Primal Bees

More bees. Healthier bees. More productive bees!

The PrimalBee® System reduces human management requirements of colony inspection, feeding, and chemical treatment by up to 70%.  This proven system not only saves labor costs, but also reduces transportation expenditures as it is not necessary to constantly travel to check colonies.  Professional beekeepers and even beginners will find the PrimalBee® System easy to master in a very short time.

Vibrant, healthy colonies are better suited to resist disease and mites.  The passive thermodynamic capability of the patented PrimalBee® hive allows the bees to maintain ideal temperatures year round for honey production, colony growth, queen productivity, and winter survival.  This results in significantly more foraging and brood-raising bees since their environmental temperature-maintaining requirements are so much lower than in a standard Dadant/Langstroth hive. Since the larger, healthier PrimalBee colonies produce far more honey than they need, beekeepers can safely harvest more honey from the hives.

After 12 years of scientific research and development, the BeeHelpful team perfected the design of the PrimalBee® hive.  They approached the many problems today’s beekeepers face from a unique perspective: Why were naturally occurring colonies constantly being discovered that were perfectly healthy, with no human treatment or intervention?  It had to be the bee hive itself!  And what was it about the those hives that produced such large colonies of healthy bees?  They were exposed to the same natural and man-made threats as the hobby and commercial hives, yet they flourished while man-made hives floundered.

Gianmario Riganti is a professor in mechanical engineering, so he decided to approach the problem using an engineering problem-solving technique:  the finite element method (FEM). This procedure allowed him to model the thermal capabilities of many different designs, and predict ideal internal hive and brood temperatures using numerous sensors within the hives.  He and his team found that a specific internal size and shape of the structure was integrally important for temperature regulation of the colony.  Then it was a matter of selecting the right material.  In 2011, they achieved the optimum prototype size, shape, and composition.  They tested their design in the following years, comparing their hives against the Dadant/Langstroth design using the same bees at the same locations and identical recommended treatments.  

Not only did the PrimalBee® hive vastly outperform the traditional Dadant/Langstroth design, the researchers found that colonies within the PrimalBee® hives quickly became healthier as well as more disease and mite resistant.  Additionally, after several more years of testing, the PrimalBee® team was able to adopt a procedure of minimal, natural formic acid treatment as the only chemical additive needed to combat the devastating Varroa Destructor mite.  One experimental apiary in Israel that has been operating with PrimalBee® hives since 2013 has colonies so strong that no treatment at all has been applied for four years.  In contrast, many large commercial beekeeping companies open, inspect, and/or treat their colonies as often as every other week.  This is extremely expensive and time consuming, but more importantly it is devastating to the colony, which in some environments takes almost two days to return the internal temperature to its ideal range of productivity.  In those same environments, sensor testing in the PrimalBee® hives has shown internal temperatures return to their natural range within two hours!  

BeeHelpful's test apiaries in Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, and Israel have realized vastly larger colony size, as well as more energetic and active bees with the PrimalBee® System.  The remarkable decrease in the colony's effort required for thermodynamic management inside the hive dramatically increases the number of effective foraging bees. PrimalBee® hives' innovative, efficient thermodynamic design lets beekeepers work less, and get more. More bees. Healthier bees. More productive bees.  Primal bees!

The PrimalBee Team

More Bees on the Trees !

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