Whats The Best Beehive - Poly Hives vs Wooden Hives - Which Beehive is Best
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- Whats The Best Beehive - Poly Hives vs Wooden Hives - Which Beehive is Best
This is one of the great beekeeping debates. Which is better? Poly hives or wooden hives. In this video I discuss the pros and cons of using poly and wooden hives.
This video was uploaded to UA-cam on 16th Sept 2020 and goes live on the channel in January 2021.
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I'm across the pond in USA and wondered about the durability of poly hives vs wood. Our market is flooded with hive kits from Asia and the wood is lightweight as compared to local pine. A neighbor was intrigued to see my bees were alive in wood hives after some very cold windy arctic weather. There is a plastic molded hive injected with poly insulation that is becoming popular but very costly, I have one on order to try it out.. Like you said, the bees will adapt and maintaining a strong colony is more important then the hive box.
I'm changing from all-timber National hives to Abelo poly brood boxes and leaving the rest of the hive in timber. Best of both worlds, and they work well here in Conwy, North Wales.
Hi Peter. Thats a system I know well. Works a treat! Everything is compatible and you get the insulation in all the right places. Which roofs do you use?
@@BlackMountainHoney I use timber roofs. I just buy Abelo poly brood boxes to replace my old timber brood boxes.
You won't get much benefit of insulation unless you use poly roofs
I‘ve got poly hives that allready have 50+ years of use, and sure they will do 20-50 more. But working with poly hives is different compared to wood and you have to adapt for that.
There is one big problem with poly, the walls are thicker, which means you need more room for them. In the end this easly means that you lose 40 hives on a full truck load
i love the fact you stuck up for both, for the ladies poly is easier to lift, and bejazzle, also i am in the scottish artic, it gets to -18 her sometimes and more importantly its damp, i started with my mentor with wood but am a maisiemore woman now. love my ladies.
Thanks Caroline. I dont think there is much between the two overall and some benefits are certainly location dependent. Scottish artic - I would definitely go for poly hives. Keep an eye out for my maisemore poly hive review coming up next week :)
i'm based in poland, and have wooden hives with poly isolation between 2 walls of wood, and full poly hives, one thing i noticed, poly has higher moisture wooden is dryer, also i have trouble keeping population of pseudoscorpions in my polly hives, while they do fine in wooden ones.
We moved bees a lot and some places we take them to have sheep in same field sheep will take a big bite out of poly hives but also lots of rabbits Around The Hives rabbits will nor on the corners of poly hives and rats so the bulk of our hives is wood for that reason.👍👏
In terms of durability there is only one winner. Once animals realised they can get in, they do make mincemeat of any poly hives.
We’re already at 12 years use on our paradise langstroth hives.
They will easily last 40+ years.
Coming from a background of equipment supply buying in bulk, the price is probably fairly comparable.
A good few bee farming businessss worldwide and UK do use poly hives commercially.
There is definitely a trend towards more bee farmers using poly. My swienty wont last 40 years without serious repair though! That silly scalloped edge gets damaged way too easily. Really poor design.
Thanks for an honest review.
I have been mulling over getting pollyhives for improved overwintering, but it sounds like that isn't a big factor.
Great video thanks. Im based in Poland im using Dadant Poly hives. The only 2 things i would had here are 1. Poly hives are light so its better making your own wooden roof which is heavy to keep it from blowing away. The Poly roofs will need bricks or ratchet straps. 2. One issue we sometimes have here are woodpeckers and raccoons can damage Poly hives if you keep them over winter in very rural areas. I have Poly deeps but made my own wooden bottom boards and roofs.
Cheers for the tips. We ratchet ours down to the stands over winter so eliminate any tipping. Wooden roofs work fine but do need to be fully insulated as we have issues with condensation above the cluster. We have issues here with badgers damaging poly hives. They go straight through them. Poly hives are definitely so much lighter though! We make our own wooden floors so save on cost and get the UFE
@@BlackMountainHoney Yes good point , I forgot to add my wooden roofs have metal cover then wooden planks then Styrofoam and again wooden planks so they pretty heavy which is good to eliminate bricks or straps. Over here straps can be costly if u run 150 hives. My roof does not sit directly on the brood box it sits on a 7 litre Poly feeder so it help too with insulation. Yes your right badgers are an issue, raccoons not.
@@mywaychannel1 Ah that sounds like an ideal set up. Poly feeder with insulated wooden roof will keep them nice and cosy! Best of luck with your bees! :)
Hi. Do you use screen bottom board with you polyhives or the solid ones? If solid - do you have any moisture problems in winter?
We use OMF floors on all of hives (see underfloor entrance video). We put a correx sheet underneath to stop drafts over winter. Dont have any issues with condensation above the cluster. A bit on the side walls is normal and fine for the bees
You missed out a cleaning con for poly hives compared to wooden hives?
Good information thanks for sharing this as poly hives become more available the best point is fit. If you can’t mix and match its best to be rich. Again thanks ( wood for this old man )👍🏽😂❤️❤️❤️
You will never find me arguing either way. Both are great and fit different situations :) I personally prefer the durability and aesthetics of wood, but like the insulation and weight of poly.
Great video, thanks! Poly are light and easy to use and move but not suitable for organic productions, isn't it?
Ive never actually considered that as in the UK you will struggle to find anywhere to accurately certify as organic. Wood is certainly deemed to be a more sustainable option but not sure if poly impacts on any other status.Thanks for watching.
@@BlackMountainHoney EPP is an alternative
Also which is the best hive Langstroth or commercial dont think anyone has done a vid on that. Great video buddy learning a lot.
Great idea for a video..cheers
@@BlackMountainHoney I would love to see it apparently the Langstroth is better for Queen rearing. Cheers mate
@@headbangingzuluuk5058 Ive already got a Langstroth vs national hive video set up and ready to go. Probably around April before its released though
@@BlackMountainHoney Thanks cannot wait to see it. All the best.
Great information. I'm going to stay with wood for now unless they become cost effective. Thanks
It really is down to personal preference in my opinion. Wood looks a lot nicer though :)
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What about in the tropics.u reckon poly would be better cause of high humidity
Had to move some boxes last night that I bought
There was one poly hive
All full off honey.
Poly hive caused me issues with the movement of the hive compared to wood.
Very strange. Ive never experienced that. What type of poly hive as they are not all made equal :D
Thanks and have a good Christmas. Hope you have not been washed away by the rain!
Cheers Peter. Happy Christmas to you too! Just about surviving
i had to make a wooden entrance for the hives, they did not like the shape of the polyhive entrance!
That's really interesting. Where they blocking it up with propolis?
@@BlackMountainHoney no they were scrapeing away the polystyrene under the entrance to make it the right shape, at first i thought it was the paint they didn't like, but when i compared the wooden entrance shape to the poly it was totally different, so made one the same as the wooden hive and that solved the problem
Better than both on performance and price is aerated concrete blocks built to suit the frames. Cost for a ZEST hive external envelope of 24 blocks x 600mm is less than £50 (volume exceeds 5 B.S. Brood chambers) and last almost for ever. Made from pulverised fuel ash, cement and a lot of air bubbles and has 39 times better Resistance (R) to the passage of heat then a wood one. What is there not to like?
Maybe that extraction is a PITA? 😉😘😉
@@BlackMountainHoney ZEST honey extraction, a Pain In The Ars. Indeed not Sir.
The average bee keeping association members have between them a small mortgage in bee extraction equipment. They often have a collective extractor, but it always seems to be in use when the extracting is going on, so everyone buys their own. The ZEST hive mission is to do MORE with LESS and that includes less stainless steel equipment and more free time.
It is not extracted, but crushed, being hung up and strained like your Great Granny used to do.
There is a ZEST video (EXTRACTING THE HONEY FROM THE ZEST HIVE) showing it on the web site
This is shockingly clean method in which the honey is not spread around your loved ones kitchen surfaces.
What is left in the drained down nylon mesh bag is rendered down in nylon stockings in a double saucepan in a honey heater at 43C. Initially, to get the honey out and then at 63C. to get the wax out. Alternatively it can be kept over winter and fed back to the bees in the spring as a stimulating, daily breakfast feed.
The merit of crushing and straining honey is that the bees draw out new comb every year from the 6 frames that they overwinter on. Varroa is not found in a ZEST or the diseases they perpetrate. I have never seen Noseama or Acarine in one and varroa are vanishingly rare and do not need treating.
So no, you do not have to spend a small fortune on stainless steel that may only get a few hours use each year. Furthermore the ZEST external envelope of aerated concrete insulation blocks costs about £50 and houses the same volume as about 5 boxes of B.S. National frames. The ZEST frames are double deep brood frames. They can be DIY or plastic from the ZEST hive Co. Natural comb is drawn down in the lattice frame made from T-bars
The bigger ZEST strategy is that the ZEST is intended to encourage low cost, small scale beekeeping widely rather than commercial. Every 50 houses a ZEST is the plan,..... which is sustainable forever.
@@williamsummers6438 Fantastically detailed answer but crush and strain on anything more a couple of hives is painfully tedious, slow and you lose a substantial amount of honey the following year when the bees have to draw the wax all over again. Appreciate I am coming at it from a commercial POV but extraction is definitely more tedious than traditional hives.
What do you think of the FlowHive?
Never actually used one but thinking I might get one to give it a whirl!
@@BlackMountainHoney I’m just waiting on delivery of one. Will be my first hive and I intend to video my progress. Hope to see some from you if and when you get one.
You lost me with carbon gasses, nonsense. Otherwise, thank you.
Clearly you need to learn more and put aside your backward conservatism.