Concrete bee hives!!

I have some immediate reservations.

Climate matters. Despite being dubbed "lightweight" and "insulating" these will be a lot heavier than a standard hive, and less insulating than my current polyhives. You can potentially make them from locally available materials, but in anything other than a year round mild climate these would be definitely sub-optimal. I would definitely try them if I lived somewhere where climate was not a concern.

I love the claim that they are theft proof (theft resistant maybe?). Presumably because they would be too heavy to lift a whole colony.

What I do like is the potential for a system like this to make non-standard hives. You could discretely make sculptural habitat spaces to leave in the landscape as swarm traps, or just places for wild colonies to settle. The interior can contain workable frames, while the exterior looks less like a standard box.

I chuckled about the fireproof claim. The boxes might be but a wildfire would still cook the bees. There are no bears in Africa so it's understandable they don't know the power of a bear. Again, the boxes might survive a bear attack but the bees & wood frames wouldn't.

I could see trying a horizontal hive made of concrete. But I would probably build it so that it's at least partially earth-sheltered. That way the thermal mass would protect the hive from temperature swings.

Condensation could be a problem, though.

This project is in  South Africa and was created by a chap whom built up a honey business to get through his studies.

"By the time I reached my final year of school, I had a bee business consisting of 100 beehives in apiaries on several farms in the district.
This allowed me to pay back the loan to my father and I also made enough money to sustain myself during my studies.

Unfortunately, the safeguarding of beehives has always been a problem in my homeland. One by one the apiaries were attacked, vandalised or set on fire.
The remaining hives were relocated to the farm where we lived but were later destroyed by a runaway veld-fire.
When I retired in 2017, I applied ideas I had to improve the lot of an Apiarist...................."



From; concrete hives web page
I have edited it to shorten the document.
"The concrete beehive was designed to address a number of problems experienced when using conventional hives.
These problems included theft, vandalism, runaway fires and maintenance.
The conventional Longstroth wooden hive did not have protection against any of these threats.
Theft is a major problem faced by beekeepers where honey gets stolen from the hive and in some cases complete beehives have been stolen at a great loss to the beekeeper.

Runaway fires also pose a threat to hives since conventional wooden hives will easily catch fire.
Concrete hives require less maintenance compared to conventional hives made from wood.
Our concrete hives made by Nectar Honey addresses these issues by providing a safe home for our bees.

It weighs approximately 300kg when occupied by the honey bees and has a locking mechanism that avoids it from being opened.
To ensure that the hive is robust, a 40mm solid reinforced concrete shell is manufactured to keep the bees safe inside.

In addition to being extremely damage resistant the Concrete Beehive is well insulated with a 20mm thick isolation material "Pratley Pearl" to insure that our bees can keep warm in winter and cool in summer when they apply their own ingenious natural temperature control methods.
Concrete beehives are constructed from a non-flammable material we believe  would stand a much greater chance in the event of a runaway fire.
Placed together in numbers ranging from 3-6 hives to form a tiny apiary, and if spread at least 6 km apart on farms to ensure the sustainability and a good natural balance, a thriving enterprise can be built."

VERSION 2 of the same concept
https://www.nectarhoney.co.za/bee-repopulation/concrete-beehive-2-0

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:I could see trying a horizontal hive made of concrete. But I would probably build it so that it's at least partially earth-sheltered. That way the thermal mass would protect the hive from temperature swings. Condensation could be a problem, though.

Good Horizontal Hives are double-walled with the hollows between the walls can be filled with insulation. FREE Plans are available on the HorizontalHive.com web site. I purchased one on my trip to Missouri to attend Dr. Sharashkin's 2 day seminar on Natural Beekeeping a couple of years ago.

IF you are going to use some commercial insulation, like the 2" blue foam sheets, make sure that your frames are thick enough for the thickness of the blue foam sheets to fit in the hollows properly.

All of my colonies are in Lazutin hives and I have a very high survival rate (but all my hives are wild caught swarms and I don't rob them except for our own use, I also rarely disturb and do no treat/feed syrup). We live in an area of Virginia (USA) with a lot of rock in the clay soil and have plans to build stone hives using the slipforming technique. My worry is excess humidity in summer. We do get a lot of rain. I can totally see how these hives work in dry climates. In fact, if you have seen one of the best documentaries to come out of my homeland - "Honeyland", you will see that the main protagonist keeps bees in stone "hives"...