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Beekeeping Supplies, Beginning Beekeeper, How to Articles
Wasps in your beehive – A Robbing Screen may help
Wasps in your beehives are a real problem at the end of the bees season in New Zealand. It seems in the Waitakere ranges, wasps gain strength as the bee season is ending. So you get situations where wasps attack your weaker bee colonies and can kill them off.
At different times of the season the wasps are looking for different things, sometimes the nice stored honey your bees have been working all summer to collect or sometimes the bees themselves. Either way it’s not a good situation for your bees and you need to help them out.
Over the years we have tried several ideas to stop these introduced pests to New Zealand getting into our hives. And we think we have come across the ultimate solution. It’s a combination of several ideas we have come across on interwebs.
It’s a Robbing Screen and you attach it attaches the front of your beehive with a bungy cord (supplied), you add the guard at night so the bees reorient with the new hive configuration.
- Open, the bees can come and go and need travel up the side of the hive box to get out. For some reason wasps don’t like to navigate tunnels to do their evil work.
- Second “Robbing in Progress”, turn the guard around and open up the moving door. This leaves the bees a small space to defend (20mm by 8mm)
- Third option is the “Shut the gate” mode, this is used when you want to block off the hive to any coming and goings. Useful for closing the hive when transporting or if your evil neighbor is going to be spraying pesticides on their crops.
All modes provide the bee ventilation through the steel mesh, and work equally well in stopping robbing honey bees.
Here are some photos:-
We have started selling Robbing Screens, If you would you like to buy one, Here is the product page:-
Out of stock
Beehive Parts
$39.50
Media Credits
- Common Wasp flickr photo by SidPix shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
Nice screen – looks brilliant. Love your top image – I want to go walking there.
Hi Karen,
Yes that image, if its the one I’m think of as it changes on every page is from Goldies Bush. Which is ten minutes from where we live 🙂 Yep if you ever make it down here, I will gladly give you the full tour of that river.
Thanks for the comment, yep screens are working pretty well. We sold them all today, looks like wasps are started to take off in New Zealand. I better get busy and make some more soon 🙂
Do you have many issues with wasps in Maple Falls? Great to hear from you.
Gary
Please i need to buy a robbing screen as soon as .the wasps are taking over.please let me know how
Hi Simon,
Thanks for your feedback and sorry to hear about the wasp issue.
As discussed on the phone, it will be ready soon. Margaret will be in touch….Gary