# How much moisture is added to the hive, from respiration, over the winter?



## Kofu (Jan 26, 2011)

Here's a science question for the chemistry nerds here. The answer should be fairly simple, but I can't give a precise answer with any confidence. My year of high school chemistry was a very long time ago...

*If the bees in a hive eat and burn off 60 pounds of honey during the winter, how many pounds of water do they off-gas as a byproduct of cellular respiration?* (Plus the water in the honey.)

I've found a "cellular respiration equation" for pure glucose. (C[SUB]6[/SUB]H[SUB]12[/SUB]O[SUB]6[/SUB]) + 6(O[SUB]2[/SUB]) => 6(CO[SUB]2[/SUB]) + 6(H[SUB]2[/SUB]O) + heat

Oxygen is heavier than carbon, right? It's comes into the hive in the air, for the bees to use in burning the honey. The same amount of oxygen leaves the hive as carbon dioxide, taking with it all the carbon from the sugar. Assuming a clean burn, the weight of the water would be the same as what the glucose weighed, minus the carbon.

So my best guess would be something like 35-40 pounds of water? (A pint's a pound, which makes it as much as five gallons of water...)

Honey's part glucose and part fructose, and also part water. So let's finish off this problem. Lots of statistics get tossed around — how many flowers does a bee visit to make a teaspoon of honey, etc. If we could say a hive has to vent off five gallons of water during the winter (or whatever the number), that might be at least as impressive to a beekeeper. I'm reading about beekeepers looking at dead-outs and wondering why it's all so moldy in there. Maybe the answer is a simple matter of chemistry.


----------



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Whether it's chemistry or physics, I swear by quilt boxes.

Some of the moisture-laden air would vent more or less constantly through the upper entrance and any small cracks in the hive - particularly on windy days when the wind would create more air exchanges through any opening in the hive. 

I know my quilt boxes are working to remove a lot of moisture because it is fairly common to see a thick layer of frost around the vent hole above the QB, and on any day when the sun hits the area I will see water dripping off of the edges of the hole. The shavings inside the QB can feel damp-ish so they are absorbing moisture from the air rising up through the fabric floor.

Recently I visited a colony that had a BeeMax top feeder on top of the upper box, with no upper entrance. (The beekeeper had left it full of sugar syrup which froze when it got down to 20 below!) Aside from not providing the food she intended, the other problem was that there was no vent on top of the hive because the feeder precluded having an inner cover at all. So the warm, moisture-laden air rose, hit the smooth bottom of the feeder, condensed and ran down (or rained down, not sure which) inside the hive. When I saw it (mid-March) there was water seeping out across the whole width of the front entrance under the reducer. I pried out the reducer and found the bottom board packed solidly with dead bees - in fact the dead bees were a couple of inches thick over the whole floor. I made a bit of a passageway through the corpses and some weak bees staggered out. I could hear bees inside the hive in a roar and the slot to the feeder was jam packed with squirming bees, but the frozen syrup had thawed and then dried into thick plates and blocking them from accessing it. The beekeeper was out of state, but she gave me permission to add a vent right away, which I did by putting on a feeding rim, stocking it with winter patty since the bees were also almost completely out of food. 

Even though it's very late in the season, a few days later we put on an improvised quilt box to try and pull some more moisture out - and improve the sodden state of the hive. I thought this colony might not make it, but they seem to be reviving themselves. Hopefully when I take a peek in at them tomorrow I'll find them chugging right along, albeit in a small cluster due to all the lost bees. Tough little bugs!

Enj.


----------



## libhart (Apr 22, 2010)

No idea if this is right. Someone else can correct it if not.
Fructose has the same formula as glucose, just the arrangement of the atoms is different. I think (grain of salt) in humans that fructose is converted to glucose before being burned. Wouldn't be surprised if the same thing is happening in bees, so your formula holds for both sugars.

Assume honey is 18% water give or take. I'm going to use 60lbs of honey as a "winter's worth" and I'm going to convert to metric and round a little to make the numbers easier to read. We're also assuming that honey is nothing but fructose/glucose and water. Not really true but for the purposes of the illustration, why not.

27.22kg of honey = 4.9kg water + 22.32kg of sugars 

glucose/fructose have a molecular weight of 180.16 g/mole. 
22.32kg * (1000g/1kg) * (1 mole/180.16g) = 123.89 moles of sugars

Your formula tells us that for every mole of sugar we'll get 6 moles of water, so we have 743.34 moles of water.
Water's molecular weight is 18g/mole. 743.34 moles * (18g/1 mole) * (1kg/1000g) = 13.38kg of water via respiration

Adding these 13.38kg of water to the 4.9kg the honey just has in it gives us 18.28kg or 40.3lbs of water.

Assuming this is right, your guess was very close if starting with 60lbs of honey. Of course we're neglecting the amount of waste held in the bee until they get their bathroom break. But I know what you're saying about giving the number as an illustrative tool. It really is something around 5 gallons that needs to go which is quite a lot and obviously cannot be ignored.


----------



## Kofu (Jan 26, 2011)

libhart said:


> Adding these 13.38kg of water to the 4.9kg the honey just has in it gives us 18.28kg or 40.3lbs of water. [ :applause: ]
> 
> Assuming this is right, your guess was very close if starting with 60lbs of honey. ... It really is something around 5 gallons that needs to go which is quite a lot and obviously cannot be ignored.


Wow, *five gallons ! !* You would think that number might get mentioned more often... We have 5-gallon buckets, so it's an easy amount to visualize. 60 pounds of honey is a fair amount for the bees to consume in the winter, so yes, 5 gallons of water is produced in the process. Science! Isn't it marvelous?

This topic comes up occasionally on BeeSource, but the actual volume of water didn't come up. I searched for 'respiration' and 'C6H12O6', both of which have quite a few hits over the years. So before next winter I'm going to be thinking more carefully about building insulated covers with vent holes, or developing my own quilt box system.

This line of thinking was triggered by reading a beekeeper who wondered why his hive was so moldy and stinky at the end of winter, and he had a quilt box. So thinking about how 5 gallons of water has to get out of the hive, can the material in a quilt box get saturated (under what conditions?) — and so soaking wet that moisture-laden air doesn't get through anymore.


----------



## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Kofu said:


> and so soaking wet that moisture-laden air doesn't get through anymore.


And it dang sure won't insulate anymore so more condensation will form in the hive. In order for insulation to remain insulation it has to be water proof.


----------



## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

I just saw a Canadian figure of .67 KG of water per KG of honey yesterday.


----------



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I think the key issue is to not get the idea that the shavings (or the top feed dry sugar) should absorb and hold the moisture produced by the bees metabolizing all that honey. I think it is easier to get your head around if you think of the layer of shavings as transporting and providing a large evaporative surface to the outside air; then the need for free air flow can be above the shavings layer and the upper and lower entrances can be greatly restricted. I try to keep the heat in and let the water out! Better out the top than freezing an inch or more of ice in the bottom of the hive that can happen without proper ventilation.


----------



## Kofu (Jan 26, 2011)

Vance G said:


> I just saw a Canadian figure of .67 KG of water per KG of honey yesterday.


:applause: Excellent! Confirmation. 40.3 / 60 = .672 aka 67%, by weight. And another easy number to keep in mind.


----------



## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

crofter said:


> I try to keep the heat in and let the water out!


If the moisture is removed from the hive the latent heat is also gone.


----------



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Acebird said:


> If the moisture is removed from the hive the latent heat is also gone.



I let it go through the change of state mid way through the shavings so the latent heat is recovered there.  Actually there is one more change of state as the liquid eventually goes to frost on top of the shavings in the coldest weather. My bees thank me for their dry surroundings and a minimum of drafts below the 4 inches of loose shavings.

Whether we analyse it in minute technical detail or not, the reality of a lot of moisture results from their honey consumption (up to 5 gallons) and there are more and less efficient means of handling it. Letting it condense on an inner cover and subsequently drip on the bees is an expensive mishandling of moisture. Wet bees really reduce the R value of the cluster!


----------



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

In my experience Frank is correct - the key to the success of quilt bxes is having adequate ventilation above the shavings to allow them to dry out and release the water to the dry outdoor winter atmosphere.

I live in very cold climate (but not as cold as Frank, thankfully) and I hang all my laundry out to dry, all year round. Sometimes when I'm hanging it out in January it is already frozen solid before I am done (I wear specially insulated ice rescue gloves otherwise I'd have lost some digits by now.) But the very dry winter just sucks the latent moisture from my stuff at an astonishingly fast rate. 

The same thing happens to the absorbed moisture in the shavings in a QB - provided there is sufficient pathway for it to get out. 

It's kind of a multi-faceted thing: you need a way for the moisture to move out of the hive proper: that means having no vapor retardation or condensation plane in the ceilling of the bees' space/floor of the quilt box. Above that you need some material that can act as a temporary moisture reservoir and thermal buffer between the interior atmosphere and the outside air. This is why the quilt box is filled with wood shavings. 

As an aside on the topic of fillings: I have seen people suggest sawdust, dry leaves and straw or hay. Each of these three seems less desirable than wood shavings, though in slightly but important ways. 

Sawdust would be too dense, I believe. When I have examined piles of sawdust that have gotten wet, the damp layers are stratified, perhaps because there is little pore space within with the material.. And for sure you want the air, with the moisture it's carrying, to be moving through - and out - of QB filling.

Dry leaves, on the other hand, offer a different problem: most leaves have a fairly smooth, small-celled outer cuticle layer on them as a means of protecting and conserving the moisture necessary for photosynthesis. Though they are airier than dense sawdust, they wouldn't be good absorbers of moisture, so it's possible any excess might actually start to drip down off them, back down through the fabric floor of the QB.

But straw or hay have still a different problem: They provide a lot of external surface that can become packed down, and it is usually already quite contaminated by bacteria and mold spores. Think of a pile of hay mulch - the top surface may seem dry, but just underneath it is teeming with all the agents of decomposition that may it such a valuable source of organic matter in your garden. Fine for your strawberries, but the very last thing you would want above your bees: warm, damp, confined, air. I doubt if bees aspire to live like ants, under a compost pile.

For my money, wood shavings, planer shavings or shavings made to be sold for animal bedding, are nearly ideal: being mostly the internal parts of wood they are less contaminated than leaves or grass stems with the microbiota designed to transform it back into organic matter. They are not sterile, of course, but just from previously protected parts of tree stems. Generally they are soft wood, usually pine, and so their cellular structure - exposed by the shavings-making processes - is open to absorbing and then releasing moisture from the air. They are large enough pieces to allow air transit, yet compactable enough to effectively mitigate against too much air transfer from the bees' warmed space (_not_ going to re-litigate the bee's hive-heating capacity here) to the frigid outdoors. The is particularly critical because you need wide-open holes above the shavings to make this whole shebang work. I have two 1" diameter holes above my QBs. These are always open, even on days and nights down at 20 below, with windchills nearing fifty below. Yet my bees, tucked snugly below the QB are safe and not stressed, because the 4-5" layer of shavings which acts as insulation - while simultaneously performing the moisture removal trick.

Pretty neat, huh? Almost as neat as bees themselves.

Anyway, that's what I think it takes to make QBS work so well - and why. I am keen to keep this discussion going since it will help when I pull to together my little essay on QBs over the summer.

Please chime in!

My apologies for getting into so far the weeds on my QB hobby horse! 

And now, let's get back to discussing Kofu's very interesting observation about the amount water created by the metabolism of 60 lbs of honey. Fortunately it's not all awash at the same time, but over an extended period. A five gallon bucket is about as tall as the stacks many people winter in. But this is the Bee Forum, not an aquarium forum. I think high relative humidity in the hive is an important topic, but I don't see much data about. 

Enj.


----------



## Kofu (Jan 26, 2011)

Acebird said:


> If the moisture is removed from the hive the latent heat is also gone.





crofter said:


> I let it go through the change of state mid way through the shavings so the latent heat is recovered there.  Actually there is one more change of state as the liquid eventually goes to frost on top of the shavings in the coldest weather. My bees thank me for their dry surroundings and a minimum of drafts below the 4 inches of loose shavings.





enjambres said:


> The key to the success of quilt boxes is having adequate ventilation above the shavings to allow them to dry out and release the water to the dry outdoor winter atmosphere. ... I have two 1" diameter holes above my QBs. These are always open, even on days and nights down at 20 below, with windchills nearing fifty below. Yet my bees, tucked snugly below the QB are safe and not stressed, because the 4-5" layer of shavings which acts as insulation - while simultaneously performing the moisture removal trick. ...
> 
> I am keen to keep this discussion going since it will help when I pull to together my little essay on QBs.


I'm interested to help with your essay, Enj. All in the context of our newly established "fact" that the hive has about 5 gallons of extra water to deal with during the winter. 

Several questions:

First of all, vents or Quilt Boxes? The standard approach is to have a vent at the top of the hive. Departing air carries with it the water vapors (and latent heat) from combusted honey. So in what conditions do QBs provide an advantage?

I'm in Philadelphia. We have cold spells with temperatures below 10° for several nights running, and staying in the teens and 20s for a week or two at a time. So I suppose we're in the North-South grey zone where either vents or QBs would work alright.

Second question, outside humidity — how does it factor in? Winter is not, for most of us, steady temperatures and levels of humidity for long stretches of time. When outside temperatures are above dewpoint, but it's still fairly cold, air intake already carries a load of water vapor. Probably in the course of a winter, a lot more than five gallons of water passes through the hive. 

Is there an East-West dimension? In the western U.S., especially with the ongoing drought, air doesn't carry so much water into the hive. In England, damp during the winter is a big problem, at least for people. In different parts of the world, how much air needs to pass through? The bees need oxygen to burn their honey, but more than that?

Third question, relative humidity in the hive — good or bad? If the air is nearly saturated in the hive, and we can avoid water dripping onto the bees, is that alright? Maybe that gets to Brian's point about latent heat? I'm picturing bees in a hole in a tree, water (more than 5 gallons of it!) trickling down the sides of the hole and collecting at the bottom, generating rot that can expand their space. In this scenario, is water so bad? What about in a Langstroth hive? Or a top-bar?

As humans, we talk about how nice it is to be "snug and dry." What about bees? :s

These questions are discussed in other threads. Now we have a new piece of information about how much extra water the hive has to deal with during the winter. We know that many colonies die during the winter, and too much water is considered to be the critical factor. What are the other factors, and what equipment and maneuvers affect how they play out?


----------



## Bear Creek Steve (Feb 18, 2009)

enjambres & Kofu,

I would like to join in as a fellow collaborator on this QB discussion too. CO is low humidity year round. I have been running QBs for the past 5-6 years and tweaking them a bit each year. Four inch high QB with wood shavings, and 8-10 1" diameter screened holes within shavings at the 2" level. In winter restricted flow SBB and open upper and lower 1 X 3/8 entries. Insulated and tar paper wrapped (still) and was below freezing last night. Prefer to communicate by e-mail, thus PM me for address.

Steve


----------



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

The situation with high outside relative humidity is very interesting. Intuitively it would seem that more air exchange in the hive would help carry off the moisture the bees add by metabolizing honey. Yet the more air we pass through the more moisture we bring in and the more heat we carry off. Remember how bees cool the hive in summer by evaporating water they haul in. 

Would it be better to limit the intake of more moist air from outside and instead allow the moisture produced to exit out the top through a layer of shavings. The layer of shavings will have a temperature gradient that reduces as it gets closer to the outside air temperature. At this point the moisture will condense but it will be drawn upward by wicking action (capilliary attraction) It will be evaporated into the outsid air. The energy to evaporate it will come from the outside air instead of the bee warmed air. Remember that air near its saturation point will not take on more water unless you heat it or in this case the bees heat it.


----------



## Kofu (Jan 26, 2011)

Bear Creek Steve said:


> enjambres & Kofu,
> I would like to join in as a fellow collaborator on this QB discussion too. ... Prefer to communicate by e-mail, thus PM me for address.
> Steve


And Frank, and Brian... And anyone else who wants. :gh:

For me, most of the collaboration happens here. Enjambres is pulling together an essay, perhaps this summer, and meanwhile we can all hash through the various factors. I don't have a Quilt Box yet, so for me it's mostly hypothetical, but the North-South and East-West dimensions are becoming more obvious, and it's good to have your low humidity perspective in the mix, Steve.

I may play devil's advocate in these discussions. Going back to my #1 question — why build (buy?) a quilt box apparatus when vents might work just as well? Five gallons sounds like a lot of water, but winter is long so it can eke out over time. And in my mind's eye, I keep going back to that hole in a tree, with one rather small entrance hole. There the comb is anchored at the top, but the walls slope away so water generally doesn't condense and drip down on the bees. Would a good quilt box and limited ventilation replicate those conditions? You'd want to wick out some of the excess water (5 gallons!) but maybe keep a fairly high level of moisture and its latent heat in the hive... :scratch:


----------



## Bear Creek Steve (Feb 18, 2009)

Kofu et.al.,

I'm cool with the communications.

In your hypothetical bee tree or gum, yes, I think that a QB would be very similar, except that more moisture would be retained inside (the gum), or at least in my case I make an effort to remove it from the QB with all of the holes. I also believe that the gum is lined with punk wood which is likely very much like a sponge in that it will tend to retain moisture. 

Steve


----------



## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

crofter said:


> The layer of shavings will have a temperature gradient that reduces as it gets closer to the outside air temperature.


It can condense and it can freeze which will kill the air flow and totally eliminate the R value of the shavings. In CO I wouldn't expect the problem but in the Mohawk Valley and many other Valleys you could be taking a risk. After this season you should be mindful of how the weather can be different than the norm. A QB works when it works and when it doesn't watch out.


----------



## Shasta Bees (Feb 11, 2015)

What a bunch of dorks.. 

Y'all need to take it a step further and calculate the ATP production based on Glycolysis and Kreb Cycle and how many beats of wings that translate to for 10% of the bees that Foragers per day. :thumbsup:


----------



## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

My quilt boxes get beads of water on them when I have a booming hive. If a small or quiet hive I see nothing. I have never had one get significantly wet.


----------



## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Acebird said:


> It can condense and it can freeze which will kill the air flow and totally eliminate the R value of the shavings.


If the moisture in the wood shavings is indeed _frozen _to the point that airflow is "killed", then the R-value of the shaving are not "totally eliminated" at all. The R-value of the frozen _wood _shavings should be similar to the R-value of frozen _wood_ (i.e. green _wood _that does not have significant air passages in it.) A _tree_, for instance.


----------



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Oh, my!

This is so interesting and exciting and I'm delighted to have sparked some conversation on this topic.

I'll add comments directed at specific commenters - just for purposes of clarity - but I'm hoping everybody feels free to pitch ideas in. This will be fun!

*@ Kofu*
Vents vs QB? Well, I think you could have vents by themselves, but you can't have a QB without vents. A no-vent QB would just keep accumulatng the moisture until it reached saturation. If the temps were freezing the moisture would be held on the surface of the wood, and then in growing layers of frost and ice (similar to how a flowing fountain freezes.) But as soon as the temps got above normal you have dripping, sodden mess.

Could vents do they job as well as QB, but by themselves? Perhaps, but the heat loss/energy costs would be higher. My upper entrance in the winter is quite literally just the diameter of my index finger, which I use to make a hole in the cardboard cover, so perhaps 1/2"-5/8", max. While I want air to leave the hive (to reduce C02 and keep air quality healthy) I don't want too much to leave since that draws in unheated air from the similarly small hole left open in the traditional lower entrance. (My bees move up out of their lower box as I keep taller and narrower stacks.) Of course is also coming in through the box meeting surfaces, despite propolis. Some of my feeding rims have foam weatherstripping along their meeting surfaces, but not all. This improves the seal between the feeding rim and the QB where the fabric is attached, and is fairly lumpy. 

I want to give my bees a warm, protected space at the top of their hive to hang out in and to find their winter supplemental food. 

Relative humidity (in and out) I think (though I have seen no data) bees need a higher humidity than we do, certainly when they have eggs or open brood humidity would be a plus to avoid drying them out.Humidity, of course is function of temperature, warm air can hold more moisture than cold, that's what makes dew fall in the evening. So the warmth in the cluster and in any space where the heat given off by the cluster is retained would hold more moisture as vapor than a hive with more air-flow that it is cold. Perhaps one of the affects of having the shavings overhead is also to retain that radiant heat loss and thus hold more moisture in its vapor state, than its liquid state. 

My upstate NY winters are dry, but nowhere near a xeric as CO. And when we have a good snow pack, and clear nights where the temps plummet, the humidity rises as the air cools, the air-vapor condenses, and freezes on every surface. It creates a magical, crystalline world for a few hours in the early morning.

It would be interesting to dig into the NOAA records and see how the outdoor relative humidity varies from location to location in the winter.

I have wondered whether a good QB should be accompanied by some kind of bee watering device. I think bees must need water to liquify sugar bricks, and perhaps also to thin honey for consumption. I have noodled on how to do this, but not come up with satisfactory solution. I have thought of little bowls (with tiny pebbles) filled with water set in the corners on the topbars in the feeding rim, or some kind of on-demand dibbler like my rabbits use. Refilling is the issue .... Somehow it seems absurd to add water underneath a moisture-removal device. Do you think it's possible that having a readily available in-hive water source would affect the bees need for cleansing flights? I see bees going out and drinking (and presumably hauling back) water from drips and icicles, the later being quite often fatal to the bees when they get frozen to it.

*@Acebird and Rader Sidetrack:*

I can't imagine QB's freezing. I have never seen any evidence (in my whole two seasons of use!) of that. When I open up the QB, even when the shavings show some eveidance of dampness, and even a touch of frost on top, it is not by any means frozen because it is not that wet. The shavings at the bottom are a bit darker in color (which is how I usually assess for moisture) but subtantially warmer. It's warmth I can easily feel. Where I see frost fairly commonly is on the undersurface of the telecover on the bottom of its insulation.One of the reasons I insulate above the QB - seems silly, doesn't it, when I have vents below that - is that I want to keep that condensation/frost off the wooden underside of the lid itself to avoid mildew growth that might carry over into the warmth months.

*@Kofu and Bear Creek:*

Re Bee gums: My goal in all my winter hive-design tinkering is to mimic natural cavities, whether trhou thicker more insulative walls, different pattterns or radiational blocking of insulative material overhead. It's interesting to think of the punky would being absorbent (and being, in turned transformed by) hive moisture.

I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it today when I had the QBs lifted and the hive partially uninsulated, but I think that I should take some photos of my QBs in action, and so we can have some common visual references. Everything is once again restore to full winter-config as we are expecting more snow and cold temps over the weekend. But after that I will begin to peel things gradually back off again.

*@WBVC:*

I often have frost, and even dripping water (in certain conditions) outside and around the vent holes above th QBs in front of the hives. (I can't see the rear vent holes as they are concealed under the blanket and tarp over-wrappings.

*@Shasta Bees:* 

You're laughing now, but last summer I kept my upper vents & QBS on (but not filled with shavings) instead of using inner covers. I thought my hives did quite well with the controlled ventilation. Perhaps QBs are the answer for hot climates like yours, too!

Will get some pics as soon as possible. One thing to consider is that my experience with QBs may be substantially affected by my other weird winter practices, and not necessarily transferrable to hives without screwy keepers.

Enj.


----------



## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Shasta Bees said:


> What a bunch of dorks..
> 
> Y'all need to take it a step further and calculate the ATP production based on Glycolysis and Kreb Cycle and how many beats of wings that translate to for 10% of the bees that Foragers per day. :thumbsup:


Foragers in the winter?


----------



## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> The R-value of the frozen _wood _shavings should be similar to the R-value of frozen _wood_ (i.e. green _wood _that does not have significant air passages in it.) A _tree_, for instance.


If a tree has enough moisture in it and it is cold enough when it freezes it will explode. It sounds like a shot gun going off. Fortunately trees dry up in the winter and there isn't enough moisture so it doesn't happen that often.


----------



## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

So I guess you are saying we don't have to worry about _exploding_ frozen quilt boxes?   _What a relief_!  Thanks!





... now we can get back to worrying about _octopi with only *7 *arms_ ...


----------



## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

enjambres said:


> I want to give my bees a warm, protected space at the top of their hive to hang out in and to find their winter supplemental food.


However each gram of water leaves the hive the latent heat goes with it.


> My upstate NY winters are dry,





> I can't imagine QB's freezing. I have never seen any evidence (in my whole two seasons of use!) of that.


Contrary to what you believe your winters are no more severe then mine. We are at the same latitude. However you are much dryer than I am. If the conditions are right a QB will freeze and when they are not right a QB will work. I contend that when they work they are no better than not having them. Just put a sheet of 2 in foam on top of your hive and it will remain at the same R value in all moisture conditions.


----------



## Kofu (Jan 26, 2011)

enjambres said:


> Vents vs QB? Well, I think you could have vents by themselves, but you can't have a QB without vents. A no-vent QB would just keep accumulatng the moisture until it reached saturation. If the temps were freezing the moisture would be held on the surface of the wood, and then in growing layers of frost and ice (similar to how a flowing fountain freezes.) But as soon as the temps got above normal you have dripping, sodden mess.


It sounds like the vent in your set-up carries out a lot of the moisture with the air that leaves that way. How far below the QB is the vent? I can imagine a 'dome' of warm moist air in the space below the QB, with materials in the quilt wicking out moisture and/or capturing it as it eases through the shavings, to be evaporated or sublimed off at the top of the layer.



> Could vents do they job as well as QB, but by themselves? Perhaps, but the heat loss/energy costs would be higher. My upper entrance in the winter is quite literally just the diameter of my index finger, which I use to make a hole in the cardboard cover, so perhaps 1/2"-5/8", max. While I want air to leave the hive (to reduce C02 and keep air quality healthy) I don't want too much to leave since that draws in unheated air from the similarly small hole left open in the traditional lower entrance.


So the QB is designed to hold in _some_ of the warmth, while removing _some_ of the moisture that would otherwise be held in?

Thinking of the overall system, do you think it keeps a balance? The vent exhausts more of the moist air when there's a surplus, but otherwise the QB holds in a lot of the moisture and warmth, letting it seep out more gradually?



> I want to give my bees a warm, protected space at the top of their hive to hang out in and to find their winter supplemental food.


That's a nice image. But if you didn't have to feed them (and give them room to "hang out" ) would that take away a reason for the QB?



> Relative humidity (in and out) I think (though I have seen no data) bees need a higher humidity than we do, certainly when they have eggs or open brood humidity would be a plus to avoid drying them out. Humidity, of course is function of temperature, warm air can hold more moisture than cold ... So the warmth in the cluster and in any space where the heat given off by the cluster is retained would hold more moisture as vapor than a hive with more air-flow that it is cold.


Shifting to my "devil's advocate" position, do you really _need_ a quilt box for this effect? or is it enough to limit the flow of air (with an insulated lid to reduce inside rainfall)?

Maybe the QBs are more helpful in places with really cold winters?

So another question is how helpful are QBs in the belt further south where temps go up and down across 32°, week by week? How much do they help (and can they be dangerous?) when there's a lot of cold, moist weather with temps in the 30s and 40s, and the occasional plunge into the 10s and 20s?



> I have wondered whether a good QB should be accompanied by some kind of bee watering device. I think bees must need water to liquify sugar bricks, and perhaps also to thin honey for consumption. I have noodled on how to do this, but not come up with satisfactory solution. .... Somehow it seems absurd to add water underneath a moisture-removal device.


Inside it's a microbial cesspool, especially if the environment is warm and moist. Don't get me wrong, microbes are good, too. But the bees in their wisdom might want clean water from the outside.


----------



## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

The wood shavings take on moisture and can freeze. Insulation value of the shaving itself is not huge to begin as it is wood. Wet and frozen the insulation value is virtually zero. 

However, it is the air pockets between the shavings that create most of the insulation. I've never seen the quilt box become a block of ice. Shavings become frosted and damp but never a solid mass.


----------



## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

There was a pretty good discussion of this topic about a year ago in the commercial forum. Bees release so much water and carbon dioxide in winter that an indoor wintering facility has to have dual carbon dioxide and humidity control systems. This is best achieved with paired heat exchangers and dehumidifiers along with temperature control set at 45 degrees.


----------



## Kofu (Jan 26, 2011)

Fusion_power said:


> There was a pretty good discussion of this topic about a year ago in the commercial forum. Bees release so much water and carbon dioxide in winter that an indoor wintering facility has to have dual carbon dioxide and humidity control systems. This is best achieved with paired heat exchangers and dehumidifiers along with temperature control set at 45 degrees.


Maybe this is it? Certainly it's interesting, though mostly it's about controlling conditions external to the individual hives. Nothing much, in the first two pages, about the hives finding their own equilibrium. 

Indoor wintering


----------



## Kofu (Jan 26, 2011)

Some other leads on our questions.

In a discussion in the Treatment-Free Beekeepers facebook group, Phil Chandler (barefoot beekeeper) points to a 1918 book by Ed Clark, _Constructive Beekeeping_, which has a lot about weather, humidity, condensation, beehive construction and interior glazing. Phil has a pdf of the book linked from a page on his "Biobees" site at http://www.biobees.com/library/general_beekeeping/beekeeping_books_articles/.

As Phil says, Clark's book "explains this whole thing, with all the math." Well, not all the math...

Basically, the idea of the book is that the bees want to reuse at least some of the water that comes from ripening off the honey. At night the water condenses on the walls of the hive. The bees collect it and reuse it. When a hive is vented too much they feel deprived, and they try to close off the vents. Unfortunately, with all the good information, Clark includes a _huge_ error right at the crux of our current conversation. He ignores the water that's produced when honey is metabolized, and counts only the 1/5 part that's already water!

"Where we find a colony with diarrhea we find even the frames and combs damp. This is the condition of most colonies that are dead or very weak in spring. ... We naturally ask the cause of this moisture-laden air. Most beekeepers give respiration of the bees as the cause. One day in the fall I took a Seal-Tight cover from the hive and held it so that the drops of water that were condensed on its inside surface could run down to a corner of the cover. Then I poured out a little more than two ounces of water. What yet remained on the cover I estimated to be one ounce. Three ounces of water condensed on the cover. No estimate was made of the amount on the hive-walls. Did the bees breathe out that much water the previous night?

"One of the axioms of physics is that something cannot be produced from nothing. If bees are confined in winter quarters 120 days and they consume 30 pounds of honey, of which 1/5 is water, making the consumption of 6 pounds of water during the winter, or 1 1-4 of an ounce for one day. Could they breathe out all the water that they eat, this amount falls away short of the amount that condenses on a Seal-Tight cover in a singlewall hive on a cool night." (p. 37 in the book)​
But still, the book has a lot of information about the dynamics of water in a hive. Enjambres, you might want to take a look at it, for your essay. Clark isn't a big fan of quilt boxes, however. (They were called "absorbent cushions" back in the day, apparently.)

"As understood by beekeepers any porous material placed between the cover and frames for insulation is an absorbent cushion. Claim is made that moisture escapes through this cushion. Sometimes the moisture has tried to escape this way and in the spring the cushion is wet. Sometimes the cushion does not fit snug against the super and an opening is left which gives upward ventilation. Moisture here travels in the path of least resistance and passes off through the largest opening it can find. If a close examination is made in the winter frost will be found where the moisture is passing out and the cushion found dry. Sometimes the cushions are found dry where the burlap is laid across the top of the hive and the super set on this and filled with packing. If this burlap is examined a great deal of propolis is found on it, put there by the bees to prevent upward ventilation." (p. 41)​
The book came up for discussion a few years ago in another Beesource thread, Ed Clark on Condensation. The general feeling there is that ventilation at the top should be minimal to none at all, and let the bees decide...

Here's a third number, to go along with libhart's "*40.3 lbs of water*" and Vance's "*.67 KG of water per KG* of honey," in response to Clark's error. We can say that *nearly three-quarters* of the water that's produced by the bees when they consume and burn off honey comes from the sugars. The other one-quarter is the water that was already in the honey. I'm dividing libhart's 13.38 KG (water from sugars) into 18.28 (the total amount of water). 73.2%, actually.


----------



## Matt F (Oct 7, 2014)

The most interesting part to me is that 60 lbs of honey is closer to 4 gallons (I think) so volumetrically, the amount of water that has to be removed is GREATER than the volume of honey that's consumed.


----------



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I apologize for not getting back to comment earlier, but work has been busy.

Tonight, though, I had a chance to get some pictures of the condensed moisture vapor leaving the hive through the upper vent holes above the QB.

These pics were taken (by my kind husband, dragooned out into the cold, wet evening to do so) at approx. 8:30 p,m. (Temp 33 F, dewpoint 28, rH @ 80%, and because it is _only_ April here in northern NY, it was during a pelting ice squall, of course.)

What you are looking at is the underside of the telecover overhang on the front of the hive just above the 1" diameter ventilation hole that is in the upper vent shim, which is set above the QB. Warm, moist air from inside the hive is rising up through the shavings and exhausting out the through the vent hole. The woodenware has been cooled by the drop in outside air temps, so the vapor is condensing on the lip of the telecover. And unlike most of the times when this is happening, the outside air is relatively moist so the vapor is not immediately dispersing invisibly. And it's not atmospheric moisture (dew) collecting in these drips, otherwise it would be collecting all across the undersurface of the tele overhang, and not just in front of the vent holes. 

Here are the pics: First, Buttercup on the left (remember her from the Muddle-headed split?) and then Fern, on the right:















One of the interesting things is the pattern of condensation on Fern's vent hole - it matches the grid of the bee-proof screening that covers the inside of the hole. (Screening there to keep bees out of the shavings, which might seem like an entrance to the hive to winter bees caught out, but of course does not connect and would result in them dying from the cold.) Fern is a large colony now, and brooding in the deep just below the QB - yes, in the top box of a stack of four deeps. And she's putting out a lot of heat these days from the vent hole just below the QB, and obviously, up through the QB as well. Buttercup's brood area is a bit farther down in the hive.

Now, lest you think that the moisture pictured is just drippings from the above-mentioned ice storm - here's a pic of the how these hives are protected from that. The holes in the pictures are (invisibly in this shot) behind and above the visible part of white horizontal wind curtain and recessed backwards into the interior about six inches. The curtain doesn't actually touch the upper row of political signs - it is suspended farther out from them - and the signs themselves are four inches away from the front surface of the hive (insulation in the intervening space behind the signs.)









So, beyond my expectations, I now have pictures of a QB at work. 

Enj.


----------



## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

So can all the water get out a single entrance on the bottom of the hive?



> but you can't have a QB without vents. A no-vent QB would just keep accumulatng the moisture until it reached saturation.


Odd thing is I don't have vents...at most there's a few small cracks in the wood I have encasing my quilts. My experience with this setup is still limited, but I don't think I've lost a hive to moisture with this type of enclosed top yet.




> If this burlap is examined a great deal of propolis is found on it, put there by the bees to prevent upward ventilation


Interesting thing is that warré seemed to consider the quilt to function by absorbing moisture, but I think he also intended users of his design to leave a propolized cloth on top of the hive through winter....then came Roger Delon who kept bees in the colder Vosges/Jura region of France/Switzerland. Though he used a similar hive he seemed adamant that everything should be insulating rather than absorbing and seemed to expect all this moisture to go out the bottom door.



> Materials absorbing humidity are not insulating.
> In the integral, stable-climate hive, the insulated crown board and the insulating vertical walls of the
> hive must not absorb humidity, neither internally nor externally. The whole thing should be water repellent.
> The wood is immersed in creosote (carbonyle), then, several months later, dipped a second time in
> ...


----------



## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

BeekeepingIsGood said:


> Though he used a similar hive he seemed adamant that everything should be insulating rather than absorbing and seemed to expect all this moisture to go out the bottom door.


It can work if the entrance doesn't get blocked or frozen up. If you don't have a vent at the top then the quit box will not absorb that much moisture and it will act as an insulator. Today it is just so much easier to slap on 2 inches of form on top of your hive and forget it.


----------



## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

Acebird said:


> It can work if the entrance doesn't get blocked or frozen up. If you don't have a vent at the top then the quit box will not absorb that much moisture and it will act as an insulator. Today it is just so much easier to slap on 2 inches of form on top of your hive and forget it.


Air can enter by the top entrance and exit through the quilt box. Quilt box are configured with vent holes in sides or in the sides above the shavings. 

Secondly, it's only the shavings that get somewhat damp. The shavings trap air which is the insulator. I have never seen a quilt box that becomes a block of ice!


----------



## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

> Air can enter by the top entrance and exit through the quilt box. Quilt box are configured with vent holes in sides or in the sides above the shavings.


That is only one variation on the theme. I don't have a top entrance or vent holes around my quilt. I have the sense from the warré list serve that viewing the quilt as an insulator is often preferable to viewing it as an absorber.


----------



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

mgolden said:


> Air can enter by the top entrance and exit through the quilt box. Quilt box are configured with vent holes in sides or in the sides above the shavings.
> 
> Secondly, it's only the shavings that get somewhat damp. The shavings trap air which is the insulator. I have never seen a quilt box that becomes a block of ice!


I dont see the shavings as being a storage for moisture. It is definitely insulation as the majority of its depth remains warm and dry (it there is lots of ventilation above it). Only the top is damp and often frosted as the top is the huge evaporative surface for the moisture. If you block the ventilation above you lose the main benefit of its potential action to wick the moisture away rather than requiring it to be swept out by air flow. The moisture either has to accumulate in the hive or be transferred to the outside air. You can control how it takes place.


----------



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I agree with Frank, I think the shavings are primarily a moisture management tool and only secondarily are moisture storage devices (Though at times they must serve as that when atmospheric conditions are not ripe for transferring it out of the hive.)

And just in case it's not clear in my pictures above: the water droplets pictured are outside of vent hole above the shavings. That moisture has risen up into- and through- shavings and was traveling on convective currents on its way out of the hive when it encountered the colder surface of the telecovers overhang.

The Warre notion of the shavings as insulators (and likely the origins the name "quilt" box) is centered in the insulative purpose, and ignores the additional, very useful, possibilities. I do think the shavings offer some insulation (mine are only bee-warm on the lower couple of inches; they are usually warmer than ambient air through the full depth, but then, ambient ain the winter here is often below freezing.) But I could achive that protection with foam (as Brian suggests.)

But that would be shortchanging the dynamic possibilities of a quilt box, which is to eliminate one of the significant risks to wintering hives in very cold temps: the continuous possibility that heat escaping from the cluster carries moisture given off by the metabolic processes of the cluster upwards until it reaches a colder surface. At that point it will condense (exacly as the droplets on the air currernts leaving my QB's did in the pics above.) When the amount of condensation increases enough to exceed the surface tension of the droplets, they will rain back down into the hive - right over the cluster. Tilting the box to allow the condensation to drain away will help, up to a point. Even that will not totally prevent dripping if there is heavy-enough moisture load which creates large droplets.

But if the warm vapor-laden air is unimpeded by a condensing plane when it reaches the underside of the quilt box then it will continue to rise, passing through the fabric floor into the QB. As it rises it will lose some of its moisture to the dry shavings. The shavings also will cool and therefore slow the air movement, which moderates the stack effect, protecting the bees below from drafts. 

I have never any "ice-blocks" of wet shavings in my QBs, not even in temps as low as minus 20, over large strong colonies. While I sometimes observe a very slight color change in the shavings (from white as freshly sawn pine to a slightly more orange color, sort of the color of sap wood in pine) when they shavings are "handling" a lot of moisture, this is usually quite transitory and as soon as the outside air conditions change the moisture sublimates on out and the shavings return to the lighter color. I will ocasionally see some frost on the undersurface of the insulation panel that is tucked up into the telecover above the upper vent shim.

I wonder if the depth of the shavings makes a difference, too. Mine are the depth of old comb-honey supers (so slightly less deep than a modern "shallow" box.) They usually start the season mounded up slightly but by now have settled down to an evenly thick layer. (I wonder causes them to settle - nothing is moving around there and the boxe are not jiggled?)

Gotta run.

Enj.


----------



## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

enjambres said:


> And just in case it's not clear in my pictures above: the water droplets pictured are outside of vent hole above the shavings. That moisture has risen up into- and through- shavings and was traveling on convective currents on its way out of the hive when it encountered the colder surface of the telecovers overhang.


Because you don't have air flow across the shaving like Frank is talking about. If you have more holes such that the top of the shavings was at the same temp as ambient frost would occur on top of the shavings. Nothing would appear on the cover as your photo shows.


----------



## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

> (and likely the origins the name "quilt" box)


Warré himself called it a 'cushion'. Apparently the english translation used the word 'quilt' as that term existed already for a similar device in uk hives.

Prior to all of that, there are references to a 'chaff tray'.


----------



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Ace, I agree in principle with what you are suggesting. Enjambres does use more insulation *above* the layer of shavings than I do so would seldom see frost on them. I do see frost on the shavings sometimes but usually do see frost also as in Enjabres photos. I use some corrugated roofing and the corrugations provide vent channels. I use some of my shallow hive bodies (that also serve as top feeder containers) and have used deeps etc. and chose not to drill cross ventilation holes in them. I have used conventional telescopic covers and prop them up clear of the quilt box.

I dont think the detail is critical on the ventilation above the quilt box as long as there is lots of it. The shavings provide enough restriction to air flow to prevent a severe chimney effect from drawing excess heat robbing air flow from the brood boxes below. 

Certainly a nice uniform box and vent system could be conjured up that would be quick to install, effective, and with good appearance. My hives in winter gear are uglier than a stump fence. I am still tinkering with the concept but in the meantime they look like the product of a sheltered workshop!

So far in three winters with up to 8 hives I have not had a single loss with this method.


----------

