My daughter wanted a Top Bar hive so we put a colony from her grandmothers home in it. They have gone wild, we should have made a split but they swarmed instead. this week I checked them and they were overrun with SHB. The TB hive has a screen bottom so we worked out a way to put the second screen on and put two oil trays in the hive from each end. We put the trays in about ,9AM we checked one tray at 5:30PM there was over 25 SHB in one tray the other is under the entrance and we were not suited up, so in about 8 and a half hours over 50 beetles went down. I would like to use soap and water and a surface tension agent to drown the beetles and mites but with our heat it would be a regular chore to keep water in the trays. None of our DSBB hives have a SHB problem some of the hives I looked at this week had no SHB. The Top bar is some distance from the other hives, there is a spring swarm next to the TB and it has no SHB but has a DSBB and oil tray. Yep I'm sold.
Topic: Double screen and oil in pan (Read 925 times)