Matt Somerville's log hives for wild bees

Matt Somerville crafts log hives for wild bees.
The hives provide a naturally insulated cavity for need to build their hive in.
This allow the bees to expand into young woodlands, where trees that are old enough to have large hollows won't exist for decades.

A big takeaway is how thick the wall of the log is when excavating the cavity.  My area has huge winter die-off of the imported honey bee. Our climate is considered "mild", but it's a very damp cold. It's very hard to keep wet things warm.

Any suggestion to local bee keepers that they build their hives thicker get met with, "then the supers will be too heavy to lift". I haven't got to the, "then design the 'supers' to be lifted by another way than human power alone!" Matt's simple tripod system is a straightforward system, if proper attachments were part of the design.

I've also been told that top-bar hives won't work in this climate - but I've not been told, "Joe Blow tried it and so did John Doe." Nor was I told that it was built to be well insulated.

That said, I only have bumble bees that appear to live on my land. The honey bees appear to just be visitors. I have too many other projects in the queue to try to tackle a honey bee project. The concept of breeding local, sturdier bees certainly appeals to me, as I have a lot of fruit trees that need pollinating.

I like what he's about, very much!
I had a thought that splitting a round, cutting the heart wood off of each split, then putting the round back together, might be easier than the chainsaw trick he uses.
Well, if not easier, it would avoid using a chainsaw, and that appeals to me .
Those things scare me!

I'm not sure he is harvesting honey from these hives at all, and if you wanted strong pollinators they require no work on your part and self replicate, then stealing their hard work is counter productive.

About the supers, I think most beekeepers remove them for the winter, so they wouldn't need to be made the same as the overwintering brood box.
Now I'm wondering if they need to be on top of the brood box, or if they could be hung underneath, for easy access...

Turns out bees don't respond well honey storage that is set below them, to the point they might starve even though it's right there.
The same session of rabbit hole diving learned me a little about top bar hives, wherein bees add honey horizontally.
So , it's complicated...

matt opens the hives at the bottom to harvest some honey in combs  but not a lot or often seems to be his method, i have watched a few ways of hollowing out the logs with a chainsaw attached to a jig , matts way  using fire and the longhandle chisel blade ---which you learn to make ---as part of his course he offered------ is to make a person appreciate the hard work a bee and the hive go through to make honey i think , a great man and his approach to how they should be kept influenced my hive build totally.