Beehive Mouse Guard vs Entrance Reducer

One of a beekeeper’s responsibilities is to keep intruders out of the hive. Sure, the guard bees make it their life’s work to keep unwelcome visitors out, but sometimes, our man-made beehives make their job difficult. The focus of this article will be the use of two tools that you can place on the hive to keep intruders out. They are the mouse guard and the entrance reducer.

Both of these tools serve different purposes in protecting and controlling your beehive. The mouse guard primarily prevents mice and other small rodents from entering the hive. The entrance reducer is designed to regulate the entrance size for various reasons, such as to help control robbing by other bees or pests. Understanding these differences and knowing when to add or remove them will help to protect your colonies.

Can You Keep Bees Without Harvesting Honey?

Before humans interfered with bees, they built nests in the wild, collected nectar and pollen for themselves, and managed to survive winter in countries with freezing temperatures. They didn’t have to worry about losing more than half their stores to a two-legged mammal with a saw. As long as they could keep away from bears, they flourished.

Then, we came along with our wicker baskets and hollowed logs, tricking them into setting up their operations where we had full access to their stores. We’ve been at it so long that it almost seems that bees couldn’t do without us taking honey from them. But that’s not exactly true. There are still colonies living unmanaged in forests and caves yet we don’t have honey dripping down the trees, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

Even though you could keep bees without harvesting honey, the bees still require management. In this article, we’ll discuss how to manage bees without honey as the key output.

Keeping bees can feel like hiring a contractor to redo your kitchen. Once the contractor starts, you can visit the site daily and complain every other day, but that doesn’t guarantee the work will be completed when you say so. When you get your first colony, either as a package or a nuc, it works like a contractor.

The bees have a deadline, which is before all the flowers disappear for the summer. Without that nectar, they don’t have the energy to build honeycombs. Without the pollen, they don’t have the food they need to care for their young. So they want to grow as much as you do, but they don’t control all the variables, and neither do you.

In other words, the answer to how long it takes bees to fill a brood box varies, from a few weeks to a couple of months. A strong colony can fill a frame every 2 to 3.5 days and fill a 10-frame brood box in 20 to 35 days. But no two colonies act exactly alike. Read on below for an in-depth overview of the factors that affect the speed at which the bees work to help you plan your brood box activities.

How Long Do Bees Live Without a Queen?

When a bee colony becomes queenless, its survival clock starts ticking. If you don’t act in time, they could turn hopelessly queenless with laying workers, and ultimately, the colony dies.

Bees do everything they can to avoid that situation. For example, when they sense that their queen is failing, they identify existing larvae that they can put on a royal diet immediately. Unfortunately, they can only make a queen out of very young larvae, so if something happens to the queen and there are no eggs or freshly hatched larvae, your colony could be in trouble.

In this article, we will explore the factors that determine the life expectancy of bees without a queen and discuss the various resources and studies that have been conducted on this subject.

How Many Bee Hives Can You Have in a Single Location?

Ultimately, the number of successful hives in any single location comes down to resources. People who keep bees in places with few natural resources spend money on sugar and other feeding supplements. In that case, the feeding beekeeper can have more hives than a neighbor who can’t afford the extra feed.

Although food is a core factor, it’s not the only one. Understanding the dynamics of honey bee life and assessing factors such as available resources, local regulations, space for hive growth, level of beekeeper experience, and potential conflicts with neighbors will inform the optimal number of hives for a specific location.

How Long Do Bees Stay Angry For?

As a beekeeper, prepare to get a sting or two when you’re working in a hive. However, even the most experienced beekeepers will avoid working in a “hot” hive. That’s the term beekeepers use to refer to a colony that seems to be on the attack.

Even when you’re wearing a full bee suit, they will cover your veil and simply not let up. They are angry and make it difficult to get through the simplest tasks. At that point, most beekeepers will close up and come back another day.

Sometimes, the apiary is quite a distance away, making it difficult to make the trip again. So, how long will the bees remain agitated? How long will the bees hold a grudge?

How Far Does a Queen Bee Fly to Mate?

A beehive holds many secrets of bees that they would like to keep away from our prying eyes. One thing that doesn’t occur in a hive that’s vital to the colony’s survival is mating. Up in the trees at least a mile away from the nest/hive it calls home, a queen will accept the attention of many suitors.

How Far Apart Should Beehives Be Placed? Optimal Distances Explained

As wonderful as beekeeping is, it’s not natural. Sure, you could practice natural beekeeping, allow them to build their comb, and look for natural remedies for pest management, but it’s still unnatural.

Professor Tom Seeley talks about his early works mapping out wild honey bee colonies in a forest. He found a ratio of 2.5 colonies per square mile. So if you have five honeybee colonies, you’re already in “violation” of that law. Since we can’t follow the natural bee laws to the letter, we find ways to cause them minimal distress.

That is the focus of this article, how to place hives in our apiaries that allows us to work them comfortably but accommodate core bee behavior. Proper placement of beehives ensures the health and productivity of the bees and reduces issues related to drift and overcrowding.

Do Bees Poop in Their Hives? Exploring Honeybee Hygiene

When discussing the intriguing lives of honey bees, have you ever wondered if and where bees poop? Understanding the bathroom habits of bees not only sheds light on their fascinating social behaviors but also provides knowledge that can benefit beekeepers and pollinator enthusiasts.

Though it might seem unimportant, the answer to this question is crucial to bee hygiene and colony health.

Why Do Bees Reject a Queen?

The queen bee is the central figure in the colony’s intricate social structure. Her primary responsibility is to lay eggs, ensuring the survival and growth of the colony. Apart from reproduction, the queen bee also plays a crucial role in maintaining harmony within the hive through the release of various pheromones. These pheromones regulate worker bee behavior and help establish her dominance as the only working ovaries in the hive.

Despite her importance, bees can sometimes reject their queen, which can be puzzling to observers. To gain deeper insight into this behavior, we will explore the main reasons behind queen rejection in bee colonies.