You would need to slope the internal hive wall as well. Easier to slope the whole hive like what flow do with there bases
You can derive the info (with some effort) from this article by Rusty Burlew:
The mesh size in the US tells you how many squares per inch of length. So #7 is 7 squares per inch or a little over 3.5mm. So if you made 3.5mm holes, bees should not be able to access the jar.
P.S. I have more success with fruit jelly mixed with borax and water (1:1:1 mixture). The fruit scent seemed to attract the ants better, but it will depend on the type of ants you have. Some are carnivorous, others omnivores and others vegetarian. So complicated!
I love the car jack, as well as the tractor ideas. Another option would be to use a fulcrum & a length of 4x2 as a lever. It would just require a second person to put some chocks under the legs while the first person levers the front of the hive up.
Thanks Dawn! As far as jelly goes, do you have your British or American hat on there?
Iām thinking the ants are carni or omnivores - yes, complicated!
Did I mention their nasty sting? As bad if not worse than a beesting (can repeatedly sting) and causes an anaphylactic reaction in a small percentage of the population too.
Both!
In the UK most of the ants I came across were herbivores. Wood ants were a pest in the garden, but we did have smaller ants that would raid anything sugary in the house.
In California we have Argentine ants. They are tiny and can get through even a 1mm gap easily. They are omnivores - they will eat my borax fruit jelly mixture, but they also eat dead bees and lots of other things. The problem is that you canāt get rid of them. They have formed a supercolony that stretches from Mexico to San Francisco, and if you kill one nest, a neighboring one moves in very quickly.
They sound like an absolute menace! Do you find them floating in your honey during extraction?
On the British V American thing, I should have been a bit clearer. When you say jelly, do you mean jam or jelly?
I mean jam with no seeds. It doesnāt really matter whether it is jelly or not, but the seeds can plug up the access holes in the jar lid, so I use the seedless variety.
As far as ants in the honey, no. We have a kind of Teflon spray that we have used on metal tape to coat the legs of our hive stand. The ants canāt get across it
We have a similar species of ant here in the West, Myrmecia, we call them sergeant ants but still bull ants, they live in the ground so donāt worry the bees. 6X the venom of an EHB. I definitely wouldnāt want to take the lid off a hive and find a colony of those which is kind of ironic now I think about it.
Oh and nice build Outbeck, well done.
Is that the AntCant? I suspect itās the answer. If only we could get it here.
Thanks Skeggs! Itās definitely Myrmecia and Iāve got at least two species of them. Unfortunately, theyāre back again, but so far in small numbers, which were quickly squashed.
Yes it is. I canāt get it any more either. They went out of business middle of last year.
The ants back again!
I vacuumed up as many as I could see/access with a cordless vacuum then vacuumed up some ant dust. This pic is from the first vacuum. Iāve done another two since, with more to go.
Note the SIX!!! queens that had also moved in.
Also, Iāve been advised they may or may not be meat ants (Iridomyrmex) rather than Myrmecia. I donāt know, they seem to only operate at night, which is a Myrmecia thing and the colours are NQR for meat ants
Time to move to Plan G, which I will come up with in due course.
Ever tried ant baits? Bees canāt get at themā¦
Bunnings sell them