Bee-House

Thinking of using a bee house this year, anyone out in forum land keeping there hives in one, if so what are your pros and cons and how do you go about swarm control

There are a few here that use them that might be along shortly

I have used the club one while helping manage their hives. Personally i dont like them because:

1) 14x12 frames sre just too big and clumsy, especially when full of stores.
2) to inspect the hive you must stand to the side of the hive and twist your body which is irritating.
3) q.excluders aren't great
4) limited number of supers and the supers aren't the easiest to locate in the grooves.

Pro's

1) looks nice in an urban setting or a tidy modern garden.
2) cleans easily.
3) good height

Just my personal thoughts.

M

Mellifera397 said:

I have used the club one while helping manage their hives. Personally i dont like them because:

1) 14x12 frames sre just too big and clumsy, especially when full of stores.
2) to inspect the hive you must stand to the side of the hive and twist your body which is irritating.
3) q.excluders aren't great
4) limited number of supers and the supers aren't the easiest to locate in the grooves.

Pro's

1) looks nice in an urban setting or a tidy modern garden.
2) cleans easily.
3) good height

Just my personal thoughts.

M

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I think the OP means a 'house' to keep beehives in, not a Beehaus

BeeBus said:

how do you go about swarm control

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+1 on this query

There's a long running thread on the SBKA forum about bee houses, lots of pictures:

http://www.-------------/sbai_forum/showthread.php?540-Bee-House

(Sorry mods ... it's an interesting thread and I think everyone knows how to find the SBA forum ! - It's not as good as this one but a lot better than the BBKA !!).

If you follow the traditional bee house route with the hives actually set in the wall of the bee house then swarm control is pretty much limited to shook swarm .. However, in the past (and I can't find where it was anywhere) I was reading about an alternative bee house where the actual hives are located on a shelf inside the shed and an entrance tube (40mm black pvc waste pipe) connected the hive entrance to the outside wall of the bee shed and the hives could be manipulated in any way that you would normally. The hives, obviously, just butted up to the inside end of the pipe entrance- clearly, all the hive entrances would need to be standardised so that brood boxes could be moved around and you would need space allowed for doing AS.

The only reason I could see for a bee house (and those who know me will recognise that I'll try anything !!) was to provide a better insulated, all year round, environment for the bees - on a hill top in Scotland I could see the potential benefit (Where's Kitta ???) but modern methods of insulation in less extreme climes seem to me to be adequate.

There are some disadvantages as well ... manipulation inside a potentially poorly lit shed is just one of them ...and I suspect that anyone with a slightly effervescent colony might think twice about being confined inside a shed with their little darlings.

Demaree for swarm control … ?

BeeBus said:

Thinking of using a bee house this year, anyone out in forum land keeping there hives in one, if so what are your pros and cons and how do you go about swarm control

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I have run a hive in a bee shed now for a couple of years and this past year started a 2nd hive. During this time both hives have not wanted to swarm but when it comes I may give up on fiddling about with vertical systems and simply remove the queens and let the bees raise a new one and hope this will stop their urge to swarm. A spare plinth or two in the shed would be nice for AS but once they are filled you will have to move bees out or combine with a neighbouring hive but remember to block the entrance of the moved hive.

Some advantages are, you can inspect in bad weather, as the flying bees during inspections fly towards the windows you don't get many bees flying during inspections, your hives are out of sight and overlooking neighbours (not a problem in this case) your hives are safe from livestock (horses in this case) although an extreme way around it, depending on size the shed stores other bits and bobs, your hives can be cheap and less flimsy as they are inside and finally the bees seem to do well in the shed.

Some disadvantages, swarm control as mentioned, it can be dark in the shed and sometimes you need to take frames outside to have a good look, it gets extremely hot no bloody hot and you will melt with the heat during inspections, you get a build up of dead bees on the floor so a good clean up every now and then, not a major problem but ants take advantage of the warmth and like to nest under the roof of the hives so if you are frightened of ants watch out (may not happen to you)

jenkinsbrynmair said:

I think the OP means a 'house' to keep beehives in, not a Beehaus

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swombo spotted this article in New Scientist last week :-
Hygienic behaviour in the honey bee, Apis mellifera, is the uncapping and removal of dead, diseased or infected brood from sealed cells by worker bees. We determined the effect of hygienic behaviour on varroa population growth and incidence of deformed wing virus (DWV), which can be transmitted by varroa. We treated 42 broodless honey bee colonies with oxalic acid in early January 2013 to reduce varroa populations to low levels, which we quantified by extracting mites from a sample of worker bees. We quantified varroa levels, again when the colonies were broodless, 48 weeks later. During the summer the hygienic behaviour in each colony was quantified four times using the Freeze Killed Brood (FKB) removal assay, and ranged from 27.5 % to 100 %. Varroa population increased greatly over the season, and there was a significant negative correlation between varroa increase and FKB removal. This was entirely due to fully hygienic colonies with >95 % FKB having only 43 % of the varroa build up of the less hygienic colonies.None of the 14 colonies with >80 % FKB removal had overt symptoms of DWV, whilst 36 % of the less hygienic colonies did. Higher levels of FKB removal also correlated significantly with lower numbers of DWV RNA copies in worker bees, but not in varroa mites. On average, fully hygienic colonies had c. 10,000 times less viral RNA than less hygienic colonies.

She now wishes to know if I can breed a colony for carpets and dusting round the house
Martin

Tom Bick said:

I have run a hive in a bee shed now for a couple of years and this past year started a 2nd hive.

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In the Spring, I was thinking of setting up a shelf in the garden shed for putting developing nucs on, but I can't decide on the best way to connect the nuc entrances to the outside world. Any suggestions?

JohnyP said:

In the Spring, I was thinking of setting up a shelf in the garden shed for putting developing nucs on, but I can't decide on the best way to connect the nuc entrances to the outside world. Any suggestions?

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Construct box a tunnel if you like that is fixed to the shed and lines up with and covers the entrance to the nuc or hive. Make sure no gaps appear as you will start to get lots of bees in the shed. You will need approx three inches from shed wall to hive so it's easy to remove the roof. You will also need some sort of adapted window so any bees inside the shed can get out.

Cooker hood plastic chimney, the rectangular type would work I should think. Check it out in b and q or places similar
Tried a link for you but it was too long. Try looking for plastic ducting at screwfix......they sell it

E

The standard way is to have the glass in the window stop short of the top by an inch and then have a 2nd piece of glass approx three inches long fixed to the top of the frame on the outside of the shed with about one inch gap between both pieces of glass.
The bees are attracted to the light and when they hit the glass they move up the glass and out through the gap.

Correction to previous post.

The three inch piece of glass fitted to the top of the frame creating a gap of approx one inch from the other piece of glass is fitted inside the shed and not on the outside.

I get the idea. Thanks very much for the info

I think I placed already this pic somewhere, sorry for repeating. This is more and more used by migratory beeks here, transparent roof. Just pay the truck to load and unload.