Temperature experiments - black IBC filled with water / 1.6m below ground in Gingin Western Australia

While this blog post is not technically directly related to beekeeping we intend to keep it here for "our reference", in our defence however the heating and or cooling out of those experiments and applications may be used to either help cool down or heat up hives in winter and we will ensure to keep you updated on the beekeeping application side for sure too.

This is a post about a few experiments we are running in Gingin Western Australia.
We are generating our own data surrounding the storage of heat in black IBC and other means, in order to potentially utilize the heating and or cooling effect of some of the experiments conducted and or combining some ideas. All data is attached to the blog post, so it can be used for the wider "scientific" audience. It seems its hard to get real life data online these days, hence we are uploading our data freely available here for people to use and study.

The temperature probe we had been using for all experiments is the following found at JayCar: USB Temperature/Humidity Datalogger with LCD | Jaycar Electronics

We basically stuck it into the IBC and made it float by attaching it to a rock and having it float about within the middle of the IBC submerged by about 30-40cm worth of water while the IBC is filled up to the top. The IBC had been painted black or at least of the paint that remained on the IBC after a few month, this side of the picture probably being the worst chipping of the paint from the IBC overall.

 

Sensor being placed in a little bottle, and tied to the stone pulling it to the ground and making it float about half way in the IBC submerged by water.

Temp Data Graph:

The rise and fall of thermal energy within an IBC on a fairly warm day (16.10.2023):

August 2023:

October 2023:

December 2023:

Gingin IBC Temperature Data as Excel files:

<insert URL for temp data download>

Introducing APISOLIS - vaping the bees instead of smoking them

Will this be the holy grail in beekeeping and making it a bit more fire safe?

We have just recently picked up an APISOLIS, and luckily it just came in time. One of our bee sites which we have not visited in some time had quite a bit of growth and we did not have a whipper snipper  and rake with us to clear it. It would have been way to dangerous to inspect the bees using a real smoker as the grass was knee high and was as dry hay can be, and the slightest ember dropped on the floor would have started a grass fire for sure. Hence the APISOLIS came just in time to save the day.

We tested the APISOLIS on around 36-40 hives that day, full strength production colonies.
Luckily our hives are not too bad in temper and we can get away using the APISOLIS.
However, we would probably say that most bee hives which have not specifically been bread to be of fairly calm and healthy producers would probably not get away with an APISOLIS and would need a traditional smoker.

When running NUCs / Nucleus Colonies the APSOLIS is a great tool, ready to go right away and sufficient smoke to direct the bees from the frames.

Overseas in colder climates lots of beekeepers use bee houses and or similar structures to house the bees, and for beekeeping within a structure the APISOLIS would be a great fit.

 

We use magnetic chargers and APISOLIS to avoid USB ports to be clogged up by bees wax and propolis.

APISOLIS fluid

The fluid has a nice calming fragrance not just for the bees, its also way better to have this in the car with the suit. We're still testing on how many inspections and hives can be inspected by one bottle, however the pricing model is fairly steep and it would be great if APISOLIS could once payed for their investment and development bring down pricing to something reasonable. 

 

Processing bees wax using solar solutions in Perth Western Australia

We had been playing around with multiple different tweaks and setups, follow us along and see what tends to work best for us.

Toolbox inside painted black:

We had one of the Bunnings tool boxes left over and played around to see if we could easily and passively be able to process burr-comb and other old brown comb without the need for electricity or utilizing gas. Basically doing it on the cheap and letting time do its thing rather than us needing the doing, basically every so often filling up those crates with comb and getting a nearly finished product without much doing. However running the unit with black paint on the inside this did not exactly perform very well in the Perth Western Australian winter going into spring time as we had hoped it may  (August-September, early October). Even said the weather was not great, we had hoped to get the box warm enough to sustain the bees wax melting point at around 62-64C Celsius long enough to get it to melt away.

 

Temperature data indicating that we where not even close of the 64 Celsius needed in spring in order to melt down the bees wax:

weather in those past few days:

Same Toolbox with silver lining / chrome spray:

We changed the setup from painting the inside with a chrom / silver spray to see if we can make a difference. Keep in mind the second test is being done in October, nearly 1 month later and getting closer to summer, which makes a massive difference on the suns position and solar radiation hitting the box. We just kicked this test off and showing below weather data and temperature data once available. But I have the feeling the silver lining will probably do way better, also having said the backing trays will nicely soak up all bounced back radiation.

Weather for the silver lining test:

How to calm bees down - from smokers to sugar water to apisolis and back

The intent of this blog post is to give you an overview into all sorts of methods on how people tend to handle bees. We have tested most of what we show on the blog, if not we will call it out.

Let us know how you handle your bees, let us know what we are missing!

Traditional smokers:

There is nothing like a traditional bee smoker when it comes to beekeeping! Very reliable and works with all sorts of hive sizes, from tiny swarms, NUCs and even large production colonies or pallets worth of colonies.

Due to burning holes into our polystyrene hives with the traditional smoker when resting the smoker on the next hive while working away we have amended all of our smokers with a slight under tray to avoid placing the hot under body of the smoker onto the plastic or poly hives burning holes into the hives. its a simple little fix which works like a charm and is way cheaper than buying or fixing hive lids!

Bee-Z-Smoker:

We had tried the Bee-Z-Smoker which operates on batteries and heats up a metal wire, which is intended to smolder wood shavings as smoker fuel. If I remember correctly the battery did not last very long, its powered by rather heavy batteries, unsure if they are lithium or not, but they felt heavy. It does work, a few seconds after pushing both buttons it generates cool smoke. Its not super thick smoke, but plenty to work the bees.

Sugar Water:

In europe many beekeepers rely on spraying the bees with sugar water to enforce them to clean themselves and are taken out of the "action" as such. I'm not sure how one moves bees out the way using sugar water mist as I would imagine that sugar water is mainly used in combination with swarms, but I might be wrong. I myself do not use Sugar Water in our operation.

Essential oils and water misters:

We had just recently tested using essential oils and water mist spray.

Tea trea oil:   
Bees seem uncoordinated in defending, still upset but not sitting on your sleeves stinging you to death.

Spearmint oil:
Spearmint had been said to be beneficial while one should stay away from lemon or banana scented essential oils, however we are still waiting for our supply to arrive and will update the blog once tests have been conducted.

Liquid Smoke:

We tried this in order to work the bees on harvest ban days, as we had our bees stationary and could literally walk to the hives. We tried this, however upset hives do not seem to react as intended. When accidentially sprayed onto hands and sleeves, we noticed that bees tended to avoid that area, so partially it seemed to work, just not so well on one of the really upset hives. The liquid would probably be sprayed just like the sugar water.

Food Smokers:

Food smokers sometimes can be handy assuming you are working with NUCs in bee house settings or similar and solely need to direct the bees from their frames or edges and need tiny amounts of smoke.

  

APISOLIS:

We have tested and introduced APISOLIS in October 2023 and it seems to be handy for NUCs however we used it on a day where one of our bee sites had not yet been slashed and the grass / hay was all around the hives at nearly knee height while the outside temperature was already around 35C and very dry.
It would have been way too dangerous to light a smoker that day, and use it on that site in that setting, hence we were quite surprised on how well it worked on our production hives. However, keep in mind that our hives are fairly well behaved, and we got away on production colonies on the hot day. However, one seems to go through quite a bit of fluid.
What we usually do is to add the magnetic charger knobs as beekeeping equipment and bees wax / propolis and usb charging ports don't do well in our experience.

If we missed a major gadget or you may have an idea you would like to share with us, please contact us and let us know an what you are using to calm down your bees.

Who left the tap / honey gate open? - Haven't we all been there? Is there a potential solution?

Most beekeepers will experience this at some stage we're pretty sure off.


Honey spills.... overflowing buckets... and having left the tap open!

Who has not left the honey gate / tap open and walked away in distraction. Quickly picking up the phone call while the honey is steadily filling that bucket in the background.
Then you get called to a different room / location for a "quick job" which ends up in another tasks or simply you forgot what you were doing..

And there you have it. Honey spills are costly and a pain to clean up, but honestly, have we not all been there?

So, while playing around with a water leakage sensor / tea bucket water alarm we noticed that the alarm went off pretty reliable when we stuck it into our honey bucket for testing purposes and made us think of a simple solution to avoid honey spills in future.

Our creativity and fantasy could easily imagine that someone on the internet may build a custom stainless-steel version of this to make beekeepers life an easier one.

It seems to work, still needs a bit of testing in "real" life with filling buckets, however when I stuck it into my honey/tea bucket it seemed to alarm fairly consistent.

Who knows, when there will be a food-grade commercial solution around this?

It be handy to have for sure!

Meanwhile we had tested this unit here, picked up from Jaycar:

Smart Wi-Fi Water Sensor - Smart Life Compatible | Jaycar Electronics

Feel free to play around with this topic and sensors and send us your pictures and creative solutions around the topic of honey spills.

 

 

Trailer tips when beekeeping

 This post is just to document of things we came across when beekeeping and using trailers or just generally good not to forget...

Trailers, D-Shackles and loosing the pins:

When attaching D-Shackles, ensure the pin / cap is the to the top, as with vibration and time you tend to buy more pins, as they literally just drop out. When facing towards the top, gravity can work its thing while most time they don't tend to fall out.

 

Paint your trailer edges white:

when operating mostly at night when shifting bees, its way easier to see your trailers position in the mirrors at night. Even when just having standard break lights, the white color lights up nicely, while most other colors being reflected by red light appear very dark and are barely visible, especially in your mirrors.

When using red flood lights to work bees and white markings on trailers:

Notice the difference of the olive green / gray trailer body versus the white parts under red lights, what a difference that makes! Just imagine how much easier that will be in your mirrors when reversing!

Working alone strapping trailers and mirrors:

When working mostly alone, then strapping can be a bit of a pain, as the hook keeps slipping off the railing and you end up walking backwards and forwards.

I tend to strap stuff by putting the strap through the metal hook, this way one side will not be going anywhere if using small straps.

I usually ensure that all rachets are located on the driver side, as when something where to becomes loose, I would be able to see the straps better flying around within the mirrors fairly soon and could pull out to fix it up instantly.
The driver side mirror will probably give you a better view than the passenger side most times, especially in the dark.

 

Trailer tray pins:

just get into a habit to put things back to the same place every time, and place especially pins back into their locking positions before doing something else, or face getting distracted and placing them on the tray where you loose them during your second additional distraction.... Yes, been there done that.
Best to have someone weld a chain on them so you can't loose them.

Flat top trailers and missing rails:

When using the 6m flat top trailer from Kennards for instance, the trailer does not have a rail underneath the trailer end to end and no real good position to attach the straps.
Now there's always multiple ways to solve things, and one solution I had seen used by another beekeeper was to use a chain in between the tie-down points of the trailer, and then strapping the hives onto the horizontal chain between the rails. Just ensure you use a decent sized chain and calculate the breaking point of the chain when factoring the number of hives and their weight at an impact speed of maximum 100km/h and calculate the force required for the chain specifications for your requirements.

Ensure you have plenty of clearance between the wheels and the chains when loose and not in use / no hives on the trailer and add straps as needed to avoid the chains coming close into the wheel space when dangling down.

The below picture was taken during the time when "DingDong Fabian" from Sun City Honey helped me out on a Canola shift and saluting in taking instructions :), as we had to improvise after noticing the rather large gap of the missing rails last minute and strapped some pallets onto the trailer, and then strapped the hives on top of the added pallets to keep us going on time. There are always multiple ways to do the same thing, just ensure your straps are rated for the job at hand, ensuring that even if you had an accident, nothing would fall of the trailer at any time and nothing moves which should not.

Spare tyres and trailers, and the time when the trailer tyre overtook me going up hill!

True story, one a shift we once did moving hives up into the Perth hills going onto a Marri/Redgum flow, I suffered flat tyre situation, where the tire had cut itself of the rim.
I heard my brother over the radio advising me to watch out for the Kangoroo jumping across the road, when i noticed my trailer tyre starting to overtake me, which my brother had mistaken for a Kangaroo bouncing across the road. Yep, carry spare tyres on your trailers, and ensure periodically that your spares are pumped up and ready!

Floral Sources: Gingin WA

 

Floral sources in Gingin:

This blog post goes into what is flowering around our site in Gingin in September 2023:

Its floral sources which have been found around Gingin area from beginning to end of September:

This is what we would call "mixed blossom honey":

 

October / November 2023:

Australian Xmas Tree