Polyurethane honey bee hives provide better winter insulation than wooden hives
Mohamed Alburaki, Miguel Corona
Abstract
During the last decades, the beekeeping industry has seen very few changes and improvements on the widely used Langstroth wooden hive. The recent development of new insulation materials with higher proprieties compared to wood could provide better alternatives for the beekeeping industry. In this study, we tested the winter insulation of polyurethane honey bee hives and compare it with the traditional Langstroth wooden hives. Eighteen honey bee colonies, equal in size, composed of nine polyurethane and nine wooden hives were randomly selected and each hive was equipped with a sensor to document the inner hive temperature and humidity. Our results show that polyurethane hives maintained a significantly (P < 0.001) higher overall temperature (10.20 ± 0.04 °C) than wooden hives (9.73 ± 0.05 °C) with a significantly more optimal relative humidity (52.05%) compared to the wooden hives (62.50%). Inner temperature patterns of the wooden hives exhibited pronounced oscillations compared to the polyurethane hives. Both hive groups showed significant differences (P < 0.001) in temperature insulation between day and night cycles. However, the polyurethane hives seem to provide better stability in humidity between days and nights compared to Langstroth wooden hives.