism?) to experimental bee keeping techniques was also "being ironic or even better a wind up." :?
The fact is if it works, that is reason to investigate why it works. That is the scientific model. If we already know exactly what is best, not much reason to use science. In the end I agree with the bottom line of BjornBee sarcastic statement. Others, go ahead and try it, I would be interested to hear your experience, but I'm not willing to: 1) let my girls swarm in hopes i can lure or find the swarm to put into a new hive, or 2) hive bees in a place I can not inspect for disease which may threaten my other hives, or hives of my neighbors.