I don't remember that Ann but I bet it was the same lecture. The striking
visual image I retain is, Derek Mitchell and his wife piling jerry cans on the
table to show you how much nectar needed to be collected to create one can of
honey. It was something like 7 in a well insulated hive and 25 in a normal
National.He was appealing to the honey oriented beekeepers, "you will make much
more honey if you give them warm hives".
Paul
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On Monday, 18 November 2019 17:35, Ann Welch <ann.welch123@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think I attended that talk as well Paul. Did they have a National of some
sort with a silvered inside? Made out of something like kingspan insulation
sheets or something similar? I seem to remember he taped it together with a
metallic tape. Or am I remembering something completely different ?
Ann
On 18/11/2019 16:56, Paul Honigmann (Redacted sender paul.honigmann for
DMARC) wrote:
I see the article is by Derek Mitchell. I attended a lecture by him way back
in 2015, I was very impressed by him, and wrote up some details
[here](https://oxnatbees.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/warm-hives/).
One of the interesting things about Derek is that he was not a beekeeper.
Well he may be now but not when he did the original research. His wife was
the beekeeper; he himself was an instrumentation engineer who did a lot of
thermal modelling of things for customers, and he got wondering about the
thermal insulation of the boxes his wife used to keep bees in.
So when he published his results they were in the form of a scientific paper
backed up by mathematical models confirmed by experiment, and he was not
seen as having any bias on the subject, so even the most traditional
beekeepers paid attention. So rare to hear something objective in the
subject which is not just opinion based on experience, or a study of a small
number of hives.
Great to see he is writing in popular press outside the craft, and raising
awareness of such issues this way.
Paul
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On Monday, 18 November 2019 14:02, Juli Cohen
[<juliane.cohen@xxxxxxxxx>](mailto:juliane.cohen@xxxxxxxxx) wrote:
Thanks for sharing this, Lucy. It was a very interesting article.
Juli
On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 at 12:44, Lucy Owen <lucy.m.owen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I read this and thought some of you might be interested in the scientific
approach here, which is confirming what natural beekeepers know already —
that bees thrive better in natural shaped hives. I don’t like what he says
at the end about polystyrene hives much (for reasons discussed on this
forum previously!), but apart from that, I thought he talked sense. Will
wait and see what the rest of you think!
https://theconversation.com/to-save-honey-bees-we-need-to-design-them-new-hives-121792?fbclid=IwAR30hAd1IAwxaIM-_wv8y9f9qbAZ9OcXHRLAHmTBQVm9jzebPDhKSNV38wY
All best
Lucy
