Here Come Skookum's Ultimate Beehives!

Why Change the Status Quo?

What is driving the growing prevalence of honeybee colony collapse? Why are bee honeybees dying? I, like all beekeepers, wish that I knew. What I DO know is that a good start for helping the bees is to make sure that their hive is as optimized for their health and comfort. Recent studies at both Cornell University here in the U.S. and at the School of Mechanical Engineering University of Leeds in the UK have started to decode honeybee biology and behavior. Skookum's Top Bar and Horizontal hive designs stemmed from Cornell research, while the Ultimate hives come from the work done at Leeds. Let's take a deeper look...

Cornell Gave Us "Volumes"

Since the mid-1800s, beekeepers have been following the "religion" of Langstroth, using his patented and standardized hive design without much wavering in all the years since. Dr. Thomas D. Seeley of Cornell conducted loads and loads of research and testing on honeybee biology and behavior, detailed in his books  The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild (2019), Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Bee Hunting (2019), and Honeybee Democracy (2010). His research led to Skookum's signature top bar hive, which has a hive volume consistent with what Dr. Seeley found honeybees prefer. Our hive has an internal maximum volume of 62.4 liters, which is close to the high end of Dr. Seeley's findings for wild honeybee tree hive volumes. With our multifunctional follower board, you can reduce that volume down to the low end of his findings (around 36 liters or so) for new colonies. As the colony grows, you can then expand the hive volume accordingly. The bees drive the process. Keep in mind that a single Langstroth deep brood box or deep super is over 41 liters all by itself. Consider that most hives have one deep brood box and a deep honey super, at minimum, and you start to understand that the Langstrogh hives are a "bit" too big for what honeybees prefer. Skookum seeks to do better. Langstroth's design is for the beekeepers; Skookum's hives are for the bees.

Dr. Seeley's findings about honeybee's preferred entrance size was also the driving force behind our 4" x 3/4" entrances. What he found, we did our best to incorporate into our design. The only thing that we failed to incorporate is that he found a much higher prevalence of vertical hives, not horizontal. We do what we can.

Leeds Brought the "Heat"

In 2023, Derek Mitchell, M.Sc., of the University of Leeds · Institute of Thermofluids published a groundbreaking article, "Honeybee cluster—not insulation but stressful heat sink," in which he showed, among other things, that the current beehive design (the Langstroth, as well as others) are woefully inadequately insulated against cold temperatures, causing terrible stress and health issues for the honeybees inside. His research is turning traditional beekeeping "knowledge" on its head. The imperative for bees to cluster into a bee ball to create heat is not at all what we have always thought. Instead, it is a dangerous indicator of colony distress as a result of poor hive insulation. 

As he points out in the article, standard beehives have an average wooden wall thickness of just 19mm (about 3/4"), whereas natural tree hollow "hives" of feral honeybees have an average wall thickness of 150mm (about 5-29/32"). Softwood (such as pine or cedar) has an R insulation rating of approximately R-1.41 per inch of thickness. That means that a 3/4"-thick Langstroth hive wall has an insulative rating of just R-1.06. That's pretty pathetic (hardwood has an insulation rating even lower than that at closer to R-0.71 per inch of thickness). A 150mm-walled hollow pine tree nest would at least have an R-8.4 insulative value.  When you consider the cold winter temperatures in much of the United States, it makes you feel pretty badly for our "managed" honeybees. Yes, a lot of beekeepers wrap their hives or stack bales of straw around them to help with insulation, but is that enough? Is that how it should be? Skookum says "no!"

Skookum's Ultimate Hives Provides the "Cozy"

As we recounted above, Skookum designed our Top Bar and Horizontal hives to meet the layout and volume preferences of the bees. Upon reading the U. of Leeds article, we set about improving out design to truly meet the bees' need for proper insulation. Seeing as that wood has such poor insulative R value, thicker wood did not seem to be the answer. To get the right insulation levels, we'd have to build a chonkin' thick hive! Instead, we looked at what would do a better job with less weight and bulk. This brought us to home construction's use of board insulation. Our design uses wood and insulation board layering to create a sleek hive design with a R-11.06 insulation value! That exceeds the hollow pine tree nest cited above. We also realized that this will benefit our southwestern honeybee colonies, as well. Heat can stress and kill a colony as easily as cold, and the high insulative rating of our Ultimate hives, along with a few other features described below, can greatly improve the colony's comfort, health, and viability in the high heat of the southwest summers. Two birds, meet one stone!

Skookum Took a "Bigfoot" Step Further!

Our Ultimate hives are meant to be the ultimate best setup for the honeybees...short of them living in untainted wilderness in their native Europe. To that end, we have added a few additional features to our hives. First, we added integrated ventilation in both the roof and in the follower board. The bees will propolize the ones in the follower board as much as they need to in order to optimize their internal humidity and ventilation needs. The ones in the roof ensure that there is a steady supply of fresh air circulating above the colony at all times. All of our hives have these ventilation holes, though. What makes the Ultimate hive, well, ultimate, is that it also incorporates a solar powered fan to push stagnant air out of the "attic" space above the colony but within the roof. In the southwest, this will be critical in order to ensure that the attic area doesn't reach oven-like temperatures. 

Speaking of hives in the southwest (but also for hives anywhere), we decided to tackle the water availability issue, too. Bees, like all animals, require water for basic hydration. They also need it to cool their hive through evaporative cooling. Our innovative new follower board design includes a clever waterer that you can remove and refill as necessary without bothering the bees. This in-hive "plumbing" means that your bees will have the water that they need right there where they need it, when they need it. Our vacuum controlled bottles ensure that there is not excess water leak to cause other issues in the hive, too.

Lastly, we wanted to find a better way to deal with unwanted pests and honeybee predators who make use of weaker colonies' entrances to get into the hive. Our entrance design uses the long-known concept of "bee space" and tribal hut defense concepts to make it nearly impossible for hornets or, well, anything other than a honeybee, to gain entrance into the hive. We'd say more, but we don't want to give too much away before the big reveal!

Availability

Skookum's Ultimate Hive design is going to revolutionize your bees' health and happiness all year long, and we are currently working hard to perfect the prototype so we can introduce and start selling them around the start of the year 2024. Stay tuned!