Poly Hives have been heavily adopted as well as many other plastic type hives such as Nuplas hives amongst beekeepers and there is a growing shift towards insulated bee hives solutions.
However, we still use the good old smoker while working away, and rest assured, in how we tend to put it down and often rest the smoker on the next best and closest hive to free up our hands.
You can easily do this on wooden hives with wooden or tin sheet lids, but its less forgiving when doing so on plastic or polystyrene ones.
Even said you have a routine and act quickly to go from hive to hive to try to work prior the heat burning in a hole of the next poly hive, there is always this unforeseen situation where your attention wonders, slips for just a few seconds longer than intended and second by second your smoker digs deeper and deeper into the poly hive lid without you noticing.
Most of us i'm sure of running poly hives have been there, or at least will be close of getting to that point faster than they want. See below for yourself how fast such things happen...
It happened to us multiple times already...
Out of urgency to fix this fast we looked for solutions and played around with a rather primitive fix and added a piece of gutter guard from bunnings out of the garden section underneath the smoker in an attempt to figure out a way that would do the trick.
And to our surprise the heat is evenly dissipated over the perforated tin piece under the smoker without causing any burns or it is digging into the polystyrene.
The basic solution of just using wire to strap it underneath the smoker is not a pretty looking setup but does seem to do the trick and came out of time pressures to make it fit with what was available, engineering on the go.
Problem..... Solution.... Problem..... Solution.... Problem..... Solution....
Now it is possible to leave the smoker on top of plastic or poly hives regardless how hot the smoker puffs along...
Also have we discovered the powers of household aluminum foil to quickly put the smoker out and be ready for relocation / transport, as it seems to last longest for that purpose and is readily available.
If those kinds of tips help you on your yourney to be a better beekeeper, make sure to let us know on our facebook page.
Happy beekeeping,
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