I planned on inspecting most of the hives today, but ended up only opening the Nuc on a Top Bar Hive. I built the hive based upon the plans provided by Michael Bush. When using the hive in such a way that there is not a solid top to keep the rain out, it works fine as is. I wasn’t able to provide a solid roof to the hive because of the Nuc sitting on top of the front half of the hive. This wasn’t so bad, as the only entrances for water were the gaps between the first and second frames that served as the entrance to the hive.
The real problem was when I decided to feed the bees using an inverted jar. I took an entrance moving screen, laid it across the hive in place of a few top bars and then put the inverted jar on that. It gave easy access to the jar for the bees, but kept them behind the screen to allow me to refill the jar without crushing bees. There were a few issues with that. The bees kept climbing on to the top of the screen, which made it impossible to replace the jar without crushing bees and it provided a nice big opening for rain to get in to the hive. The inverted jar prevent the plywood from covering the screen. My original plan was to get a drill bit the size of the jar tops and use a piece of wood to prevent water from getting in. I never found the time to make that happen, so I cut corners.
End result was that all this rain that we’ve gotten in the past to weeks made its way in to the hive and had no place to go, so it just sat there. There was about 2-3 inches of water in the bottom of the hive with many dead bees floating in it. It smelled disgusting. I ran and got my drill with a 3/8″ bit to put a few drainage holes in to the hive. I then spent the next 30-45 minutes scooping out the dead bees and using the hive tool as a squeegee. The cardboard follower had to be tossed and this explains why there was always a mass of bees on the screen. They were desperately trying to dry out the hive.
The main lesson to be learned from this is that you should always assume that water will find its way in to the hive and it needs a way to drain out.
Before putting any hives on my property, I spent a large amount of my free time reading about what to expect and how to be a good neighbor with a few hives. Bees need water and will use a source of water whether you like it or not. Bees like dirty water, chlorinated water and salty water. I did a google satellite search and didn’t see any pools anywhere near my house, so I didn’t think that would be an issue I would potentially encounter. Just to be on the safe side, I keep the fountain full with a few goldfish to give the water some flavor. There has always been a very active presence at the fountain. Anywhere from a dozen to a few hundred bees actively fetching water from the found. This gave me the impression that I was providing a good water source for my bees.
It turns out that a neighbor behind my property has a pool. I cannot see it from my yard, but I learned this when the owner called me about “a lot of bees” constantly visiting her yard to sun on her deck and enjoy the salt water in the pool. She was very friendly and understanding, despite being inconvenienced. Her and her family have even been stung while trying to enjoy the pool. Bees dislike being splashed, even unintentionally.
When she said “a lot of bees” , I had a mental image of thousands of bees draining her pool. Something like this.
“A lot of bees” is a relative term. It turned out to be 4-5 bees at a time, but a steady stream of them coming and going during the hotter parts of the day. Thankfully, it was not like I envisioned. The phone call was friendly, so I hand delivered a jar of honey and let her know that we’d try to do a better job of enticing the bees away from their pool. It was later in the day when I visited and didn’t see any bees going to the pool. There was a bee flying around the yard looking for something. It was interested in us, so I encouraged her land on my finger instead of anyone else. Bees in the field are usually friendly and I was trying to show that you don’t need to swat at them if they are hovering around you. In fact, you’re more likely to get stung if you do swat at them.
Given the low amount of bee traffic to their pool, I put out a giant ice bucket full of water in the back of my yard and connected it to the drip irrigation system to help keep it full. I plan to make the water more attractive for the bees by adding some lemon grass. Bees are attracted to lemon grass oil, so a 40 gallon bucket of lemon grass “tea” will hopefully reduce the bee visits to the pool to an unnoticeable level. I do plan on moving some of the hives off to other locations as soon as I pick up the pickup in two weeks. I don’t think it’s possible to stop all bee traffic to her pool because there are a few beekeepers in the area and it is a nice pool.
Google+