Australian Native Bees | News & Info

Summer Heat and Your Hive

Summer is here!

Your Native Bee Hive may need some help during the hotter periods. Native Bees don’t cope very well when the temperatures get to 40 – 42°C and you could lose your hive from over heating.


Things you can do to help keep the hive temperature down:

  1. Provide a well insulated hive box – Thick / light weight / light colours
  2. Provide a good roof over the box with an air flow gap between the roof and box
  3. Build a shade structure over the box – Shade cloth or pergola type structure
  4. Use the shade from trees – The hive could be moved backwards under the shade of a tree
  5. Allow air flow around the box – Avoid positions like patio corners where there’s no air flow
  6. Avoid hot areas or positions for the box – areas that create radiating heat mass when exposed to sun like brick walls, concrete slabs, pavers etc

Extreme measures – rarely necessary

  1. Move the hive indoors – Block up the hive entrance the night before and take indoors to air conditioning (use mesh or a screen to block the entrance to allow air flow but stop the bees leaving)
  2. Use a fan to cool the hive box
  3. Place a bucket full of ice on the hive box – cooling the hive, not freezing it
  4. Place a wet towel over the hive box

Some of these suggestions might sound crazy and are rarely needed, but when the temperatures are getting up to 40°C you’ll be starting to worry about losing your precious bee hive and it may only be necessary to do this for one day in a year or if there’s a heat wave in your area.

Check out the Tests page on this site for articles about temperature testing

Hivecraft - Australian Native Bee Supplies

Native bee boxes available at www.hivecraft.com.au

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