The Honey Factory

[OhZark Biddies]

I am thinking about all of it, still not sure what I will do.

The more I think about it... I think the Canadians that are warehousing bees in sheds are holding them at a constant temp range around freezing that hold the bees in cluster but didn’t allow it to drop to the sustained lows that won’t allow bees to overwinter...

it’s been a while since I saw that, and it was only a curiosity so I didn’t pay attention to the details...

but if that’s how they’re doing it... that’s a whole other thing...

sometimes it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the extreme cold, let alone the sustained extreme cold that your winters bring... I just dismiss it as lunacy

Maybe you should hit @shawluvsbirds up for some bee rental space at her place, and then you can take some dux back with you till spring... kinda some sorta ‘dux for bees’ exchange program

 

[shawluvsbirds]

Sure. It's only a 9 hour drive.
I mean, he mines well.

 

[OhZark Biddies]

I keep a ‘bee’ folder on my phone with reference info and things... so I looked in there earlier thinking I had screenshotted the max extra deep frames info...

but I ran across these thermal images from my hive this winter in mid January... I think the air temp was right at 32 degrees that evening...

kinda shows the heat loss pretty well in that the outside of the box on the warm side next to cluster was at 42.4

 

[Kusanar]

I keep a ‘bee’ folder on my phone with reference info and things... so I looked in there earlier thinking I had screenshotted the max extra deep frames info...

but I ran across these thermal images from my hive this winter in mid January... I think the air temp was right at 32 degrees that evening...

kinda shows the heat loss pretty well in that the outside of the box on the swarm side next to cluster was at 42.4

View attachment 2213886View attachment 2213889

That is really cool. Looks like the lid is holding the heat well, just need more insulation on the sides.

 

[OhZark Biddies]

@CindyinSD I found it! I had saved a screenshot... just didn’t have it in the right folder

so this is referring to dadant jumbos which are 10.5” tall inside vs a langstroth deep which is 8” tall inside...

So...
10.5x 17 = 178.5 square inches
178.5x 7 = 1249.5 Square inches

so this person was saying about 1250 sq inches is about all the average queen will cover

A layens frame is roughly 14.5x 12.2 inside dims or 176.9 sq inches... so very close to the dandant jumbo...

so I think 7 for brood would suffice also... but say you add one more, and then if you added four honey frames... you’d have 12 total... and you’d have a pretty tidy little layens hive that is not much bigger footprint than a standard Lang’s 10 frame... and could likely be picked up with a dolly pretty easily and moved in/out of a greenhouse

 

[OhZark Biddies]

That is really cool. Looks like the lid is holding the heat well, just need more insulation on the sides.

Oh good point... I had a “moisture quilt” made of about 3 inches of wood chips on top under the lid...

most folks here don’t do that or insulate at all... but I add the “quilt” in fall, and often add an insulated wrap from about January till the first of March or so...

Many folks will say that the inside temp of the hive is irrelevant, and that it’s the center of the cluster that counts... and that some bees dying on the outside of the cluster is normal...

I kinda think that while that is true and normal for Lang’s hives... it’s probably not true for natural tree hives... where bees don’t have to work as hard to warm the cluster, and are able to warm the inner air space of the tree and empty comb...

But then you have to think about ventilation and humidity/moisture too... and three other things that vary by region, lol

It’s all very interesting... but I don’t know that there is really any perfect answer for all

 

[R2elk]

Honeybee in Sweet Clover

 

[CindyinSD]

@CindyinSD I found it! I had saved a screenshot... just didn’t have it in the right folder

so this is referring to dadant jumbos which are 10.5” tall inside vs a langstroth deep which is 8” tall inside...

So...
10.5x 17 = 178.5 square inches
178.5x 7 = 1249.5 Square inches

so this person was saying about 1250 sq inches is about all the average queen will cover

A layens frame is roughly 14.5x 12.2 inside dims or 176.9 sq inches... so very close to the dandant jumbo...

so I think 7 for brood would suffice also... but say you add one more, and then if you added four honey frames... you’d have 12 total... and you’d have a pretty tidy little layens hive that is not much bigger footprint than a standard Lang’s 10 frame... and could likely be picked up with a dolly pretty easily and moved in/out of a greenhouse

View attachment 2213898

Thanks! Very helpful!

 

[CindyinSD]

I think I saw a honeybee today! I was filling up a bucket of water for the birds when a buzzy bee flew up and alighted beside a splash on the rim. It perched there for maybe a minute or two, drinking, then flew off again. It's thorax was fuzzy, its abdomen stripy-looking but not clearly delineated stripes... I don't carry around a phone so no pic. I hope it's a honeybee, but I haven't been back to surveil the bucket.

 

[jerryse]

Sure. It's only a 9 hour drive.
I mean, he mines well.

What kind of mining does he do ?