New video of my bees ; Mouse Guards and Heather
I was asked where all my videos were
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Where in the UK are you Valli?
Bit early here for mousegards. 2 reasons, they tend to strip pollen off the bees and lots of holes are more difficult to defend against wasps.
The bees are not clustering at night even in a wooden hive, let alone a poly so no mouse will get in.
A good tip is to make your own entrance block with an entrance slot 10cm long and 8mm high (a bee space) No mouse guard ever needed
I was having trouble with wasps and I had to do it now as I’m away for a month for work and can only come home for an hour or so, I have other things to do besides bees when I come back.
I’m in Solihull - West Midlands. It has gotten really cool here and the nights have noticeably drawn in. They seem to be OK with the guard - the poly hive had a gap to the side so I put a 1" piece of wood in the gap - neither Poly Hive or Nuc would take the poly guard I had so had to go for the traditional one.
The only way I could put the guard on was nail it through one of the holes either side of the entrance. There is only 1 row they are able to get in through
On the wooden one the wooden block with the 10cm opening is behind it there and the mouse guard is wedged in around it tightly - had to hammer it to keep it in place so only has 10cm of holes 1 row deep to defend.
I only had this weekend to do things as I’ve loads of jobs to do before I go