Each Spring I have problems with ants. Like Michael said, if they are causing a problem to your hives and the work the bees are doing then be concerned. I just deal with it and leave them alone. They start out sort of heavy but as it gets closer to summer, they usually leave my hives alone. I have tried the following and didn't see much for results: cinnamon on the inner and around the ground around the hive, cinnamon sticks on the inner and outside, and I tried the coffee grounds trick. Finally, I decided to sprinkle ant killing granules on the ground around the hive. it didn't seem to affect my bees but the ants did seem to slow down. The ants that I had were the kind that build mounds in the dirt to live in, so I also dug their home out of the ground and chucked their home in the river. That worked great. juzzer
Ant colony in the top of the hive
I installed two packages back in March when the weather was cold and windy. Since the top bars weren't sealed with propolis, I put down newspapers over the bars to help keep drafts out until the bees could seal things up. March and April were cold and windy so the newspapers stayed there five or six weeks. When I took the paper up there was an ant colony in the top of one hive between the pages of the newspaper complete with eggs and everything. They had the perfect world. The heat from the bees were keeping them warm and all they had to do was slip between the top bars for food. They were quickly evicted. Which brings me to my question. I've read that ants don't like coffee so I was thinking about saturating the ground around the hives with coffee grounds (I can get a ton of them from work). I was wondering if anyone had ever tried this?
