# When should insulation be removed?



## Tibbigt (Mar 17, 2017)

What month or temps should I begin removing insulation? Not sure if it can heat up and kill bees if left on to long. 

Thanks everyone


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

It is below zero here tonight so no thoughts of heat damage. I am a strong believer in a warm broodnest and hive. I leave the insulated wrap and top insulation on until I see 90f in the immediate forecast. Bees are exclellent ventilators and with the 1" hole bored in my upper brood box for an entrance/vent, the bees thrive and rapidly expand- which is my objective. Only a small entrance open on bottom board.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I'm with Vance on this - I think a warm broodnest is the key to a healthy - and strong - spring build-up. 

I leave my insulation on long after it's really a PITA to work bees. That means at least to mid-to-late May here north of Albany NY - that's about on the frost-free date for my area. I use XPS foam panels that are held to the hives with ratchet straps, so any hive work requires a quick removal of their winter covers. And even then I don't stow the panels away in the barn for a few weeks since we often get short cold spells when the temps at night can get back down near freezing. Many nights in late May I have been out in the yard in the dark strapping panels back on the stacks because the 11 o'clock news announced an unexpected freeze warning. But I am used to that after decades spent growing vegetables and fruit for market.

Nancy


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

My wraps come off and on easily but it is a pain as I am in the bees several times before things warm up. My bees are around 5500 feet and nightime temps are in the thirties into June. Don't think I could manage foam panels blowing away while trying to insulate. Stapling the wraps is bad enough in our normal windy conditions. But it pays off.


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

You remove it when it's warm at night and no longer convenient for you to leave it on. Unless its black. Black will dramatically increase solar gain when it gets hot, but in your part of the country that probably isn't a concern yet. 

Insulation doesn't make heat. It slows the transfer of heat from the warm side to the cool side. Insulation doesn't care which side is warm or cool, it works whichever direction the heat is. It helps keep the inside warmer when it is cold outside, and the inside cooler when it's hot outside. But it is super inconvenient for the beek to deal with during hive maintenance season, so once it's warm at night the insulation comes off because bees can take care of staying cool on their own. I use the purple 2" foam and secure it with a ratchet strap. If I had something more convenient, I'd be inclined to leave it on all year. 

I've have drawn up plans to build a long hive, something I'm wanting to try it out because geezer back. The sides and bottom of it will be permanently insulated, with a removable top foam board for the winter.


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## DanielD (Jul 21, 2012)

The insulation is mainly needed in more extreme and extended cold, so I would say as soon as it's springtime enough where food is coming in and buildup starts, and it's time to start working the hives some, it's time to get them out of the way. Like JConnolly wrote, the insulation will prevent overheating in the sun if anything.


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## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

Vance and Nancy,
have either of you left the insulation on year round? Or do you know of anyone who has done that? Other than the trouble of removing the insulation during inspections and then putting it back on, is there anything else that keeps you away from having the hives insulated all the time?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Tibbigt said:


> What month or temps should I begin removing insulation? Not sure if it can heat up and kill bees if left on to long.
> 
> Thanks everyone


I laugh. Two years ago, we went to super the Brigham yard, and Oh Oh. Forgot to unwrap the hives. Of course wrapped in black. Of course it was hot out. No problem for the bees. If you wrap in black, and the wraps don't get in your way, leave on into April in PA.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I think insulation would keep the colony cooler than normal during the summer months. Would that be bad? I don't know and certainly a natural cavity doesn't get thinner during the summer.

There are polystyrene hives which I imagine have a much higher R-value than the 7/8ths in thick wood boxes I use. I think they made by Lyson; Betterbee sells them.

But I would go nuts taking my insulation on and off all summer - as it is now, putting it back on each time is an annoying three handed job, anyway. I am really glad to be done with it when the time comes. 

Plus in my winter set up, my boxes aren't insulated individually but in a large contiguous group. I use multiple, full-width, 8' sheets to cover the backs and fronts; with two, 1" thick panels between each hive which is pushed tightly against the next one. The panels are held to the hives with pallets leaned up against them, back and front (An innovation over the last two winters, I previously used long lengths of conjoined ratchet straps. Last winter I used a mix of both and this year nothing but pallets.) The pallets are better and easier to work with. But this makes working the hives very inconvenient since there is no side access, except to the end boxes.

Nancy


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

enjambres, do you have much rouble with drifting with a "row" of hives and what do you to minimize/eliminate it?


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

Marcin said:


> ... do you know of anyone who has done that [leaving insulation on year round ?] Other than the trouble of removing the insulation during inspections and then putting it back on, is there anything else that keeps you away from having the hives insulated all the time?


All my permanent hives (vertical and horizontal) have 3" of expanded polystyrene on top of the Crown Board (inner cover) all year round, inside feeder shells. This set-up works fine - haven't experienced a problem yet.

The only hives which don't have insulation are the 'Joseph Clemens' queenless starter-finishers which I set up at the beginning of each season. These hives become over-populated and can easily over-heat and so require maximum ventilation, rather than insulation.
LJ


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

There is probably some drifting in the spring, but I usually only pack the hives up cheek-by-jowl after flying weather has ceased in the fall. And my winters keep the bees inside for long stretches. I have experimented with holding bees up to the wrong hive entrance, and the home guards are on the job, even in bitter weather. 

Up until last summer my bees were generally much closer together than is common and I never found significant issues with drifting. 

The design of my apiary mimics the "natural", self-selected spatial relationships of my three original colonies. For decades I had bees living in the walls of my old horse barn. I paid little attention to them, beyond noting that they were always there every summer, and used multiple entrance holes on two adjacent faces (north and east) of the building. One winter all the bees in the cavities died, or at least there were no bees in the spring and I happen to notice it. I was grieved to see they were gone and felt that I had dropped the ball. However within weeks first one, then another, and finally, a _third_ swarm reoccupied the premises. At that point all three colonies were turfed out and placed in boxes. And it is those bees that I still have, albeit now with daughter queens. 

Since I knew squat about bees to start with, I arranged the colonies close together - like they had been in the barn cavities -and they did well. Only a year or so into beekeeping did I discover this was very uncommon (at least here in the US - there are these colonial nest arrangements for honeybees in other parts of the world.) But my bees seem to thrive and I have little problem with colonies pestering each other. 

but last summer with the appearance of EFB, I busted the lines apart a good deal to separate the sick colonies from the apparently healthy ones. Combined with unstinting effort to avoid cross contamination using tools, boxes, my hands and clothing, I was able to contain the infection to the originally sick ones and maintain the healthy ones throughout the season. I also treated every colony, sick or not, with Oxytet.

This winter they are once again all in a line, but the formerly symptomatic ones are grouped together at one end, and with a slight break in the common coverings between them and the "healthy ones."

I haven't decided what to do this summer. It depends on if, and how much, of an EFB problem reoccurs. I did not summarily shake the bees on to clean equipment last year, but I will do that promptly this year if it crops up again. That process will drive how I arrange the stands. I have lots of good summer places for bees here on the farm and can easily move them about. Perhaps this is the year to proactively experiment with wide hive separations. Sounds like an inconvenience for working them, but I guess I'll play that by ear.

Meanwhile I am still interested in observing how bees adapt to living in what in biology might be described as colonial nesting situations. In other animals there are some distinct advantages to this arrangement. 

My original bees did not choose their close-in cavities because of a lack of possible nest spaces. There are six, very large, two or three story, 19th century, timber-framed barns here. All with empty cavity space, made easily accessible by 160 year old siding with cracks and dings and fallen-out knots. Those cavities were chosen because they offered what the bees wanted. 

Nancy


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## Ruthz (Sep 13, 2011)

One year I actually made 2 hive boxes out of 2.5 inch pink insulation board. I thought that seemed simpler than removing and replacing insulation panels. They were good in the spring, good in the summer which hit 100F, and good into fall until a family of rodents found that they could chew right through the side, nest in the box, and continue chewing up the insulation for nesting material.


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

I had three 5 over five NUCs last winter that I pushed together with 2 inch styrofoam between. They wintered well. However, population in middle NUC dwindled to a fist size. I suspect drifting to two outside hives as they were doing very well. I moved the fist sized cluster to an insulated NUC and they started raising brood, so added a frame of capped brood and nurse bees and NUC took off.

This winter I have five, 5 over 5 NUCs, insulated on four sides with 2 inch, and pushed the row together. So 4 inch between NUCs. Side pieces of Styrofoam extend 2 inch beyond front of hive to block easy movement across top entrances. With insulation on all four sides, I can move stacks apart when flying starts. Have also added some blue and yellow and white triangles and circle markings to fronts of hives. Hope to minimize droft.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

@MGolden,

That's an interesting observation about drifting from the center to the ends. I alternate strong/smaller/strong colonies in my line of about 14, so the end ones are always the stronger ones to begin with. And I have not noticed any weakening of the already smaller ones in between. I wonder if that's a function of the these colonies not being nucs, but well-established colonies in their long term boxes? You have raised a thought-provoking point - I plan to open and check on the bees, if I can, on Tuesday or Wednesday, and I will keep that possibility in mind as I look them over. 

(I had one that I am pretty sure went queenless late in the Fall, and the bulk of those bees appear to have fetched up in the stack next door which was one of the smallest and is now bursting. The queenless one was an end one.)

ETA: A side note: I have 4' high pieces of 1" foam as the outermost layer on the fronts of the hives. (There is 2" stuff underneath, flat against the hive bodies.) The 2" pieces run up only to just under the upper entrances, but the outermost layer is tall enough to extend way up past the upper entrance, up above the bottom of the quilt box, almost to the level of the top of the telecover. So, in effect, all the bees' entrances give on to a narrow, common, corridor right in front of their individual upper entrances. The bees quickly learn to fly up and over the edge of the 1" foam and on returning head right down to their own entrance behind it. And they get the benefit of the substantial amount of wind block it affords. I am not sure I like this arrangement but have used it for two years. Before that I had an actual woolen curtain that hung down from the top of the telecovers to below the upper entrances. I think I like that better, but I didn't have as much opportunity to observe them as closely as I had hoped to do this winter. I had planned to have half curtain, half panel. The panel got put up, but not the curtain. (The uncurtained bees - which happen to be the non-EFB section - seem to fly more in what _I_ consider to be inappropriate conditions, perhaps because they get more sun immediately outside their entrances, even though they all have my little three-part, wind-baffled, portholes. Maybe they are just more energetic, not having been sick last summer.)

Nancy


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Marcin said:


> Vance and Nancy,
> have either of you left the insulation on year round? Or do you know of anyone who has done that? Other than the trouble of removing the insulation during inspections and then putting it back on, is there anything else that keeps you away from having the hives insulated all the time?


No I take it off when nineties are forecasted as then in my high desert conditions, the nights are finally approaching fifty F

I have hives in rows a few feet apart. Originally I pushed them touching together and wrapped them all in a block but found individual wraps easier to deal with since I put the wraps on and off several times before storing wraps for the summer. The end hives are always the best producers! Or the ones tired bees with a full load gravitate too! Periodically I move them to central positions and move the laggards to the end. I would forgo my wraps if I decided to just go up north by Calgary and bring down a load of Beaver Plastic insulated boxes and use them for brood chambers. Then no wrapping is required and only insulation at the top.


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