Hive Insulation

Insulating a hive is not wrapping it up. Get that backwards and you kill it.

The enemy is not cold

A healthy colony copes with cold: it clusters and generates its own heat. What it cannot cope with is condensation. The water vapour the colony produces rises, meets the cold roof, condenses and drips onto the cluster. A wet colony in January is a dead colony.

So the right formula is insulate above and let it ventilate, not seal. An insulating cover (€2.15-2.95) keeps the inner face of the roof warm, and the vapour leaves instead of condensing. Sealing the hive up tight does exactly the opposite.

The other half: reduce the volume

The dummy board (€7.95) walls off the space the colony does not occupy. A five-frame colony in a ten-frame box spends half the winter heating empty air. Reducing the volume matters as much as insulating the roof, and often costs less.

What to choose

• 8 mm reflective (€2.15) — thin, light, returns radiant heat.
• Apifoam (€2.95) — more thickness, better conductive insulation.
• Dadant cushion (€17.95) — serious insulation for a hard winter.
• Plastic poncho (€9.60 for 20) — covers the whole hive against rain and wind; it is not thermal insulation.

And in summer

Shade. The same reflective sheet that keeps heat in during winter rejects radiation in summer, and in very hot country it stops the colony spending all its strength fanning instead of foraging.

Hives are in beehives and other accessories in hive accessories.