Mouse guards

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Aggravated

New Bee
Joined
Jul 26, 2011
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Location
London
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
4
Is it time yet to start thinking of fitting the guards?
 
not usually until the temperature drops to clustering temperature. But I've got the kind of mouseguards which can be left on all year - it doesn't seem to make any difference though - I'd some hives sans mouse guards all year and others with the mouseguards on and the bees seem ok.
It's wasp open season though so it's that time of year for reducing the entrances, with or without mouse guards.
 
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I've got the mouse guards on all my hives. Always put them on or snap into place straight after removing the supers to avoid me forgetting about them.

Chris
 
The bees are still quite active and the mice aren't thinking of a winter shutdown yet.
So early, IMHO. Especially in town, in the South.
But I do have reduced entrances most of the time, and definitely at this time of year.

Advice from elderly beek - "put on mouseguards when the Ivy pollen stops going in."
 
What's that sort look like?

like the one on the white hive - in the fawns catalogue i think it's called a castellated mouse guard - the reason it's ok all year is that the spaces don't knock pollen off the bees' hind legs unlike the round holed mouse guards and it has reduced entrance on one side and the other normal side. I do take it off during a nectar flow though
picture.php
 
As meidel says, the right types of guard will not be a problem for the bees or their cargo and better safe than sorry. In the natural world a bee colony may have an entrance of perhaps only a centimetre or two all the year and they manage rather well, pollen and all.

Chris
 
the reason it's ok all year is that the spaces don't knock pollen off the bees' hind legs unlike the round holed mouse guards

The normal round mouseguards don't knock off pollen either as the holes are much bigger than the bees and the stripping holes in a pollen trap. Somewhere on here, maybe a year or so back is a comparison of the dimensions of mouseguards and pollen traps and the observations I made about them.
 
Looking at Meidel's picture, what's with the anti bird spikes in front of the hives? Just curious.

Also I notice the blue debris netting; I have a green coloured version and find that the bees fly straight out of the hive into the netting and then have to work their way up before they get to the top & fly off. Seems like they don't see it, although they do when they come back from foraging. How do your bees get on with it?
 
Looking at Meidel's picture, what's with the anti bird spikes in front of the hives? Just curious.

Also I notice the blue debris netting; I have a green coloured version and find that the bees fly straight out of the hive into the netting and then have to work their way up before they get to the top & fly off. Seems like they don't see it, although they do when they come back from foraging. How do your bees get on with it?

anti bird spikes deter most of the other birds save for the magpies who are just too clever. the resident allotment moggy does a better job of protecting the bees :D

debris netting - majority of the bees fly over it but there are the odd few who fly into it, tends to be the tired ones coming back with a heavy load and don't seem to clear the height
 
entrance reducer on at the moment but mouseguards open/unreduced in winter so the bees can bring out their dead
 
With the mouseguard in place for the winter do i leave the entrance reducer in place or remove it for ventilation

Remove it. (Unless you have a Pains poly Nat/14x12 and no better idea than mine!)

It doesn't affect ventilation. Shouldn't with an open mesh floor and no-hole crownboard (topped with insulation), which is the forum orthodoxy.

Risk with leaving it in place behind the mouseguard is that the bees might get blocked in by dead bees obstructing the small available entrance/exit.

Pains poly is a special case, with a non-flat front to the hive, so needing an unusual mouseguard.




In former times, people have advised all manner of strange things, including fitting the entrance block upside down - so that it takes a thick layer of dead bees to obstruct the hole! Unfortunately, it can also make work difficult for the mortuary bees to eject any corpses, thereby creating just such a thick layer of dead bees...
 
Pains poly is a special case, with a non-flat front to the hive, so needing an unusual mouseguard

Not sure about the full size hives but with the original p a y n e s polynuc that had an entrance partly in the front face and partly in the bottom, a normal national hive mouseguard can be cut down to about 4 inches long and fixed vertically round the bottom and up the front with gaffer tape. Sheet queen excluder can also be fixed in a similar manner if you wish to restrict exit of the queen or entry/exit of drones.

Of course the mouseguard isn't totally 'secure' with the use of tape, but neither is a national one usually fixed with drawing pins.

I'd be interested in seeing what the entrance looks like on the full sized hive if it is different to the polynuc.
 
...
I'd be interested in seeing what the entrance looks like on the full sized hive if it is different to the polynuc.
Nothing like it!

Its not the 'entrance' that's unusual, rather that the brood box wall (above the entrance) isn't flat, so an ordinary flat mouseguard (taller than the entrance) cannot lie flat against the brood box wall, and leaves gaps 'over' the mouseguard.
Take a look at the photos on the Pains website.
http://www.p a y n e s beefarm.co.uk/polystyrene-national-hive/
 
I didn't use mouse guards over last Winter as I'd changed over to Dartington type floors . No probs with mice ,so Ill leave them without this Winter also! Should owt untoward happen, I shall return to the practice of using them :)
VM
 
I haven't used mouse guards during the past two Winters and so far have had no problem with mice.

I attended an association lecture last night where the speaker advised that he has already had mice damage in a hive and produced a comb with a lovely arch of comb missing from the bottom centre of the frame. When he had been setting up for his talk I had initially assumed that he had cut a queen cell out of the frame.

Now, I am assuming that he had other evidence that a mouse or mice had been present in the hive or Nuc and I didn't put him over it but I did observe and remark on the fact that he must treat for varroa using oxalic acid by sublimation: he looked at me and asked how I knew that so I commented that his frame told me. I pointed out the charred mark on the bottom bars of his frame, directly under the void in the comb and suggested that he must put the evaporator on top of his OMF rather than under it.

He commented that you could see where the mice had chewed the comb and put the frame away again.

Perhaps the mouse had chewed where the evaporator had melted the wax? ;) I know what I think happened.

From my perspective, all my stocks would seem to be too active to allow a mouse to gain access to a hive but it is worth keeping an eye out for unwelcome stowaways in our hives.
 
I've seen plenty of evidence of what happens when mice enter a hive and it can happen if protective measures aren't in place. Even a strong colony clusters and becomes "dormant" in cold weather and this is when the serious damage can be done. Rats can be an even greater problem as they can also slip through the entrance space and they can push normal loose fitted entrance blocks out of the way, (not that I use those myself).

Simple thing like a mouse guard costs very little, (about 70p each here), and can be kept in place from Sept to April.

Chris
 
With the mouseguard in place for the winter do i leave the entrance reducer in place or remove it for ventilation

With a mesh floor, it doesn't really matter if you have a reduced entrance or not as there will be sufficient ventillation.

The advantage of keeping reducers in place over winter is that you can cut the mouse-guards to 1/2 size so you don't need to buy so many! I've never seen so many dead that they block the entrance (or should I say exit?).

I have some sort of reducers with all my hives all year. The biggest colony this year with 18 frames of brood had a 150 mm x 10 mm opening and they were fine with it. Given the opportunity, bees will reduce the entrance themselves with propolis and I think it's fair to say that they know what they're doing.
 
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So,

Conflicting advice as usual.

That's beekeeping!
 

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