From: Murray McGregor <[log in to unmask]>
Newsgroups: sci.agriculture.beekeeping
Subject: Re: thickness of the hive wall
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 08:56:22 +0100

>His position is: A hive built from thin wood
>is as good as a hive built from styropor.
>Bees in a "cold" wood hive have a steeper
>development in spring and you can earn as much honey
>as from "warm hive bees".

I run hundreds each way, and I can assure you this is not in keeping
with my experience (in Scotland).

If I could afford it at this time I would convert the lot over to the
polystyrene and have a big fire of the wooden ones.

The wintering performance is vastly better, with losses far lower, and
spring strength much better. This is comparing like with like too, as we
have both wooden and polystyrene Langstroth hives.

The honey production point is a little less obvious until you really do
the sums. The spring growth of the wooden hives does indeed seem to be
faster, with an earlier start to breeding, but suddenly the polystyrene
ones get  going and overtake  the wooden ones.

In 2002 we had a really good wintering in the polystyrene ones, but
pretty modest in the wooden. Losses were a pretty high 18% in the wooden
ones, but only 4% in the polystyrene. The strength of the wooden ones
was on average about three bars of bees less. The wooden ones were not
of adequate bee power to work the rape, and indeed were still being
boosted between colonies right up until late June. The polystyrenes were
ready to go right from the first flowering of the rape. (This proved an
academic issue here this year as there was virtually no crop anyway due
to poor weather)

The polystyrene ones mostly gave a split in May, which refilled many of
the wooden ones, plus an increase in numbers on the polys. These were
back to splitting strength again in late June and needed further
attention to prevent swarming. About 30% of them were split again at
this time. Their recovery rate from splitting is tremendous, and very
few of them went on to the heather below production strength.

We are still extracting, and thus far we find the polystyrenes running
at around 29Kg of heather each, and the woodens at around 23Kg. Not
seemingly a big difference, but if you take into account the fact that
around 20% of the woodens are actually splits from the polystyrenes, and
that the polystyrenes themselves gave further increase, and draw a line
back to last autumn, then every wooden hive put down to last winter went
on to average 18Kg of heather, whilst those in polystyrene account for
37Kg.
Slightly more than double.

Previous measures in 1999 and 2000 gave similar results, whilst 1998 was
even more remarkable insofar as the parent polystyrenes (this was only a
small experimental unit at this time) alone averaged double that of the
wooden hives, plus they gave an average of two splits each whose crops
were not even added in to their average. 2001 went somewhat against the
trend as there was a severe dearth of nectar on the heather, and the
increased brood rearing in the polys caused increased stores consumption
and the bees then needed fed earlier than those in wood. In the end they
all got a bit, but crop (after deduction of summer feeding) was only
slightly (10%) higher in the polys.

Much of the early season effort in these hives appears to be devoted to
brood rearing and colony development, and spring crop can be
surprisingly poor. No worse than wooden hives for sure, but less than
you would expect. I do not keep apiary by apiary statistics for blossom
honey, but there is always less on the polystyrenes than you would
expect. Summer harvests such as phacelia and spring rape do show them up
well though, with them filling deep supers quickly as well as putting on
a lot of 'condition' for the heather crop to come.

Bro. Adam was operating in a different climate from ourselves, however
there are also some merits in his statements. US boxes are markedly
thinner than their British equivalent, so much so that you can struggle
get 10 US frames into a British box, yet there is apparently no
difference in the wintering or summer performance of these. About 30% of
our wooden Langstroths will be on US boxes and they perform exactly the
same as the thicker UK ones.
--
Murray McGregor