Scientists identify culprit behind biggest-ever U.S. honey bee die-off

There are some technological ideas to help bees be healthier such as special bee hives which have more natural topology and help the bees spend less energy on cooling/heating the hive. Example for a cylindrical hive: https://www.hiive.eu/en/

We could install HVAC in each hive.

Can heat pumps be scaled down to that size?

Peltier heat pumps, though less efficient than other types, can be made very small and have no moving parts.

there are simple, no power, designs that have existed for a long time that would be a better way to go.

kiss

You don't typically have just 1 hive. It's usually a group of them.

You wouldn't need an HVAC per hive, but rather 1 HVAC for the swarm. Get a water mass, HVAC it to the right temperature, and then pump the water through the hives to maintain a good temp.

It'd be somewhat more expensive and you'd have to have enough insulation to make sure the water isn't prematurely cooling before reaching the hive.

Hives also tend to be really cheap. They are simply wood boxes. So you'd be competing with $100 wood box with $200 wood box and $1000 HVAC and plumbing.

I'm thinking something like a wind-powered rotating attic fan.

There may be passive geothermal heat pump architectures that would be a good fit. Surprised that you can still learn about geothermal heat pumps from the U.S. government: https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/geothermal-heat-pumps

> though less efficient than other types

IIRC they are _massively_ less efficient. Relevant Technology Connections video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnMRePtHMZY

No power and no moving parts are good design goals.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher

Perforated Double Skinned Exterior

Lots of cool tech from the past

Sometimes the old ways are best. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason, or they'd just call it the way.

Who benefits most from old methods and tech remaining a historical footnote, but the very people selling their new whiz-bang solutions for modern problems, which are themselves inherent to using their products and energy production and consumption supply chain?

Commercial hives need to be portable. Geothermal isn't that.

I searched about this and found a German beekeeper with such hives,

In [1] he can not detect the Varroa within the hive, nevertheless he notice the behavior of the hive is as if it had it. In [2] the hive is already dead, then is when he find the Varroa. In the comments on [2], one beekeeper explains that when the combs are twisted the mites fall into the combs rather than onto the floor which is traditionally used to detect them ( The sugar [3] or CO2 technique to detect Varroa in any type of hive is recommended by other beekeepers in the comments).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYKL7hrp23k HIIVE Confusion

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsdHyRdpfB0 All the bees dead - why Varroa was so treacherous here

[3] By comments on other videos about the topic, this needs around 200 bees which are placed in a container with grids to which sugar is added. When shaken, the Verroa falls and a count can be made. The topology of this hive makes it difficult to gather this amount of bees (in the video [2] one can see that the hive would have to be dismantled).