Bee Air Conditioning

It's hot and it's only going to get hotter. Around 11 pm, Karl took a look at the bees and found a bunch of them hanging out on the hive's front porch to stay cool. I admit that masses of bees hanging out on the wall of my house freaks me out.


Karl's canvassed a beekeeping group to find out if he can replace the cover with some sort of screen so that the hive stays a bit cooler. One guy recommended that we replace the inner cover of the hive with a screen cover during the summer so there's ventilation across the whole upper area of the hive. Someone else, a woman who keeps hives on rooftops, recommended a BeeCool Honey Bee Hive Ventilator. This solar powered contraption is a thermostatically controlled ventilator that draws air in from hive entrance, up through and out the top, and exhausts stale humid air out via the vents in the ventilator. Are our bees really going to get air conditioning? Seriously?