Anyone who knows me or has read my blogs will now that I LOVE my poly hives. I am a great fan of the Paradise Honey solution but it is time to try something new.
Can I keep my core requirements and improve on the function? In all cases functionality comes first. As a beekeeper my primary concern is the bees welfare. Warm in winter cool in summer is essential. Mite and pest resistant is key. Honey production and convenience comes second. Though it should be obvious that happy bees tend to produce most honey. Bees spending all their energy keeping warm in winter tend to survive less well and any colony that survives the winter will likely produce honey that year compared to a new colony.
Primarily I am interested in successful winter survival which my Paradise Honey hives do well, however there are a few niggles for me.
- The boxes fit together perfectly when clean but just never seem to fit in the field. This leaves openings where bees can escape. This makes them hard to lock up and contain. The overlap is so precise that the roof doesn’t seal and the slight miss alignment makes securing the hive very tricky. ( I currently have 2 hives that have chosen to use alternative entrances. One through the bottom mesh and one through the roof!)
- The entrance sliders break and jam. Clog up with dead bees in the winter as the bees struggle to lift the dead out through the slide. This blocks the entrance and suffocates the hive or leads to pools of bacteria. If the alignment of the hive onto the entrance reducer is not perfect then the sliders fall off preventing you from being able to lock the bees up.
- The mesh floor is hard to attach properly and the bees break through creating new entrances. Screw holes into the polystyrene pull out and tear especially when you have to remove them and put them back after cleaning.
- The queen excluder is a pain to clean as the bees have so much space that they brace comb between the bottom of the super and the queen excluder.
- My Chinese bought Standard Langstroth frames don’t fit. I bought a huge box of plastic frames from china and they don’t fit the poly hives. They do fit in the wooden hives but the poly hive has too tight a tolerance. They are 2 mm too wide to fit properly. This is a big gripe. I have to sand off 2 mm from the ends of all my deep frames. Uniform equipment is key to a happy beekeeper as frames can easily be transferred from one hive to another.
- Inability to level the hive. Having adjustable feet would allow me to level the hive if the hive stand has sunk.
So meet the Technoset Beehive. This is a Greek built plastic beehive with polystyrene inside so should be warm in winter, cool in summer. It is robust and heavy but easy to clean and can be deployed directly without any need to paint. I came across them when looking for hives for pollination services and wanted something that was slightly more robust than the Paradise Honey hives.
I got a initial set up to see what they are like. My set up is a brood chamber and 2 shallow supers. (In hind sight I hadn’t realized they were shallows rather than mediums but one day i will learn to read.) I bought them off one of the 2 current importers to the UK, beekeeping supplies UK The choice of colour was simply down to the fact that the yellow was on discount while the green was not, and that this can be called Yellow Hive in my list of Hives.
If this becomes my standard set-up then I would like to keep all the supers one colour and just to change the brood chamber colour for identification of the hive. Unlike wooden hives that require regular maintenance, Technoset hives are thermally insulated, rot-proof, pest-resistant, and built to last. All components lock together with strong, integrated latches, offering both security and convenience.
What’s Included in This Bundle:
- 1 x Open mesh floor with Varroa tray
- 1 x Full-depth insulated brood box (Langstroth)
- 1 x Plastic queen excluder
- 2 x Full-depth insulated supers – compatible with Langstroth shallow super frames
- 1 x Technoset Premium Top Feeder (4-litre capacity, for syrup or fondant)
- 1 x Insulated roof with integral locking system
My First Thoughts
Arrival:
Well packaged but surprisingly heavy. Love the sunshine yellow but it does look and feel like a lump of plastic which is not surprising as it is a lump of plastic. No instructions but how hard can it be to assemble!!
BASE:
The base is a white plastic with open mesh floor varroa tray and a set of non adjustable feet (I think they have missed a trick here in functionality as being able to level the hive would be super useful.) The open mesh is significant larger area than on the Paradise Honey hive, and much wider. It is almost like a short queen excluder. There are 6 holes down the side for pegs to help align the brood box. But it seems that you only put in 2 pegs per level in alternate corners.
The plastic can be quite sharp and while it is obvious that someone has been around with a knife to tidy up the finish there are some bits that were neglected. Also the plastic is really quite brittle with the finer features breaking off from simple handling. I didn’t consider these parts to be essential but it does give the hive a feel of being rushed to finish. These two bits came off the part that secures the wider door way and the support for the slide for the varroa tray. I hope no other bits break off!
Entrance:
The entrance is a plastic gate structure called a 3 point door, that allows for the hive to be open on the front, queen excluded or fully closed. The parts clip nicely together and are easy to operate. The bees have 2 sides with a space in the middle for the clip to clip the brood chamber in place. I wonder if the hive will operate with a incoming side and an outgoing side when busy? The light blue parts are slide out landing boards which look neat. You can slide them out and in for transport and use.
Brood Box
The Brood box is a standard Langstroth Brood Box and looks to be high quality once I had tidied up the sharp edges on the inside which was easy to do with a craft knife. It clips nicely onto base. There are sits in the side that will allow the box to be split in half or thirds which I guess adds to the functionality. Most importantly it holds my Langstroth frames as standard without having to sand the extra 2 mm off the ends. The clips are easy to adjust and i’m guessing only need to be finger tight. If you over tighten them then the whole side flexes which doesn’t feel right.
Alignment plugs
The whole hive is aligned and held together using alignment plugs. These fit in opposite diagonals to the layer above or below and give the structure alignment.
Queen Excluder
Nice QE. This one had a hole in it but the company is sending me a new one. I like that it fits cleanly over the sides and doesn’t therefore have issues with thickness. The Paradise Honey ones have to fit inside the groove of the overlap where the bees can find a way around it or if you use a flat sheet it stops the tow boxes form interlocking nicely. I think using all 4 pins at this level would be a good idea. New QE arrived the next day and is perfect.
Shallow Super
So I didn’t read the description properly and was thinking that the kits were the same form the two different suppliers. Simon does kits that are brood + 2 x medium super and this one is a brood + 2 x shallow super. My bad. I need to have a very careful think about what my ideal set up should be going forwards as I really don’t want to have too many different types of frame. It was going to be Brood + mediums but if this take off then I may have to change to brood + shallow supers. This could be good given the weight of the supers. These hives are not light weight. Again I like the clips and the few frames in the right size that I do have fit beautifully.
Feeder
The feeder is yet more plastic but fits really nicely onto the top of the super or the brood box. No need for the plugs. It has 2 strips of liquid feed access form below and a section in the middle for fondant. There is also a bee entrance at the top of the hive in the feeder. I guess that this feeder is meant to be part of the roof structure and fitted all year around. Interestingly there is no way of accessing the inside rail where the bees drink so any bee that dies in the compartment will either have to be cleaned by the other bees or stay there for eternity. It looks really functional and robust as part of the roof design. not sure what you do though if it goes moldy. Do you perhaps open the solid feed section when the liquid feed is finished so that the bees can clean the top for you? I guess I’ll find out.
Roof section.
The roof section is a double walled and vented structure that sits on top of the hive and over the feeder. It clips down so that it is sturdy. It can be used with the feeder or on its own but I would guess that on it’s own without a cover board it will just get filled with brace comb. They do not do a cover board so I might try to make one myself. This would have been super easy had I still got my laser cutter but I’ll work something out. A solid plastic cover board will remove the ventilation though so don’t go fully covered. The vent sections look like they have not been molded perfectly but this will actually be good as it will reduce the ventilation a little keeping the hive warmer. To me it looks like the roof has been designed to be convex on the top so that rain doesn’t settle in puddles but i’ll have to see.
All in, a really nice smart set up, full of innovation and cleaver designs. It is very plastic though so not sure what I was expecting. It looks sturdy and easy to clean. The finish is lacking in places where it seems that it was put together with out huge amounts of care. By example, the catch on the front of the hive has been put on wonky which is a bit of a shame. Cant wait to try it. It will have to be really good to beat the Paradise Honey Hives.
Here is it installed though without bees. You can see it next to the red hive for comparison.