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| beehive heater |
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| metrologist:
My neighbor has beehives and they were talking about installing some kind of heater to keep the temp at 107F (42C) for a few hours or so when needed to kill bee mites. I'm thinking of helping them with the build, but I don't have an intuitive sense of a few things. The bee hives are made into a box from wood planks, and there are honeycomb frames. The typical kind of setup. Some of the ideas are to string nichrome wire around inside the box or through the frames, or otherwise set up a heating tube with a fan. What size wire gauge should I consider if stringing through the frames (i.e., is 30ga too thin)? I'd probably try 24ga for a heating tube, and I think a heating tube would be easiest. If ambient temps are 40F (4C), about how much power do we think we need? The hives are currently wrapped in ~2inches of foam board insulation. I would use a few temp sensors and Arduino for control. |
| Stray Electron:
I wouldn't use a bare nichrome wire or anything like that as a heating element. Sooner or later dust or bee wax or other debris will build up on it and when the heater comes on and gets hot, it's going to start a fire. I would only use some kind of heater where the heating element is embedded in a tank of oil or other liquid. It will supply the same amount of heat but at a lower (and safer) temperature and the greater mass will hold down the temperature swings. I would use something like this as a heater. https://www.amazon.com/oil-space-heaters/s?k=oil+space+heaters Most of these already have a built in thermostat but if the heater was placed under the hive it may not be accurate so I would add a second and maybe a third thermostat located in the hive. I've never heard of heating a hive to get rid of the bee mites. Can the bees withstand that kind of temperature or do they need to be taken out of the hive first? Also does that temperature damage the wax combs? |
| metrologist:
This is a commercial version available in another country: https://www.vatorex.ch/en/beekeeping-solutions/varroa-solution/ Apparently, they cannot import to the US, or it's too costly. I did not research that. Beeswax melts at a higher temperature, ~140F. But I think a lot of wire would need to be strung through the combs to have effective heating since you can't let the wire get much hotter than the desired temperature. This is why I was considering an air heated system. |
| james_s:
How about a good old fashioned incandescent lightbulb? They are quite efficient as heaters. If the light is a problem they can be enclosed in an opaque metal box. Putting two identical bulbs in series will dramatically extend the life and substantially reduce the amount of visible light produced. |
| Gyro:
I don't know how the bees would tolerate it, but I would have though blowing in warm air would be the most effective way of uniformly heating such a skeletal structure. Probably with some form of temporary outer thermally insulated cover (Edit: which it sounds like you already have). Is this a frequent treatment? You mentioned several hours. I suspect it comes down to whether it is something that needs to be permanently installed versus something you can sensibly carry to individual hives. |
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