# Solar-powered beehive cooler and ventilator



## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Wow! What a concept! However do my bees survive without it.

Ventillation is a good thing and the bees are very good at it. Bees choose a cavity to nest in with one hole and do fine. People kill a lot of bees with gadgets that the bees may be able to tolerate but I don't think they actually benefit the bees.


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## RedneckBee (Jun 5, 2017)

I know someone who swears they work.






I think he said something like 20% increase in honey yields. Too expensive for my Bees.







http://www.beecoolventilators.com/
http://www.littlecreekbeeranch.com/Solar-Ventilation.html
http://www.littlecreekbeeranch.com/Solar-Ventilation.html


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## oldhat (Feb 18, 2018)

Hi all
I pull fans form old computers, amps, video projectors and other = free and get solar panels surplus like all electronics.
most fans of this type are 12 Volts and pulls .2 to .5 Amps, for the lower CFM fans .1 Amp.
https://www.allelectronics.com/category/565/solar-panels-and-photovoltaics/1.html
I have used all electronics for 40 years

Bill


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

My bees bring water from the pond over to the hives, where that water gets evaporated. As the water evaporates it absorbs heat, cooling the hive, and helping keep the brood chamber humidified.


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## Fivej (Apr 4, 2016)

Oldhat, what type of controller do you give the bees or do you decide how they would like their hive?


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## RedneckBee (Jun 5, 2017)

The one who I know that uses them only plugs the solar panels in when the temps are going to be over 90 for at least several days and unplugs them when it is going to be over like 100 or it acts like a convection oven. It has a plug between the panel and the hive to make disconnect easy. The only problem with thermostat is you would have to mount it high enough that only the queen could reach it because if momma isn't happy....no one is happy. I told my wife when she saw it in the friends apiary that it was a satellite monitoring system so that he would get emailed when it was time to change honey supers....she didn't buy it.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Note that no matter how much ambient air one moves though the hive [with a fan or otherwise], it is _impossible_ to get the temperature below the ambient [outside] air temperature. And yet, bees maintain their brood area very close to 94 degrees F, even when the outside temperature is hotter than that.

There is only one way (short of bringing in ice, or an air conditioner) to do that, and that is _evaporative cooling_ - bees hauling in water, spreading it around in more or less a mist, and then allowing that water to evaporate (and absorbing heat in the process) and then expelling that humid air to the outside via bees' _fanning_.

Effective evaporative cooling requires a fine balance between outside air coming in and the water hauled in and spread around by the bees. I'm puzzled as to how a person would judge how much incoming air from a fan is appropriate to match the water the bees are bringing in [or not].


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

Bees are very good at regulating the temperature by using evaporation. Adding further ventilation can make the need for more water.

Secondly, I have tried the ventilation rim above the inner cover as per BeeWorks website. It is a 2 1/2 inch shim with eight one inch screened holes, to create more ventilation of the hive. One is supposed to get more honey. I get more honey with the ventilation removed.


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

The only way I see there being any advantage to forced ventilation is if the ventilation happened only in the honey supers and only when its a lot warmer than 75°. The bees regulate the temperature of the brood area during hot weather by evaporating water. This increases the humidity in the hive, lowering the efficiency of dehydrating nectar. So to solve that without impacting the brood chamber, a forced ventilator would need to positioned so as to isolate the brood area and supers, allowing brood chamber bees to evaporate water and ventilate normally, and force ventilate only the supers to decrease humidity in the supers, while allowing bees to pass between the two areas.

It doesn't look like any kind of chamber isolation is covered in the patent. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) that idea is now out on the forum and thus out in the public domain. 

I'm not convinced that it takes more time to dehydrate the nectar than it takes the bees to gather it. At least in my climate honey seems to be capped at just about the same rate that supers get added, making the value of extra ventilation dubious. When exterior temperatures are cooler than the inside of the hive the bees warm up the air instead of using evaporative cooling. Warming air causes the RH to drop, increasing the ability of the air to absorb water, and convection will cause the now lower RH warm air to rise up the hive to the supers. In high humidity climates during times when the exterior air temperature is lower than the hive temperature, for example 75°, force ventilating the hive with exterior air, keeping the hive cooler, removes the advantage that happens as the cluster heats the air thereby lowering the RH.

However, even though I'm dubious of the advantage, I like seeing innovation. Continuous innovation is what leads to progress. Have there been any side by side controlled studies about whether this increases honey production? Or is it anecdotal right now?


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## wasabi (Jun 14, 2016)

I agree with JC on this and although I too am a fan of innovation, I think the pendulum has swung way too far as regards fanatical hive ventilation.
Managing relative humidity seems to be the answer. Ventilation seems to be a fix looking for a problem that the bees have never complained about

Rader Sidetrack nailed it by saying there is no way to get a hive cooler than ambient air. The bees seem to have evaporative cooling down to an art.

Now isolation, insulation and protection from insolation are all ideas worth focusing on. I think bees need environs with more temperature stability!


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## AmericasBeekeeper (Jan 24, 2010)

The thread so far focuses on temperature and humidity. Bees also use pheromones to signal queen presence, brood presence, presence of intruders, provide forager stimulus and many other signals. By eliminating or disturbing these chemical signals with movement is counterproductive. Vibrations from whatever mechanism is used,and bees have a different and broader sound spectrum than us especially on the low end alsodisrupts the remaining communication. If the hive is below 96.8 degrees they also have to raise the temperature and possibly humidity by resource consumption. Viruses, Varroa and small hive beetles have also shown greater advantage at lower temperatures. Air movement is great for mammals not for insects. This is another time not to humanize the bee.


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## viewcart (Jul 31, 2020)

Wet bees die way sooner than cold bees.

Fix your ventilation problems first and then decide if you need a fancy tech heating solution. I sincerely doubt you do unless you're just in the frozen north of the US/cansda or something.


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## BW56 (May 10, 2020)

I'm in Phoenix Arizona. 115*+ this week. 8 years ago when I built my chicken coop I double roofed it at an angle so the heat would exit the high side bringing in ambient air. They are happy. When I built my horizontal hive (my one and only hive) I made the roof way over-sized with a 1" gap in the overlap at the peak. Allowing hot air to exit at the peak between the overlap. So far so good. Time will tell this winter. Since May they have built and are filling ten combs and working on building numbers eleven and twelve. Ill add two at a time when ready up to twenty.


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## RedAceBees (Jul 23, 2018)

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/nosema-part-7c-the-prevention-of-dysentery/#_Toc26176354
Randy Oliver has some interesting research on hive ventilation. In a nutshell, providing active air movement not controlled by the bees seems to cause more problems than it solves.


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## Live Oak (Oct 11, 2008)

> When temps outside get up to 110 degrees or higher, we'll tip these solar panels backwards, or simply unplug the fan inside. The air is then TOO HOT to move across the colony. We'll let the girls go get water and make wax cups on top of the brood frames and circulate their air; natural sump cooling system


Although this is an unusual temperature extreme, this raises the question "what's the point if you have to remove it when it gets really hot?" This is an interesting idea, however sometime too much human intervention can be counter productive in my opinion.


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