My access door has swollen and does not fit in place anymore, I will have to trim this down to fit.
I have now noticed bees can escape from underneath the flow frames. There’s a small gap. I have checked and I have installed them correctly.
Anyone else having this issue. Any quick fixes?
that metal strip doesn’t look right, I am pretty sure mine isn’t sloped like that.
After 4/5 years I have found one of my flow hives has warped too. In my case allowing bees out the top above flow frames. Despite dismantling and cleaning the problem reappears. Have now fixed it with heavy duty masking tape! Have also had the problem with inspection door sticking after rain. Have removed it and scraped down joins successfully. No other complaints really. Have been harvesting 40 to 50 kilo a year each with no other attention.
I readjusted my bar where the bees are coming through. To keep it square I used the inner cover as a guide for staying “plum” with the rest of the hive. Now my access door fits again and it took a small amount of time for the wood to warp back into place. I unscrewed the bottom piece and used a clamp type thing to bring the wood closer the rescrewed the metal back on. It worked for me. Plus I had to check the top of the brood box to make sure that was flat as well.
Hi John ,
Thanks for replying. How do you mean slopped? Is it the angle I took these photo Mayb. The strip is level. It’s just my frames have a 4mm gap all along.
Thank you for your suggestions. Hopefully good weather this weekend will allow me to get in there and have a tinker.
I’m guessing that your hive is Araucaria - hoop pine, which warps & swells when it gets wet. It doesn’t like water & rots within a short period of time. I treat my hoop pine boxes etc. with copper naphthenate, before applying 3 coats of paint, inside & out.
I was recently given a couple of untreated pine bee hives. I promptly moved the colonies out before cleaning up & sanding the hives back to bare wood, so that I could treat & paint them.
This is one of the boxes I used for the first time yesterday.
I don’t know if anyone us interested but I made a very lightweight wooden ‘roof’ which keep rain off the sides and also the landing board. I actually store bits and pieces in the space between the two roofs. It weighs about 1lb and doesn’t come off in windy conditions. The plastic on top just tucks into a small gap created by the wood ‘guttering’. Maybe not the most aesthetic of constructions but very functional and takes about half an hour to make. The roof here has been on for nearly a year and the hive itself has lost very little of its original look after varnishing. Sintra, Portugal, is very humid and windy, as a matter of interest.
Ignore me. Sorry, it is clearly level!
It does appear to be a wood warping issue. I have been in recently and had a good look. Everything is level and fit together correctly. No propolis pushing the flow frames up.
Things like this do make my other hive which is a standard national the simplest choice.
Any suggestions on something I can block that gap up with? As soon as I open the access door the bees fly out to greet me. Will be a pain when it comes to harvesting.
Thanks everyone
A simple solution would be to block it with some thick cardboard, but bot pushed in past the plastic. That way the bee will eventually make a propolis cove inside of it, hopefully covering the gap completely. I found out recently that Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) swells when wet, however it eventually shrinks back when it dries out.
