Putting a hive in a city is a bad idea. Domestic bees, which are more resistant because they are fed by humans, eat the food of wild bees, and accelerate their disappearance.
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
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I heard this phrase once: Trying to save the ecosystem with domesticated bees is like trying to save biodiversity by putting up another cattle ranch.
Elevated solar panels, with beehives underneath. I've seen a few of these combinations. The shade from the panels protect the hives from the worst of the sun. The bees just do bee stuff.
If it was my problem to solve, here's how I'd go about it, since I know nothing about either.
Start with the solar panels since the barrier to entry is much lower and after they're installed, you don't need to do much with them.
Then use your spare time to learn about beehives and go from there.
Do the solar panels and let native pollinator friendly plants to grow around it.
Has anyone put into the equation how much energy is consumed in the production of solar panels ??...๐
I'd be curious to know for funsies, but do you really expect it to be anything that would make one rethink solar?
Install solar panels and plant local flowers (drought resistant in drought prone areas).
The beehives have a huge prerequisite of making sure there's enough flowers throughout the year to feed them. So if they come with installing a full rooftop garden, that's great, otherwise you'd be better off sticking to the panels.
But putting up panels wouldn't prevent you from also starting container gardening. Pollinating insects are pretty good at making their own homes. What matters more is growing food for them and their larval stages to eat. So if you're up for it, install the panels, and start filling the gaps with container plants. Just don't go overboard because soil is too heavy for roofs that aren't designed for the extra load.
Honey bee hives are not good for the environment. If you wanna help the environment look into homes for native bees, and bugs. Usually these dont require much if any upkeep from you. Also there is no reason you couldnt do both. Put the hives under the solar panels. It will shield them from the elements too and keep the bees safe from storms and birds.
They help different things. Bees will help the local flowers and plants, solar panels will cut carbon emissions. But boosting plants doesn't cut carbon emissions since the carbon isn't sequestered, it'll go back to the atmosphere once the plant dies.
So if you like the look of flowers or want honey, go with bees. If you want to lower carbon emissions, go solar.
Are 4 solar panels enough?
No but that's all I can fit there
4 Solar Panels are plenty, I have 2 and on sunny days you get much more than you can consume. I would recommend just getting 2 aswell (I got 870Watt peak in total) because everything else would require either some form of battery or would involve giving the energy into the power grid. Also in Germany there is a 800W limit for easier registration aswell.
That depends highly on what you do. We have 8 and it's not nearly enough.
We live in a snowy area and during the winter we can have an entire month just not produce.
Well i got 6 KWH in December and the highest of the year was 81.4 KWH in June. I'm just saying that getting closer to fully consuming what you produce is much more worth than going into the grid/batterys. We also don't produce to get to 0 KWH by external sources but that isnt the goal.
Well we are a 2 person household basically, what do you do to consume the power of 8 panels on sunny days?
2 EVs