Bees blocking off OMF? One strain or?

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Poly Hive

Queen Bee
Joined
Dec 4, 2008
Messages
14,093
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Location
Scottish Borders
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
12 and 18 Nucs
I am intrigued by peoples comments on their bees blocking up floor mesh as in over 20 years I have never ever seen any attempt at all to propolise up the floor mesh. Travelling screens yes for sure. But never the floor.

Is there a common strain or locality where this occurs?

PH
 
Or maybe someone is selling mesh/meshfloors at a smaller gauge ?
 
I have tried various sizes of mesh but as I say...

PH
 
I think if I look at my six mesh floors under my six colonies, they probably all have at least some blocking of the mesh. However, note that they are large (MD) hives ... but the whole floor is not meshed off, only the middle bits. The areas around the entrances typically get blocked, which might suggest that the bees prefer a smooth surface on which to walk - less pollen knocked off.
 
I'm with PH, Whole floor area is mesh on all my hives and nucs - clean as a whistle. With the old solid floors it was standard practice to swap all colonies onto a "clean" floor in early spring, not necessary now the stainless steel mesh positively shines.:hurray:
 
All my colonies on omfs have propolised upto circa 20mil from edge all the way round !
however they have never attempted to go any further !

John Wilkinson
 
I've seen the local bees to propolize the mesh on the bottom board of the Dadant Blatt hive, which is the most common type of hive used here. The mesh covers only about 6-inch diameter round area and is propolized in every hive during the winter and free of propolis during the summer.
I've never seen such behaviour among the italians.

I don't know whether the local bees will propolize the whole surface of a screen bottom board ( I don't have much experience with them), but I think some of them will try to (i've seen so propolized entrances that only a single bee could pass).

Regards
Donnie

Some pics from internet
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