Air conditioning for the beehive

Dear bee enthusiasts,

Dear friends of the foundation,

We have had a very warm summer here at our research site in Hungary. For the past two days, temperatures have been well below 30°C, after frequently fluctuating between 35°C and 40°C in June and even more so in July and August.

This was clearly too hot for the bees, and in one hive that was only in partial shade, we had a wax melt. To prevent this, we set up a research project using simple means and report here on the procedure and the results.

Here you can see a normal clay pot with a diameter of 20 cm. For the project, this pot was supplemented with another pot that had a diameter of 15 cm.

Here are the pots set up for the workshop, where we used them to equip the beehives:

The next step was to saw a hole with a diameter of 83 mm in the upper lid of the beehive.

This was easily done with the help of a hole saw and a drill. Then, one pot with a diameter of 15 cm and one pot with a diameter of 20 cm were watered for about 15 minutes each. Both pots were then placed on top of each other (first the smaller one, then the larger one) over the hole in the beehive.

We installed digital wireless thermometers in the beehives to monitor the temperature curve.

The results confirmed our theory that the evaporation of water causes cool air to enter the beehive through the hole, lowering the temperature by 2–4° Celsius. The first picture in this article shows a wireless thermometer used to monitor two hives. The first line shows a hive without ‘cooling’. The second and third lines show the temperature in two colonies with ‘cooling’. The bottom line shows the outside temperature. The humidity can be read on the right-hand side of the device. It is very pleasing that the system has the effect of significantly increasing the humidity to a good level.

We were able to measure these results over a period of six weeks at each hive at different temperatures, which were generally well above 30°C. The effect lasted for an average of over 6 hours. We installed the newly watered pots in the morning and replaced them around midday.

Our test model was also adopted by other beekeepers, who had the same experience. On average, temperatures were reduced by 3.3° Celsius over the 6-week test period in 10 bee colonies. This was a vital contribution to bee health, especially with outside temperatures close to 40 degrees.

We would like to thank all the helpers who were involved in setting up and contributed to the project, which shows us that positive results can be achieved with common sense combined with simple means.

Best regards and be(e) good,

Yours sincerely,

Klaus Heinzel