video - wintering bees without a hive

[Greg V]

Pretty cool video by MegaStaratel (sorry, in Russian).
Still worthwhile watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVTvnaq3rIk

Few notes of my own:
* the video starts in October and goes through March
* the rig is similar to double-deep (but those are Dadant frames I think; so equivalent to three-deep Lang)
* the room temperature fall below (-11C/12F) at times - no problem;
** appreciate how hard it is for the bees to move around at such temperatures - once left outside of the cluster, they quickly freeze
* the bee cluster starts at the bottom of level #1 in October and gradually climbs up to about mid-level #2 by March
* the video author remarks how the bee abdomens look obviously bloated in March - there are full of feces

If any questions about specific points in time in the video, I can answer.
But basically, he just remarks date and temperature and does few free comments of bee movements.

[Greg V]

Interesting too how sometimes in January solid ice formed between the frames.

That seemed to not bother anyone that much.

Another point - he collected about 1.5 liters of dead bees as he documented in the end

[Greg V]

Interesting also that the locality in the video seems similar to zones 4/5 - WI (by the temperatures and duration; pretty much he announces in March segment that the wintering is about over).
But the Russians can winter just fine in zones 2 and 3 - much longer and colder.

[harold steinberg]

That is such a cool set up. Take a small shed/building and then house all your hives in it. Super easy inspections! and harvest! and switching frames between the hives.

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[Greg V]

Slovenian setup is sort of like that.
But surely, something can be setup if you have a spare shed.
Maybe screening between the bee-rack is needed.

So yes - an open bee-rack is the basic idea.
Just like a server room - pretty cool in that.
Setup conditioning/heat/humidity - if care to be techno-beek.

[Greg V]

Along this line - the bees seem OK with living in pretty-much open volumes (super-caves if you will).
Like that cut-out I did - they settled just fine into a huge, open, voluminous vertical well, about 3x3x15 feet.
So a setup like a multi-cage chicken coop where open bee-racks (with screen between the racks) sounds pretty cool and even quite practical.
Give it a try!

We are not allowed detached coops on the backyards.
Too bad, because that would give a good way to get around "one-hive-per-backyard" limitation in Fitchburg.
You can setup 5-10 bee-racks inside a coop - not a problem.