Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Sniper338 on May 10, 2017, 12:43:22 am
-
Im new, both my hives have screened bottom boards. Havent had an issue yet except for bees under it wanting back in the hive.
Im in south texas, 105 to 112 degree days is a norm...
How does this work with a solid bottom board inca hot climate?
-
I use SBBs but I don't remove the IPM board unless I'm cleaning it up to do a mite drop test. I have to pull them at least every two weeks to dump dropped pollen and wax. Even when not doing a test I keep a coating of petroleum jelly to trap SHBs and varroa. I left it out during hot weather late one spring and found the bees didn't want to draw out the bottom box. I find its a great diagnostic tool for a few hives but if I had hundreds I'd go with solid bottom boards.
Bees are very skilled at ventilating there home so I question the need for us to help them out.
Hope this is helpful.
-
It sounds like your 50/50 too.
-
They build in the wild whether it be in our house, a tree, and many other places that only have an entrance and no ventilation at all.
I live in Thailand and it always hot except a few months get to 60 degrees at night.
Hives here have an area 2" x 4" with expanded metal over it and they have one in front and back of Brood Box, not in second Brood Box or Supers.
-
The SBB was not intended to be a ventilation tool although it can happen. It is more of a trap and observation tool. Time is money so they are not used by commercial beeks.
-
Here I go again. I am changing over to DSBB, because I catch so many SHB and larva. My screens are 3.5 inches apart with a door on the back to change oil in cookie sheets or cake pans. I catch a great number of SHB. In cold weather I use a political sign or what's at hand to reduce or close the bottom. I also use green house shade for a blackout board under the oil pan in hot weather as SHB like the dark. Works for me.
-
I use them but I have nothing to compare them against because I have always used them
-
I have one in use, but leave it closed. I have never lost that hive. This year out of 11 hives at that yard, it was the only one left. Can't say I attribute it to the scb, but who knows.
-
I use SBB on all of my hives and most of my nucs. The hives have dry oil pans under them. I only take them out when I am transporting the hives. I close off the entrances with screens and having the pans out keeps them from overheating when closed in. I have them in my nucs for trans port, especially when a large swarm moves in and I am bringing them home. I also have bottom boards with pans that I can screw on for when they are in my yard. It only takes 30 minutes to cook a swarm in a nuc that has screen over the entrance if there is no other ventilation.
Jim
-
I use SBB on all of my hives and most of my nucs. The hives have dry oil pans under them. I only take them out when I am transporting the hives. I close off the entrances with screens and having the pans out keeps them from overheating when closed in. I have them in my nucs for trans port, especially when a large swarm moves in and I am bringing them home. I also have bottom boards with pans that I can screw on for when they are in my yard. It only takes 30 minutes to cook a swarm in a nuc that has screen over the entrance if there is no other ventilation.
Jim
Which bottom board do you use? SBB doeant make since to me and solid and screened both start with an S...
-
Most people refer to a Screen Bottom Board as SBB. Some might refer to Solid Bottom or Solid Board as SB or just say they use solid bottom board. I agree ScBB would clear things up but then it is slower to type.
-
FWIW, over here in Britain we call 'em 'OMFs' (Open Mesh Floors) ...
Here's an extract from a book I've just finished reading, which you might find relevant - maybe (?):
The position I have taken up in regard to Plenty of Air both in Summer and Winter in connection with large hives and frames, is confirmed in a very decided manner by an experience related by Mr. Chas. Dadant, in the American Bee Journal of December 26th, 1895. This champion of large hives, and the largest frame in use (the Quinby), states that a bee-keeper he once visited "had five or six hives in a covered apiary facing south. Those hives were placed upon strips made of 1-inch timber, two inches wide, and nailed edgewise on stakes driven into the ground, so as to form a sort of rack. The hives had no bottom boards, for our friend thought that bees succeeded best when they had plenty of air ...
Strange to say, colonies in these hives wintered successfully, and we were very much astonished, in one of the hardest winters, to find that he had not lost a single colony, while our losses had been heavy."
There is nothing at all strange about the bees doing well with no floor boards. For many years past I have been trying to get bee-keepers to adopt an empty chamber under the actual stock, both Summer and Winter. The reports that come in show conclusively that the deep space under the stock is the only means of keeping the hive cool in Summer, and thoroughly dry all Winter without the least draught through the cluster, which actually hangs in a dense mass below the combs during the severest weather.
Samuel Simmins, A Modern Bee Farm, 1915
-
Let me explain DSBB. This bottom has #8 screen on both top and bottom of the base therefore "Double screened bottom board". I use a drop door in the back on most hives ,I like this better, on the back to make it bee proof and lets me change the oil without disturbing the ladies. How many designs are there? As many as there are beeks that make them.
-
Screened with oil tray, in the deep South shb are rampant. It is about the only tool we have found effective.
Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
-
We have mild, wet winters here. 80 days rain of 120 for a winter season- rare to get snow (but we saw it a few times and it stayed around). We have no small hive beetle. We have about a dozen days a year that it gets to be above 90f
The hives that I have built SBB for all made it through another winter, all of my losses were from the solid boards. Some at the bee club say it is too much ventilation and the new thing last year was placing a board so that only the center was out to carry moisture through a modified, divided quilt board (open center for broken sugar candy) to get air flow through the center. I have just recently taken a hole saw to the bottom of the solid, divided, bottom boards and screened them to do a hybrid without spending a bunch of time or money.
-
A thread you might like to read about SBB
http://www.beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=16851.msg123059#msg123059
BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :smile:
-
I've personally never used them.
-
I drill a 70 mm hole in the bottom, lightly around with a rasp and a ball jar lid fits tightly in the hole.
I use small Ball jars about 3" tall and put 1/2" of mineral oil in them with #8 screen.
The bees will push the beetles to the back, they fall thru into the oil.
But, luckily, so far not one beetle in my hives