Laurence Edwards explains why you shouldn't open hives when it's hotter than 40°C. Bees keep their hive at 37°C and cool themselves by bearding and using the colony as air conditioning. In the UK, water is usually nearby, so they'll manage fine on their own.
This heatwave is absolutely crazy, but you'll never hear me moaning about the heat. In this video, I'm going to show you how to inspect your beehives when it's 40°C plus. Okay, we're having a little bit of a joke there, but genuinely, you do not need to inspect your bees when it's this hot outside. In the UK, very, very rarely this hot. It's like 2 or 3 days that we've got a crazy little heat wave. Don't get your bee suit on, don't get your smoker lit, definitely don't go inspecting your bees. In terms of setting up your colonies for this heat, what do you think you should do? I would say absolutely nothing. If the temperature in the beehive gets too hot, this is what you're going to start seeing, and this is only like a little mini frame mating nuc, F2 Buckfast by the way, and they are really battering me with all these stings. This is what you're going to see though, you're going to see bearding. The bees are very, very good at regulating that temperature inside the colony. They keep the temperature inside the colony normally about 37°C. So outside at the moment it's about kind of 38, 39°C. It is very, very hot for humans, but bees are really well set up to manage with this kind of heat. They are effectively a superb air conditioning unit, and as long as they've got access to water Then they will keep that hive very, very cool. So how do you set up your beehives for a heatwave? You don't. But all I would say, the only thing that you might want to add is maybe like a tray of water with some pebbles on it to give the bees access to some water. Have I done that? No, because I know that they're going to be able to access water really freely in North Wales. The rivers, the streams, the ponds, they're not dried up. So the bees will just go out, they'll collect the water, bring the water back to the hive, And they will keep the hive cool. So in summary, how do you inspect your bees in 40-degree-plus heat? You definitely don't. And what do you need to do to prepare your bees for that heat? Absolutely nothing. Get in the pool, get on the sun lounger, cool off, take it easy.
