Solid underfloor entrance

[JamezF]

I'm planning to make some of these by just routing an 8mm slot about 15cm long out of a piece of ply for the main floor. Does that seem a reasonable way to go or are there other considerations that I've failed to, err, consider?

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

I have four. They look like a mesh UFE but no mesh. The bees seem to do really well on them.

 

[JamezF]

I have four. They look like a mesh UFE but no mesh. The bees seem to do really well on them.

Are yours all on nucs still? I'm sure I read in one of your posts that you had at least some nucs on solid UFEs, but it wasn't clear if you had them elsewhere too.

I'm hoping mine will do better on them than they do on an OMF (given that they have taken to propolising up the OMFs as it is).

James

 

[Wilco]

I think they do better on solid floors. I have some, just use ply where the mesh would be on JBM's design as featured on the BMH video.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Are yours all on nucs still? I'm sure I read in one of your posts that you had at least some nucs on solid UFEs, but it wasn't clear if you had them elsewhere too.

I'm hoping mine will do better on them than they do on an OMF (given that they have taken to propolising up the OMFs as it is).

James

I have four now under full size colonies and two under nucs

 

[GlenJ]

I made a couple from 2 x 1 and had an annoying 10mm to make up. Otherwise great. Ply seems a good choice as long as the edges are protected from the elements.

 

[Newbeeneil]

I have several solid floor UFE and have noticed they seem to be doing better than the mesh ones. Mine are made from 3 x 150mm cedar boards with a 10mm gap in the floor.

 

[JamezF]

I have several solid floor UFE and have noticed they seem to be doing better than the mesh ones. Mine are made from 3 x 150mm cedar boards with a 10mm gap in the floor.

I assume in that instance your 10mm gap runs the entire width of the hive?

Our local sawmill sometimes has cedar available and if I could get them to provide boards in a size I could work with that might be handy alternative.

James

 

[Newbeeneil]

I assume in that instance your 10mm gap runs the entire width of the hive?

Our local sawmill sometimes has cedar available and if I could get them to provide boards in a size I could work with that might be handy alternative.

James

Yes in some it does, in others I have glued a piece of 10 mm wide wood at the edges to reduce the width of the slit to about 200mm.

I get quite a few lengths of 150 wide run up by my local saw mill as the are also good for roofs.

 

[user 22174]

A word of warning - my solid floor with an underfloor entrance which I made according to the youtube from No Nonsense Beekeeping went wrong. The boards expanded and closed up the gap so the bees couldn't get out.

 

[madasafish]

Mesh floors are an invention of the devil.
Avoid.


Never seen in the wild so not British nor natural.

 

[Ian123]

Mesh floors are an invention of the devil.
Avoid.


Never seen in the wild so not British nor natural.

I’m not sure celotex is seen in the wild but there’s a lot of it about atm bloody foreign stuff!
If any are worried about omf then just sit them on something solid an old brood box on a couple of blocks is a good solution.

 

[Murox]

Mesh floors are an invention of the devil.
Avoid.


Never seen in the wild so not British nor natural.

As Franz Kafka observed in his short fable regarding “The invention of the devil”. “…..Only a crowd of devils could account for our earthly misfortunes.…”
Of course “…the telephone was “an invention of the devil…..” as were …WW1 airplanes. Even mathematicians tell us divergent series are the invention of the devil….” not forgetting that religious leaders used to call the fiddle “The Devil's Instrument” because food, drink and merriment were involved. Then there are forks, socialism and smoking, dice and best of all The Smurfs.

OMF were not invented by the Devil, but they might be a manifestation of a certain school of elderly frock coated group of people.

 

[derekm]

Mesh floors cause outrageous drafts ... well it takes alot to eliminate the effects of "drafts" in the CFD simulations. It took lowering the "outside wind" down to 50mm/second to get rid of their effects. Thats without a hive stand making it worse..Yes the simulated hives float in in simulated mid air.

 

[user 20297]

I’m not sure celotex is seen in the wild but there’s a lot of it about atm bloody foreign stuff!
If any are worried about omf then just sit them on something solid an old brood box on a couple of blocks is a good solution.

I have blocked the unnatural, open-mesh floors of my hives with an unnatural square of "Celotex" cut to fit and shoved in the hole.
I had only been a beekeeper for five minutes when it occurred to me that an open floor might have negative effects for the creatures housed above it; I didn't need data or a scientific paper (or even to know anything about beekeeping.)
Yesterday, I briefly opened five such hives for fondant filling and found no signs of current or previous condensation problems caused by the lack of ventilation; I just found a very lively bunch of bees, greatly annoyed by the sudden ventilation above them. Luckily, the sting under my chin has subsided very quickly.

 

[Hedgerow Honey]

I moved away from mesh floors fourteen years ago. There is still the odd one, mostly old poly floors.

We did have one factory site that wanted hives painted in there corporate colours, so we used paradise poly‘s, including they floor. It was quite a windy spot alongside a railway track and the colonies just did not flourish.
after a month a transferred them into our timber hives with solid floors and they did not look back.
certainly not scientific, but sort of proved to us mesh is not good.