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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Zac Morris <zac AT zacwolf.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ocba] Black Ants!
  • Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:10:14 -0400

My third season of keeping bees.  I remove the top cover today and it's FULL of big black ants!  I had placed screen on my inner hive cover "port" so the ants were not down in the hive itself, just in the space between the inner cover and the rain cover.

So I cleared them all off, inspected the hive (no ants inside it).  Hive was doing very well!

No ants in my other hives either.

So I now have two questions:

1) Screen on the inner hive port: I've gotten two very different opinions on this practice.  
  1. The man that lead the class I took down in Southern Pines said you should block the port to prevent robbing.
  2. Someone else told me that you should not.
  • Opinions?  Would unscreened have prevented the ants from setting up shop in the top area, or would it have allowed them to get down in the hive?
2) Ants: I have my hive bottom setting on a cinder-block.  I was considering two possible approaches.
  1. Shallow pan, place the cinder-block down in the pan, then fill the pan with a shallow layer of mineral oil.
  2. Slather the cinder-block in Vaseline.
  • both, or something else?
THANKS!
-Zac




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