[Crabo]

We cut some covers out of used steel ply. Some of the wood has been coated with diesel fuel to make the wood release from the concrete. Is this small amount of diesel going to affect the hive if it is on the bottom of the cover, inside the hive?

Thank you,

 

[crofter]

We had a heating oil spill into the crawl space of a shack we lived in. A year later a cake baked from a mix packaged in a plastic liner in the box would give off a taste easily identified! It probable wont bother the bees but I would worry about tainting honey.

 

[JWPalmer]

I would not use it. Not worth the risk of finding out if will work or not. That said, someone last year or two had a swarm living in an old gas tank. Say what?

 

[justin]

That’s what i use, mine have been out of service a couple years and i use cleats so they air out some when i make them. I do put the nicer side down.

 

[snl]

We had a heating oil spill into the crawl space of a shack we lived in.

You lived in a shack? (Not that there is anything wrong with that...)

 

[crofter]

Yes, it was pretty rugged. When the Uranium boom took off in Elliot lake in 1957 you could rent anything. Nothing but bunkhouses for workers and nothing for families. Wasn't till later it got called uranium capital of the world. Now it is a retirement living community; the mines are all healed up and grassed over now.

Fuel oil smell is hard to get rid of. If you are in it steady you get so you dont smell it but other people can smell it on your clothes. It doesnt take much of it in surroundings where it is out of place. Cant say I have heard of it in honey but I think I have detected a taint where the thymol/eucalyptus mite treatments have been used and brood honey probably got moved up into supers.

You might get away with the form boards for hive covers after they are sun dried for a summer but for me the memory lingers!