Thermosolar Hive – Guest Review

Thermosolar Hive – Guest Review

John in Ireland has very kindly provided a review of his first season with the two Thermosolar Hives:

29th May 2018: Purchased 2 overwintered nuc’s from a friend and brought them to my site in the countryside where I already had 2 Poly Hives.  There are no other Bee Hives within 2 miles of these so they have free range.

30th May: The following evening I transferred the frames into the Thermosolar Hives in which I had fitted the Hoffman frames and foundation.

Thermosolar Hive (Green) With Bees
Thermosolar Hive (Green) With Bees – Photo when in Roger’s apiary

9th June: Routine check – found that the colony were building comb on to the existing national frames that I had inserted from the Nuc and as a result I was unable to carry out a full inspection, but I added a super.

24th June (during our Irish heatwave): Found evidence of honey in Supers. Bees could be seen using the Super exit and I blocked off the Solar Panel at front as I felt the bees would get burnt alive in the soaring temperatures.

8th July: Supers full and added the other 2 Supers.

15th August: I put on clearing boards and as the weather had deteriorated I removed the board that was blocking the Solar Panel in front.

17th August: Removed 3 full capped supers from each which extracted 95 lbs of golden honey.

The brood chamber seems quiet full of Stores & I have not seen any evidence of Varroa in hive to date.

I intend to give them a feed of just sugar and water syrup this week.

I will not be doing the Thermosolar Treatment this year on these hives as the temperatures have dropped a lot here in the last few weeks and I did not want to do the treatment with the Supers on.

I hope to get a few more Supers made locally where the carpenter made up feeding boards for me.

I notice that there is no crown board and as a result I found that when opening for inspection the frames were coming away with the roof!!!

Overall I am quite happy with the Thermo Hives this year 2018.

Thanks John – much appreciated, great honey production.  Roger.

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Author: Roger

regaining my sanity through beekeeping

3 thoughts on “Thermosolar Hive – Guest Review”

  1. Hello,
    I’ve expecting delivery of two these hives. Do you already have any experience how it works? It’s funny, that in country of this invention (Czech republic) is almost impossible to get any review. Except directly from the inventor 🙂
    Maybe because they are more expensive than clasic hives…

  2. Hi there, are you still using your Thermosolar hives? Have you managed to do an intensive thermotherapy treatment with them? I’m trying to find some info on how to actually do it as it seems incredibly complicated! Thanks in advance.

    1. Hi Jennifer,
      I love the idea of these hives, but with 2 kids, a full time job and beehives in a farmers field surrounded by large cows … my access to the hives is limited and I wasn’t able to use them properly. Hence, I sold the thermosolar hives.
      Please keep me posted with your experiences.
      Roger

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