Beware Wasps And New Colonies

[mike99]

Hi Steve. I have seen your design for the tunnel and I am going to make one. I was also thinking that if I did another one with a small entrance, say about 5-10mm, it could be used as a winter one and would deter mice?

 

[Millet]

Nope i am still lost. nothing should be under the roof ... that is unless you have a wrong type of crown board..

 

[Hivemaker.]

Gaps in the under roof battons

Should not be any gaps.

 

[Millet]

Hi Steve. I have seen your design for the tunnel and I am going to make one. I was also thinking that if I did another one with a small entrance, say about 5-10mm, it could be used as a winter one and would deter mice?

Mike. if you make the type i have you would need a pretty flat mouse to fit through it.. the type i have already mentioned

 

[mike99]

Mike. if you make the type i have you would need a pretty flat mouse to fit through it.. the type i have already mentioned

Thanks Steve. That is reassuring. However would it be a good idea to reduce the size to save heat loss?

 

[gbee]

New carniolan nuc end of june, first time beek. Bees seem to be doing well with the wbc entrance reducer closed, filled out a brood and most of a half. However, I had to abort a hive inspection yesterday because so many wasps were trying their luck with the hive open. As fascinating as it is watching a bee latch on to a wasp and tomahawk it in to the sky, I didn’t think it fair on the bees.

So yes wasps are being a problem but the colony seems reasonably strong at dealing with it. I Put out a few traps and will see.

 

[Tony19]

Should not be any gaps.

Checked with one of the bee keepers last night and they found loads of wasps in the ashworth feeder. So asked how hive was assembled, open floor with entrance narrowed, BB, ashworth feeder, crown board, then roof. Bee escapes were in the crown board which allowed access to feeder but not sure how the wasps got in via the roof, these were removed and holes blocked. So I think that there may be a problem with the roof, maybe not sitting correctly I'll pop round and check sometime today.

 

[Karol]

For the benefit of beekeepers new to beekeeping:

To protect your hives from wasps requires a basic understanding of how wasps feed because that allows you to 'flex' your strategies depending on the situation you are faced with. The feeding behaviour of wasps is complex so I propose to stick to the sweet feeding aspects of their feeding behaviour as this is most relevant at this time in their life cycle.

When sweet feeding wasps feed they do so on three different 'levels' characterised by the nature of the attack that you will see at the hive.

Scouting Attack

Wasp nests send out individual foragers who randomly scout for food sources. There is little pattern to their direction of travel and they simply randomly fly about until they pick up on a (sweet) scent trail which they will follow back to the source. If scouting wasps find the source to be 'rich' by which I mean they successfully feed at the source and there is a surfeit of food after feeding they will communicate this back to the nest to recruit more of their colleagues to the food source. It is important to appreciate that the biggest competition that wasps have over food is other wasps and so their feeding strategy has evolved into team work to protect discovered food sources from other wasps.

It is important therefore to appreciate that hives provide constant scent trails which I prefer to refer to as plumes and that each hive may produce several plumes depending on the construction of the hive and where the plumes leave the hive. So OMF hives will have a different plume signature to solid floor hives. Understanding this will give an insight into how scouting wasps will approach the hive to probe the hive for weaknesses. The basic principle is that the more plumes you have the greater the attraction the more scouting wasps will come probing. So it's essential to think about how to limit the number of plumes being created which means removing all extraneous sources being fastidious about hygiene outside of the hive and managing entrances and venting systems.

At the hive scouting behaviour is seen as individual wasps probing hives for access. It is imperative that those scouts are denied access otherwise feeding risks jumping to the next level with a commensurate increase in risk of hive failure. Having a strong hive and properly constructed entrances is key at this stage. If the hive is set up properly it should be able to continuously bat away probing attacks by scouting wasps so that wasp feeding never escalates to the next level. This is the desired natural operating state that bee husbandry should always aim at. Critically entrances need to be of a tunnel construction where the height of the tunnel is equivalent to the height of a bee. The width of the entrance is variable depending on the size of the bee colony and the level of flow. You don't want to restrict passage of worker bees because doing so will be counter productive to maintaining the strength of the hive and therefore its ability to bat away scouting wasps. The important thing is that the tunnel should be no less than 100mm long so that there are at least 8 to 10 ranks of defending sentry bees. The way that you know how wide to make the entrance in relation to the needs of the hive is by observing the optimum width that supports a tunnel fully populated by sentry bees. This is easily achieved by using a system of adjustable shims that can be slid in and out of the tunnel entrance to vary the width.

As for other potential access points into the hive then it is critical to have these 'wasp proofed'. The use of a fine wire mesh held securely in place should do the trick.

Above all it is imperative that scouting wasps don't get the chance to feed at the hive because that way they will not communicate the location of the hive back to their nest and your problem will remain manageable and superficial. Opening hives represents one of the greatest challenges to preventing scouting wasps getting to the hive's rich source. There are two aspects to this. The time of day when the hive is opened which should be done when wasp activity is at its lowest, i.e. crack of dawn or at dusk and the second is suppressing the back ground population of wasps in the vicinity of the apiary.

Swarm Feeding

As already explained, once scouting wasps eat at a rich food source they will communicate it back to the nest. This results in swarm feeding which will adopt one of two different characteristics based on the nature of the food source. If the food source is an amalgamation of pin point sources for example lots of scattered droplets of honey on the floor then you are likely to see lots of mini swarms with each mini swarm representing a different wasp nest. If the food source is a concentrated expanse then you are likely to get one big swarm of wasps which is likely to represent a multitude of wasp nests. understanding the distinction between the two is critical because in the latter situation the competition between wasps from different nests will lead to them potentially releasing alarm pheromone which significantly escalates the level of attraction with regards to the emanating plume and will act as a magnet drawing wasps from miles around. (Wasp alarm pheromone around nests is not good which is why it is a bad idea to squash wasps on a hive.)

When wasps swarm feed then it is important to understand two things. Firstly is that wasps have incredible powers of navigation and have mental maps based on land marks and are able to navigate to the same food source to within millimetres. The second thing to understand is that swarm feeding wasps are programmed to keep coming back to the same food source until it is fully consumed and will ignore all other sources of food once they have latched onto their original food source. These are key fundamentals when it comes to dealing with swarm feeding wasps and forms the basis of different eradication strategies based on dynamic trapping as opposed to static trapping.

Swarm feeding is more difficult to deal with than scouting feeding because it requires dynamic solutions but nevertheless it is entirely manageable with the right strategy and tools. One word of caution though. If wasps manage to start swarm feeding at a hive and the only solution adopted at the hive is to reinforce the entrance with no other parallel actions taken then the swarm feeding wasps will know where the food source is and moreover the sentries at the hive entrance will not be faced with batting away individual scouting wasps, they will be faced with dealing with a concerted onslaught from the swarm of wasps that have been denied immediate access which even a well defended tunnel entrance may not cope with. The difficulty with this scenario is that there will be mass killing at the entrance to the hive resulting in the hive being flooded with wasp alarm pheromone which will drive the next level of feeding which is frenzied feeding.

Frenzied Feeding

Frenzied feeding is promulgated by the presence of wasp alarm pheromone that has tipped over a particular thresh hold. Frenzied feeding is characterised by thousands of wasps overwhelming the hive and is really end game for the hive. It is still possible to rescue hives in this situation but speed and having the correct knowledge are of the essence. Sadly, the most common instances where this happens is through poor inexperienced husbandry or through trauma at the hive, for example being knocked over by winds or animals etc. Because frenzied attack is driven almost entirely by pheromones which provide a homing beacon for all wasps that encounter the plume (including the entire foraging population of a wasp nest if so exposed) simply moving the hive won't work. Food plumes don't draw wasps the same way as pheromone plumes and this makes sense because not all food plumes will deliver a satisfactory food source that justifies wasps investing effort on a massed scale. Alarm pheromone is different because it sends a specific message that wasps understand and respond to.

Anyway I hope this is useful food for thought. Happy to answer questions.

I get slated on the forum each time I raise the issue of low efficiency vs high efficiency traps but it is key to good husbandry. Trapping is an essential tool in managing wasps but fundamental to trapping is understanding that low efficiency traps put your hives at risk. Period. The difference between a high efficiency trap and a low efficiency trap is that a low efficiency trap will allow wasps to enter, feed and escape to recruit more of their colleagues. This is not always easy to see so the trap has to be observed closely over a significant period of time and at different times of the day and at different times of its cycle to determine if it is allowing wasps to escape. So for example observing a freshly prepared trap for a few minutes will give no indication to its efficiency a day later when there's a raft of floating wasps providing a platform to prevent other wasps from drowning giving them ample time to find a way out. One of the advantages of high efficiency traps which allow no wasps to escape is that they help suppress the population of wasps in the vicinity of the hive allowing hive inspections to be undertaken with less risk.

 

[enrico]

And all that should go on a separate thread that should become a sticky. Thanks Karol
E

 

[Tony19]

Problem identified

Checked with one of the bee keepers last night and they found loads of wasps in the ashworth feeder. So asked how hive was assembled, open floor with entrance narrowed, BB, ashworth feeder, crown board, then roof. Bee escapes were in the crown board which allowed access to feeder but not sure how the wasps got in via the roof, these were removed and holes blocked. So I think that there may be a problem with the roof, maybe not sitting correctly I'll pop round and check sometime today.

Ok went round and looked at the roof of this particular hive, the underside battons which seal the roof against the crown board should be a continual strip on each side interlocking with each other, this particular roof had a gap the guy who owns the hive had cut two battons short when assembling the roof. So wasps now inside the roof above the crown board, then bee escapes in place on the crown board allowed wasps to enter the feeder. The roof has been modified (built correctly!!) and the bee escapes removed and the holes sealed with ply. Fortunately the ashworth feeder completely sealed the brood box and then acted as an extreemly large wasp trap. So loads of drowned wasps removed. Checked again after a couple of hours now all's well and any wasps approaching the hive entrance are rebuffed by the guard bees.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Ok went round and looked at the roof of this particular hive, the underside battons which seal the roof against the crown board should be a continual strip on each side interlocking with each other, this particular roof had a gap the guy who owns the hive had cut two battons short when assembling the roof. So wasps now inside the roof above the crown board, then bee escapes in place on the crown board allowed wasps to enter the feeder. The roof has been modified (built correctly!!) and the bee escapes removed and the holes sealed with ply. Fortunately the ashworth feeder completely sealed the brood box and then acted as an extreemly large wasp trap. So loads of drowned wasps removed. Checked again after a couple of hours now all's well and any wasps approaching the hive entrance are rebuffed by the guard bees.

A few points here - porter escapes should not be in place on the crown board unless clearing bees down from a super - when using a crown board as a CROWN BOARD there should be no open holes in it - cover them with a thin piece of thin ply or slate.
you do not need those battens in the roof - rip them out and fix a piece of 40 or 50mm celotex over the whole inside of the roof.

 

[Millet]

Thanks Steve. That is reassuring. However would it be a good idea to reduce the size to save heat loss?

Don't worry about heat loss Mike.. as long as you have no holes above and insulation in the roof ...all will be fine..