Hello all. I’ve recently noticed that something has built some kind of structure inside the entrance to my hive. The bees seem to still be able to come and go freely. I didn’t notice anything strange during my last inspection a couple of weeks ago. Any ideas what it is?
Looking at the picture it looks like the edge of a wasp nest of some description and the bees are going in underneath it. I could be wrong but would do a inspection and have a look.
The bees have built a propolis screen to reduce the entrance to the size they want… small. I keep my entrances 8 cm or so all year round reducing to two bee spaces when wasps are about.
I would use the claw of your hive tool to rake it out, it might bee a wasp nest as suggested or maybe an ant nest but once you get some of it out you will know what it is. Could bee that the bees have done it to reduce the enterence size.
Cheers
So they will make their own entrance reducer! This video is somewhat different to @Hackdog as the entrance reducer was removed I gather and this was behind it perhaps?
Propolis for sure, how cold does it get in Oyster Bay? I good tip is to, as @Dee says, reduce the entrance during winter.
It doesn’t even need to be full width during the summer. I reduce mine, however I put the reducer in the middle leaving a small entrance on either side.
Thank you all. I’m going to go with propolis screen. JeffH it doesn’t get too cold here. Our winters are very mild. However we have had a couple of cold nights in the last few weeks (in the vicinity of 5 degrees C) so maybe this is their reaction to those temperatures. If I end up pulling it out when the weather warms up I’ll post a picture of it.
looks like a propolis reducer to me. Our bees have, on occasion, blocked off their top entrance. We too usually have a much smaller entrance, rather than leaving the whole bottom open, as with the Flow hive.
I am not a lover of the full width entrance, the bees you have didn’t like it with the cooler weather either. I’m sub tropical Queensland and the widest entrance I have is under 1/2 the width so down your way even that might be a bit on the wide side.
If you decide to put in a piece of wood to cut it down it has proved best for the bees to put a piece in the middle of the gap to make two equal(roughly) entrances.
Regards
Thanks for the tip. I’m going to give that a try.
Jeff is on the money there, I am not that far from you Rod and I have exactly the same thing on one of my pure caucasian hives. Planning to pull it out when the temp gets up into the mid 20’s.
My Caucasian/Carniolan colony is big on propolis too. Must be a Caucasian trait, coz my other Carnies don’t do it.
Will put a propolis mat on to collect some.
Buckfast glue everything down. I looked in a hive for the first time in a month on a hot day and I had to change gloves three times in one box
I’d say that’s a little inconvenient. Do you just wear disposable surgical nitrile gloves? I mean, how many goat skin gloves would you want to depropolise after each inspection?
3 of them for each hive! 
That’s hard work really.
Nitriles and it was only one box of bees
I don’t waste them. they are washed and used for gardening
Sounds like you don’t need an entrance reducer because the bees built one for themselves. But, if you want to make one there are some nice ideas on the forum:
