Closing up during spraying.

[Matt77]

Morning everyone, just had a call from the farmer to say he'll be spraying the beans in the field my bees are in. They intend to spray them tomorrow maybe in the afternoon/evening apparently it depends on the weather during the day.

I intend to close them up tonight & open them up again tomorrow night. They have an open mesh floor but should I be providing more ventilation for them?

 

[enrico]

You could put a travel screen on top but an umbrella to provide shade and several sprays of water up through the mesh floor if it is warm was good for my bees. No obvious adverse reaction. The other thing you can do if it is available is put a very fine water spray from a hose over your hive all day, keeps it cool and the bees think it is raining, depends if you are metered water or not!

 

[Matt77]

Hi Enrico, ideally that sounds spot on but the bees are in a field a few miles from my house. I'll add some ventilation by lifting the crown board om matchsticks though. My other problem is once I've closed them up tonight I'm not going to be able to get back to them until early eve tomorrow at the earliest.