A couple of notes on the article, that I disagree with, backing it up by "appeal to authority" through my decades as a beek.
> These man-made hives have very different thermal properties compared with their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows.
Bees, including Apis mellifera will build hives anywhere where there is sufficient cover, space, and ventilation, not just "thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows".
> On cold days in these thin-walled hives, colonies form dense disks of bees, called a cluster, between the honeycombs.
The presumption is that the human made hives are less thermally protective because they are "thin-walled". This is just patently incorrect. There are many, many hive designs and many are made out of wood, but many are made out of plastics or even styrofoam. Their thermal protection can be significantly higher than 150mm wood (later noted in the article
substantially insulating, such as 30mm of polystyrene".)
Bees do not form a dense "disks of bees". They form a ball, and rotate in and out with the queen around the center, just like the referenced penguins.
I could not identify the type of hives that were evaluated. From the picture, it appears to be a tiny apiary with Langstroth design, all with three full/deep/brood boxes. From the pictures in the paper, they evaluated eight hives.
I am willing to learn, but this single article provides insufficient details how the data was collected and in what context was done.
Most non-initiates think that beekeepers somehow control bee colonies like cows or chicken. Not so much. If a colony decides they want to leave, there is almost nothing you can do about it; they will leave. If they figure they did not like the winter, they will move. A hive will be just fine in a felled log, a hollow tree, or human made space for years without any interaction. It is more of a symbiotic relationship than a stewardship.
edit: spellingerating fixage
> These man-made hives have very different thermal properties compared with their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows.
Bees, including Apis mellifera will build hives anywhere where there is sufficient cover, space, and ventilation, not just "thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows".
> On cold days in these thin-walled hives, colonies form dense disks of bees, called a cluster, between the honeycombs.
The presumption is that the human made hives are less thermally protective because they are "thin-walled". This is just patently incorrect. There are many, many hive designs and many are made out of wood, but many are made out of plastics or even styrofoam. Their thermal protection can be significantly higher than 150mm wood (later noted in the article substantially insulating, such as 30mm of polystyrene".)
Bees do not form a dense "disks of bees". They form a ball, and rotate in and out with the queen around the center, just like the referenced penguins.
I could not identify the type of hives that were evaluated. From the picture, it appears to be a tiny apiary with Langstroth design, all with three full/deep/brood boxes. From the pictures in the paper, they evaluated eight hives.
I am willing to learn, but this single article provides insufficient details how the data was collected and in what context was done.
Most non-initiates think that beekeepers somehow control bee colonies like cows or chicken. Not so much. If a colony decides they want to leave, there is almost nothing you can do about it; they will leave. If they figure they did not like the winter, they will move. A hive will be just fine in a felled log, a hollow tree, or human made space for years without any interaction. It is more of a symbiotic relationship than a stewardship.
edit: spellingerating fixage