Are you ready for the Odfrank overwintering challenge?

[Rader Sidetrack]

It's cold here!

How cold is it, he said?

Here are some of the girls yesterday going after Eucalyptus

You mean they are flying? In cold weather? How cold is it, he said?




Nice hive stand!

[KQ6AR]

You have ant problems on the roof top?

[Charlie B]

Dan,

When it gets cold there is an invasion of Argentine ants. Almost every tenant in the building calls me to spray them. They eventually smell the honey and armies ascend on the roof hives. Even my strongest hives can't stop the on-slot. I've tried everything and they keep on coming until I finally had enough and came up with these upside down grease traps. It's the only thing that works.

[odfrank]

You have ant problems on the roof top?

Dan,
Ever heard the term "Slumlord"?

[Charlie B]

How cold is it, he said?
You mean they are flying? In cold weather? How cold is it, he said?

Nice hive stand!

It's so cold that Olly has to use the bottom end of his bi-focals to pee!

[odfrank]

It's so cold that Olly has to use the bottom end of his bi-focals to pee!

Bifocals don't help when your pot belly is as big as a double brood chamber and your desired target as small as a house mouse.

[KQ6AR]

Got a look in my large hive today, its gone from a triple deep full of bees down to about a softball size cluster. I've run mostly Yugo/Russians, muts, & carnies in my yard so very small clusters in the winter aren't uncommon for them. No dead bees in the hive or on the ground, plenty of capped honey. I'm betting they'll make it.


I resemble that statement

Dan,
Ever heard the term "Slumlord"?

[Goat Man]

Charlie, how long is your stand and how far apart are the doll rods?? How many hives do you get on each stand?
Gathering the materials now to build a few by spring.. Thanks Charlie

[Charlie B]

Charlie, how long is your stand and how far apart are the doll rods?? How many hives do you get on each stand?

This particular stand is 8' long with 6 support dowels spaced evenly, 3 on each side. I have a 12' stand at my San Mateo yard that requires 8 dowels, 4 on each side spaced evenly for proper load support. I can place 8 hives on my 12' stand and 5 hives on my 8' stand but I use 8 frame equipment which is 14" wide. 10 frame equipment is obviously wider so you could probably get 4 10 frame hives on an 8' stand with adequate room between each hive.

If you're going through the time and expense to build one I would do a 12' stand. You could even build a 16' stand with 10 support dowels depending on how many hives you have. Something to keep in mind if you plan on making up nucs or doing splits, this stand is excellent to keep ants away while they're growing and gaining strength so make it longer than what you need at this point and time.

[Goat Man]

Thanks Charlie that clarifies it for me..

[BeeGhost]

On the way up to our property I stopped to feed the bees some frames of honey, and to my surprise they are doing a lot better than I thought with the nucs covering 4 of the bottom five frames!! Even have fresh nectar from Eucalyptus coming in!! I dropped a couple capped frames in each nuc and called it good, lots of bees flying out of the hives as well, so if I am lucky I might have 7 of 8 hives make to spring build up! They also cleaned up the SBB of dead bees that was there yesterday. Six of my remaining seven hives are either from swarms or cut outs. Cant wait to do some splitting and grafting from these hives in the spring!!

[Charlie B]

Thanks Charlie that clarifies it for me..

You're very welcome. You'll be glad you took a little extra time to build one come summer when you're making up nucs.

[odfrank]

The only hives that I have had destroyed by ants were nucs with queen cage candy in them. What are you doing wrong?

[JRG13]

With all the rain, the ants start coming out of the plug outlets in the house. I hate argentine ants.

[Charlie B]

The only hives that I have had destroyed by ants were nucs with queen cage candy in them. What are you doing wrong?

I put a frame of honey in all my nucs I make up and that's obviously what they're after. My San Mateo, San Jose and Bolinas yards have never had ants. Both Saratoga yards have more ants than soil!

Go figure!

[GLOCK]

If you have top feeders and ya get alot of dead ants in the feeder will that cause any type of disease ?
I had alot of ants in the bee yards and i tryed cinnamon waste of time and money .
I'm going with baiting the ants with poison come spring we'll se if it works.

[Charlie B]

Glock,

Not sure about the dead ants causing disease. As far as the ant poison, that didn't work for me. In looking at your hive stand, it wouldn't take much to make it ant proof. Just add another layer of hive joist with grease dowels in between.

[GLOCK]

Glock,

Not sure about the dead ants causing disease. As far as the ant poison, that didn't work for me. In looking at your hive stand, it wouldn't take much to make it ant proof. Just add another layer of hive joist with grease dowels in between.

Charlie thak you. I f you know how my stand is then i guess i could grease the cender blocks that the 4x4 set on you think that will work?

[Charlie B]

Glock,

I think it would work as a temporary measure but rain and debris would eventually break it down causing allot of touch up using allot of grease. The upside down PVC grease cups eliminate that where you hardly ever have to do any maintenance. If you place your hives directly over the grease cups, you never have to worry about any touch up.

[squarepeg]

i was able to get rid of some pesky sugar ants (very small and black, not fire ants).

they took the baited fire ant granules in just like the fire ants do.

(on fire ants, i plan on leaving some mounds in the vicinity of the hives, i think they help with hive beetles)

also, if i found sugar ants' hole in the ground, i squirted some bug stuff into the hole.

they're gone now.