Insulation, venting, real bee life, exits.

[LoriMNnice]

This thread is getting stupid PLEASE NOTE I am NOT calling ANYONE stupid. Just that this thread is going no where. Why don't you PM each other instead of having a battle on the forum?

[rdy-b]

Hmmm.  Interesting.  Is a swarm the same as a winter cluster?  

No it just that there is switch in behaviour around this temp in other circumstances, 18c may just be a good holding temp to jump to activity or brooding. Holding at 18c is just not thermally possible for  bees for any length of time  (weeks months) in a conventional wooden hive, it gets too cold or too hot too fast (6k). It takes 54 watts in wood at 0c ambient to hold 18C  but only 7.2W in a PU hive. Bees have an average winter heating budget of around 20W. With 20W  they could heat the entire PU hive to 34C at ambient of -16C.
  Thats what they could do, but what will they do? Thats what we are finding out.

I am wondering about the sizes of the bee population--it must be relivant to all the calculatios ??
   RDY-B

[T Beek]

Finally some rational thought.  I agree w/ LoriMNnice.  This thread has become more rhetorical (and mean spirited) than theoretical.  I've learned very little from the last 4-5 pages. 

Why don't you guys just take it outside and settle it like High-schoolers

thomas

[Finski]

.
I just calculated that if in Britain 10% are fool or propel heads, they are more than Finnish people together included emmigrants.

[T Beek]

(guess I should'a said middle-schoolers?)

[JackM]

Finally some rational thought.  I agree w/ LoriMNnice.  This thread has become more rhetorical (and mean spirited) than theoretical.  I've learned very little from the last 4-5 pages.  

Why don't you guys just take it outside and settle it like High-schoolers

thomas

Yes, as the thread starter, you sure took away the value to me of this thread with all the...whatever you want to call it....Thanks TBeek.

[rdy-b]

  JACKM--are you having problems wintering your bees in WA without
extra insulation--i would like to hear more about WA-Is it really that
cold or is it just wet-remember the bees inside the tree--inless that tree is dead
 dormant it is absorbing(and utilizing)
extra moisture that is a byproduct of the bees--we have run the topic
of insulation past its value at this point--but what else is going on--?? RDY-B

[derekm]

Hmmm.  Interesting.  Is a swarm the same as a winter cluster?  

No it just that there is switch in behaviour around this temp in other circumstances, 18c may just be a good holding temp to jump to activity or brooding. Holding at 18c is just not thermally possible for  bees for any length of time  (weeks months) in a conventional wooden hive, it gets too cold or too hot too fast (6k). It takes 54 watts in wood at 0c ambient to hold 18C  but only 7.2W in a PU hive. Bees have an average winter heating budget of around 20W. With 20W  they could heat the entire PU hive to 34C at ambient of -16C.
  Thats what they could do, but what will they do? Thats what we are finding out.

I am wondering about the sizes of the bee population--it must be relivant to all the calculatios ??
   RDY-B

Definitely it has a bearing on how much sugar/honey they eat and the heat released- and so doses the size of the hive box. If you have a bigger box with more bees but with the same number of bees per unit volume it has more heat, and more heat losses but they are outweighed by the heat gain. I took as my baseline the volume a british national hive and the often reported consumption of 12.5Kg of sugar over 150 days. This gave 17W, uprate it to a langstroth and you get 20W. 70lbs of honey per winter is more like 30w. The variation is considerable but it gives us an order of magnitude to understand the system. We can then understand that those 70lbs of honey in one type of hive cannot enable the bees to warm anything but the cluster but in another type can heat the entire hive to a significant degree.
  The thermodynamics are straightforward, how the bees behave to benefit or lose  is another matter.

[BlueBee]

When beeks start talking about wintering, you have to expect a heated discussion.  Happens every time.

Maybe I shouldn’t ask ….but do trees absorb much water in the winter?  In the summer, water is transported up through the living tissues (just under the bark) and sugars are transported down.  Water is transported up to support leaf growth and for cooling the tree in the summer.

[rdy-b]

When beeks start talking about wintering, you have to expect a heated discussion.  Happens every time.

Maybe I shouldn’t ask ….but do trees absorb much water in the winter?  In the summer, water is transported up through the living tissues (just under the bark) and sugars are transported down.  Water is transported up to support leaf growth and for cooling the tree in the summer.

lots of trees in my area keep there leaves -like the california oak--but the tan oak loses them
  hard to put a discussion like this in a one size fits all--RDY-B

[rdy-b]

*We can then understand that those 70lbs of honey in one type of hive cannot enable the bees to warm anything but the cluster but in another type can heat the entire hive to a significant degree.
  The thermodynamics are straightforward, how the bees behave to benefit or lose  is another matter.*

 seams to me what gets warmed is the air in the top of hive--RDY-B

[derekm]

When beeks start talking about wintering, you have to expect a heated discussion.  Happens every time.

Maybe I shouldn’t ask ….but do trees absorb much water in the winter?  In the summer, water is transported up through the living tissues (just under the bark) and sugars are transported down.  Water is transported up to support leaf growth and for cooling the tree in the summer.

The rotted wood inside a tree cavity seems very absorbent to me maybe the bees are with their heat and moisture increasing the hollowing process?

[rdy-b]

 yea may be--but we dont know for sure the wood is rotten--do we??
maybe they have covered it up with propolis like bees often do--the tree
is a thing of its own and not the best example for understanding--RDY-B

[CapnChkn]

Yep!

Trees need water in winter.

Bees propolize every surface.

[Finski]

yea may be--but we dont know for sure the wood is rotten--do we??

yes we do. How else a tree has a cavity if it is not rotten?
To old leave trees it is normal that the core is dead and rotten and the trunk has a living cylinder which grows as fast as inner material rottens.

There are hard rotten wood too but then no cavity. It depends what mushroom eates the trunk.

Bees carry out soft rotten wood fibres. So they tend to do in human made hives.

The tree trunk is wet all the time. It has not "normal dry wood" insulation values.

[rdy-b]

  relay --if they clean out the pulp--the rot is gone-at any rate tree is a bad example
of what goes  on in colony of bees-moving backwards to the days of GUM LOG HIVES
 for infanet wisdome somehow over looked- RDY-B

[JackM]

 JACKM--are you having problems wintering your bees in WA without
extra insulation--i would like to hear more about WA-Is it really that
cold or is it just wet-remember the bees inside the tree--inless that tree is dead
 dormant it is absorbing(and utilizing)
extra moisture that is a byproduct of the bees--we have run the topic
of insulation past its value at this point--but what else is going on--?? RDY-B

Don't have bees yet, trying to learn.  Very wet climate winter lows might get down to upper 20's and sometimes a teens night if it is clear.  Sometimes some freezing rain, rarely snow.  Rain.  Feet of rain.

[T Beek]

We had our first bit of freezing rain just last night (do I hear a celebration?), betcha my bees are in cluster now and finally slowing down, after three weeks of wandering about without anything to forage besides the buckets of syrup I provided.


(some trees, like some people, can be both rotten and still alive
thomas

[Finski]

(some trees, like some people, can be both rotten and still alive
thomas

important is that twig is hard

[T Beek]

Now that's funny Finski, actually LOL!!

thomas