I notice the Russian beekeepers around here put a piece of fabric over the top bars of their hives in place of an inner cover and then use a vent box style cover over the fabric, instead of a telescoping cover. Has anyone tried this? It seems like it would provide good ventilation during the summer.
(http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/5165/russianhives1.th.jpg) (http://img254.imageshack.us/i/russianhives1.jpg/)
(http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/7954/russiancover.th.jpg) (http://img254.imageshack.us/i/russiancover.jpg/)
Interesting. That roof bears a striking similarity to the hive roof as defined in the Langstroth patent and his book (early editions). It also is very similar to the roof design officially adopted by the British Standards Institute, not that anyone pays attention to standards...
I wonder why we drifted away from the aspirated roof? It seems to be a re-discovery in the Americas. Odd.
I've been using ventilated covers here in Oregon this year and lovin 'em. Good air flow and condensation issues are gone.
I came up with something similar, independantly and quite by accident. At one time I acquired quite a bit of stainless steel woven belting. I only got into keeping bees last year. I'd watched the bees fanning the hives trying to get rid of heat and moisture during the hot humid summer months, so I figred more ventilation would help, but having seen a hive lost to moths, I knew better than to simply prop the top up. Since I had all of this "fine screen" available, I built a top frame from it for each of my hives, and then propped the telescope top up an inch or so to give the air somewhere to go and still keep the direct rain off. One hive coated it with propolis pretty quick, but has since cleaned much of that back off.
On all of my mating nucs. Yes.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm#matingnucs
Seems like it also might provide one of the advantages of a TBH....you don't expose all 10 frames if you only want to pull one or two for a quick inspection. Plus, good ventilation and moisture absorption. It must work pretty well, the people who use this method around here seem to be the ones selling all of their extra bees after the winter....not buying replacement packages like everyone else. I may have to give it a try on at least one hive....it makes sense...the one drawback I see is that you can't feed with a jar over the hole in the inner cover, but that may work through the fabric as well.
-Mike
I think it would be harder to get off once the Bees bridged wax to it and also get the wax off the cloth.
The plastic "burlap" seed and feed bags work well, but of course you need to make sure they didn't have treated seed in them. Some elevators will sell you new empty ones for a nominal charge and you can just fold them to fit. They come off pretty well.