[JimD]

Being in the Houston area we have discussed different ways to keep crawling pests out of your hives.

I have posted up the use of a cotton rope ~5/8's that is soaked in oil drained then axle greased then tightly double wraped around a metal leg or wood support. I am going on 7 months and not had to regrease the legs of my multi hive stand nor has it made a mess as the cans and such that fill with water around here.

Playing with splits and nucs I have found that using cinder blocks like many do if you place one of the plastic for sale or political signs work great under the hive on top of the block. I have not seen any ants or such climb up and over the plastic and I am in the middle of fire ant country. Other than trash the only other use for these signs are portable shooting stands.

I have also pieces of them for front hive over hangs and a way to divert the water from dripping down on to the entrance by placing the piece of sign wider than the hive top and extending it out 6" or ". I am placing a piece of 2x4 the width of the hive or wider on top to keep the water from running under the sign and use a brick on top of that. You may not this problem but I was having a lot of water standing on the entrance board even with the desired forward lean on the hive.

 

[srockey]

I have seen political signs used as SHB traps. The ones I saw were cut into 2x4 inch pieces and put on top of the boxes. Supposedly the bees will chase the beetles into the holes of the sign and the seal the hole with the beetle inside.

 

[JimD]

The fat bee man had that up on his utubes.

I really like his utubes but the problem is the tubes are not in date order so many tend to have dated info. Bee man is supposed to be in the Conroe Texas area in mid July.

 

[R.Varian]

I cured our landing board problem i cut them all flush with the box and build the new ones that length.