Continuing the discussion from Hive beetle help:
Thanks all for your replies. Firstly yes i am in Doonan QLD. I bought my starter bees of you Jeff. I dont have a tray in the bottom, only a flat Corfu board. I was advised to take it out because "the bettles can lay their eggs there in the bee droppings "!!!. Also i have a lot of worker bees from what i can tell, but unsure what you mean Jeff or how to implement this idea. Do the oil traps work well. Cheers
Hi Michael, I’m pleased that your bees are producing honey for you. I do recall someone named Michael from up your way picking up a colony.
If you’re ever down this way, feel free to pop in & I can show you what I mean. Simply, I like to have the combs in the brood box consisting mainly of worker comb. If the frames contain a lot of drone comb, I’ll cycle them out, before fitting fresh foundation.
I’m not a fan of the coreflute sliders. I just like a solid floor, coupled with an adequate entrance. Then the bees will effectively air condition their hive.
A lot of people with those sliders get slack & forget to check them. Consequently the sliders get stuck down with propolis, which is not ideal. I have an easy solution that would give you a solid floor without changing the bottom board. You would need a temporary bottom board while you modify the existing one. My thoughts is to place the slider in the top slot, before filling the screen with external gap filler. After 48 hours of shrinkage, apply another layer. Finish both layers with a 3" broad knife. Then you can paint it after an hour or so.
Thanks Jeff for your advice. So just leaving the bottom floor removed is not a good idea I take it.
Hi Michael, not a good idea in my view. I think the open mesh interferes with the bees effort to air condition their hive, via the entrance. A great video to illustrate what I’m talking about shows how bees air condition their hive is City of Bees on Youtube. That video needs to be watched several times in order for us to get a good understanding of what goes on inside a hive.
I converted my screened bottoms to solid by putting the core flute board on top of the mesh - it needed to be trimmed a little to fit but if you do that right it will wedge tightly into place.