R&D
Behind the development of the Ceramic Beehives, there are many days invested in Research and Development in order to bring you today the best experience for your beekeeping passion.
It was very important to develop and prove the utility of our innovative idea and in this section, we want to share with you our progress.
At the end of the page, you will find new projects and ideas which are awaiting your collaboration.
The Process
We got the first idea, a moment of enlightenment and we were impatient to research it and discuss it with prominent experienced professionals.
This is how were organized our first advisory councils where our engineers were able to wildly brainstorm with beekeepers, biologists, equipment producers, and representatives from the beekeeping industrial organizations.
After many experiments, the first model was ready to be tested by the true experts - the bees.
They were so happy that they showed appreciation bringing us much more honey than expected.
Of course, we took into consideration their feedback and continued improving and refining our model.
Today we are happy to bring to your bees houses which were
theoretically proven, field-tested, and experts approved
for their advantages and quality.
Publications
During the process, we were eager to share our results with the scientific community so we participated in several specific events to collect opinions and feedback.
THE CONCEPTUAL PAPER
The first article we published is aiming reasoning the idea of creating a beehive from baked clay. There we listed all the advantages we found together with some historical evidence which led us to the conclusion that it is not just an idea, but a mission to make it happen.
THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY OF THE CERAMIC BEEHIVES
The basic idea that the ceramic beehives improve significantly the living conditions of the bees lays on the specific properties of ceramics which performs better in terms of temperature and humidity. These two factors affect the bees' behavior and the presence of mites, viruses, bacteria and pests.
The optimal temperature in the breed is around 35-36oC. Higher temperatures can cause the death of the family. Lower temperatures especially temperatures below 0oC will lead to protective diapause behavior or will have a lethal effect. The extreme temperatures affect the bee products as well. Overheating causes wax melting and too-quick dehydration of the honey while the low temperatures slow down the dehydration of the nectar which causes problems in the production of the honey. The bees have their own regulation mechanisms to maintain the healthy temperature of the hive. Whenever the weather is too hot, they start fanning the hot air out or use evaporative cooling mechanisms. If the temperature gets too low they start generating metabolic heat by contracting their flight muscles. Both these mechanisms consume high energy of the bees and increase their need for food.
That's why we conducted an examination of the thermographic properties of ceramic and wooden beehives.
The results we obtained show that the ceramic hives have better and even heat distribution while the water absorption is relatively low. Both factors manage to create a much better living environment for our small friends.
NOISE INSULATION PROPERTIES OF THE CERAMIC BEEHIVES
Bees are highly sensitive to noise pollution and in some cases, noise can impact their behaviour. Towards the goal to create optimal living conditions for the bees, we aim to understand how the material of the beehive impacts the microclimate of the beehive. The present paper aims to examine and compare the noise levels inside beehives of the same construction but made out of different materials. Three 10-frame Dadan-Blatt beehives were used in the experiment – a ceramic beehive made out of high-cavity ceramic tiles of marl clay; a ceramic beehive made out of high-cavity ceramic tiles with increased kaolin content and a wooden beehive (pine). The noise was measured in an urbanized area and inside the beehives. The results show that the best performance in terms of noise insulation is the ceramic beehive with increased kaolin content.
THE COMPARATIVE STUDY
In 2019 in the experimentation fields of Trakia University in Stara Zagora, a team from the Agricultural Faculty, Department of Beekeeping, started a field study of comparing wooden, ceramic, and beehives from polystyrene in terms of strength of the bee colony; egg-laying; colony vitality; development of the bee colony during seasonal changes; winter survival and quantity of produced bee products.
For the purposes of the examination, beehives from the three types were inhabited.
The study is still ongoing but the preliminary results show amazing advantages of the ceramic beehives.
Stay tuned for further updates in this section!
ACADEMIC AND SCIENTIFIC WORK
We believe that knowledge exchange with the academy will lead us to amazing results.
We started a collaboration with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences to develop better and improved recipes for technology and production.
Currently, there is one doctoral thesis dedicated to the improved chemical content of the clay mass.
Meanwhile, our colleagues from the Technical University of Sofia developed their graduation theses based on the need for further research on Ceramic Beehives production.
We are ready to share our results and experience with more students and interns who are keen to examine and write about different aspects of the development and production of the hives.