Season of the Mouse

For a mouse looking for somewhere to overwinter safe from the cat and chickens that wander my garden the beehives are an excellent place to go. Safe from the elements, dry, heated by a few thousand bees, lots of honey, wax and dead bees to chew on. Perfect. As the weather cools down and bee activity slows mice start to get ideas about overwintering in those inviting looking boxes so the normal response of the beekeeper is to put mouseguards on the hive entrances to keep them out. I think this is normally this is around mid October but this year mid October was still tshirt weather -actually here in Hull 'tshirt weather' just means the snow doesn't come too far over your boots, anyway as the bees still very busy I decided to hang fire till it cooled as the mouseguards slow bees down as they enter and leave the hives and can knock collected pollen from the bees legs too.

Mouseguards

In October I decided to make sure the guards old fit the floors, I'd originally made the mouseguards back in 2011 when I had hive floors from two different manufacturers, since then I've bought floors from different sources and they all have slightly different sized entrances so as expected my  guards wouldn't fit them all. There are standard measurements for hive floors so it shouldn't be a problem in theory but in the real world as long as the outer edge of the floor is the 46.5cm square expected of a National hive the rest is a bit variable, probably depending on wood available and the preferences of the carpenter

Hive1 Mouseproofed

One of my original mouseguards fitted Hive2 without a problem, and I was able to saw half a cm from another to make it fit Hive1 but there was nothing for hives 3 and 4. I decided to make a new guard for Hive3which had a wider entrance than any of the other floors. After a quick trip to get wood and aluminium it was outside with with a saw and chisel to make the wooden part then out with the hacksaw and drill to make the metal part.

Drilling holes for bees and nails

One new reduced entrance mouseguard

The Black Bees trying the mouseguard for size in October

As an experiment Hive4 is using an old solid floor picked up at an auction. This has a slightly lower entrance than the others. I didn't have a piece of wood to fit it. I decided to put some mesh over the entrance and see how that goes. The holes are 12mm squares which I've read a small mouse can still get through but some beekeepers report having used for years with no problem. I attached it with a handful of drawing pins and it'll do for now and whilst it looks a bit rough and ready the bees can actually pass through it easier than the holes in the other mouseguards.

Hive4 with it's wire mesh mouseguard

The usual mouseguard is a strip of metal with vertical slots which is pinned to the front of the hive, this would work on Hive4 but some of the other hives I've put porches on the redirect rain from the entrances (not a normal part of the Commercial brood box specification) which would obstruct these. Another approach is to use an entrance reducer with metal nails hammered in at intervals to stop mice squeezing through, although I've read that mice can widen a wooden entrance reducers to get into hives. After making sure I had reducers to fit the hives.

In the end I fitted the guard in late November when the hive activity was reduced. Now it's been a couple of weeks since I've seen any flying bees and today the ponds are frozen over. Next thing on my list of things to do are Oxalic Acid treatment for varroa and I plan to install candyboards again like last year, other than that I'm prettymuch done for the year.

Let it go...