Wow well i survived the drive with a car full of bees - and some of them escaped too!! A friend came over and helped me settle them in, so hoping it will be fine now. my children seem genuinely interested too which is nice! I’m not going to disturb them for a few days, and they are all over my mini wildflower meadow. I will probably replace the feeder in a day or two once i’m feeling brave again!
I did get a sting annoyingly - i carried the sheet that i wrapped the hive in the car and there was a bee stuck in it! oops!
Good you must be pleased. Is that a queen excluder over the front?
Just a small tip or two. The entrance should be reduced this time of year to prevent robbing and it would be better if the hive was a little higher to keep the damp away. If you’ve got that sorted then apologies in advance
Its a mouse guard and i think it is the right size for a queen excluder too. it is definitely off the ground - how high would you recommend? I can stick another few bricks underneath if necessary!
Yes try a few more bricks. The hive would benefit from being up from the damp of our weather. It’s too early for mouse guards. We are still in wasp and bee robbing season and having a multiple entrance like that means the guards have to police every slot which is nigh on impossible you need an entrance block giving you a hole 8mm(a bee space) X 5cm at this time of year
Thats interesting - they actually put that on for me at the apiary. do you mean one beespace hole every 5 cm? I will just raise it up another brick level - will have to get hubby to help, i’m not sure how he will feel about that!!
Thanks Dee - could i just block off part of the existing mouse guard? or take it off and use something else to shrink the entrance? i’ve got some mesh i can pin across (i used it to shut them in before i brought them home).
I know i’ve got a lot to learn!
I’ve seen the pics, it’s just that i have a piece of mesh that will fit and i can attach in about 30 seconds lol! wood will take more effort!! Would mesh be ok?
It depends on size, they may still feel the need to guard the whole length? I’m not really sure on that as I haven’t used it myself. It can be one piece of wood that blocks most of length, leaving space at the end. Someone used a couple of chopsticks glued together.
You’ve just brought home & set up your hive, in comparison finding/buying a bit of wood (most hardware stores will cut pieces for you) to push into entrance is not really very hard
If it really is queen excluder size, your hive’s drones are going to be in trouble - they won’t be able to get out and will probably kill themselves trying. You can measure the gaps, if they are less than 5mm wide, that could be a problem.
When we kept bees in the UK, we used mouse guards like these - just attach with drawing pins, and close off any unneeded holes with duct tape/gaffer tape etc.
It is 9mm tall at the back, 10.5mm tall at the front and about 320mm long. It needs this slope from front to back so that it wedges tightly into the sloping entrance of the hive. I did it with a sander in about 10 mins, and it looks like this from the end:
You can measure the gaps, if they are less than 5mm wide, that could be a problem.
