At 04:46 PM 1/19/96 -400, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>The Museum of Natural History in Nova Scotia is considering setting up
>a demonstration bee hive the help visitors learn about bees,
>pollination and insects in general.  Does anyone have any references,
>advice or experiences with demonstration hives set up indoors?  We
>were wondering things like:
>
>How far are bees willing to travel, say through a plexiglass tube, to
>reach the outdoors?
 
Dallas is quite different from Nova Scotia climate, but ...
  Bees at Science Place Museum in Dallas travel a little more than three
feet to reach the outdoors through a three inch diameter clear plastic tube.
This hive design has been operational for nearly two years now and it does
not seem to stress the bees.  The tube is tilted slightly towards the
outdoors to drain any condensation.
  The original hive design at Science Place DID have some tube problems.
Since bees naturally tend to move towards the light when seeking exit from
the hive, we found that the tube connection to the hive needed to be located
in the direction where the most light is coming from.  Normally, this is
near an upper corner of the hive near the glass front.
  We added a lower entrance too, so the undertaker bees could do their thing.
  Ventilation was another thing we learned the hard way.  It became
important for our hive to have no ventilation from inside the room for two
reasons: (1) In public buildings there is almost always an air pressure
differential between the outdoors and indoors, so any source of hive
ventilation from the room can cause a wind flow through the hive; (2) The
bees can better gauge the outdoor temperature without the airflow from the
building.  We do have some condensation inside the hive.
   Direct sunlight on the plexiglass can cook the hive.
>
>How do they react to lighting of the hive interior (eg. through
>plexiglass sides) or movement of people near the hive?
>
 
  Light or people movement in the hives generally shouldn't be a problem.
Queens will regularly lay near the plexiglass if the hive is no more than
three or four frames wide. There is a trade-off here:  Fewer frames width
give better viewing of brood area (forcing the brood against the glass), but
narrow hives stress the bees more.
  An outdoor observation hive at the Dallas Arboretum that I maintain is
only two frames wide and it overwintered nicely for the past two years
(However, I'm sure the bees would prefer a width more suited to a spherical
winter cluster!).  Single-width observation hives generally stress the bees
too much for permanent displays, IMHO.
 
>
>Calum Ewing
>Registrar
>Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History
>E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>
>URL:  http://rs6000.nshpl.library.ns.ca/nsmuseum/summer.html
>
 
Regards,
John in Dallas