Question about top entrance

The drawbacks to top entrances are:
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1. Dead bees and hive debris are never
   removed as well, so the bottom board can
   become less-than sanitary.</font>
2. Since the bees learn to use the top
   entrance, tearing down a hive suddenly
   prompts the bees to attempt a landing
   on the taller object, which would be the
   beekeeper.</font>
3. If comb honey is your goal, you get
   more foot traffic over the comb, which
   can lead to less-than show quality comb
   honey (not a big deal if you pull your
   comb honey just after it is capped)</font>
4. A higher entrance means a tougher
   job of shielding the entrance from
   crosswinds. It gets windy here, so
   wind can cut back on sorties, and hence
   nectar gathering (as measured with
   hive scales).</font>
5. As far as mice go, mice can climb.
   They have no problem climbing a hive,
   so top entrances are not going to help
   much if you have a mice/vole issue.</font>

If given both top and bottom entrances,
and/or Imire shims, some fraction of the
bees choose to use one of each entrance
provided. I think that this is the best
of all possible worlds, as the bees are not
stupid, and will pick the closest exit, with
pollen foragers using the lower entrances, and
nectar foragers using the upper ones.

So many beekeepers tout the "advantages" of
one thing or another, when stubborn implementation
of ANY single approach can be observed
to have less-than consistent impact across
larger numbers of hives. So, if you have
a dozen or more hives, you start to see the
advantages of not imposing your will on the
bees in areas where doing so is merely changing
the bee's infrastructure, not clearly enhancing it.

I just notch my inner covers on those hives
with non-migratory covers, and insert a shim
on those with migratory covers. As only a
tiny number of hives consistently use only
one entrance or the other, I consider the
use of multiple entrances during "the season"
to be far superior in simple terms of
sorties per minute and better internal hive
traffic flow.

> 5. As far as mice go, mice can climb.
They have no problem climbing a hive,
so top entrances are not going to help
much if you have a mice/vole issue.

It will not only help. It will eliminate your mice problems. Whether they CAN or not does not change the fact that they don't do it to climb into a live colony.

I see nothing wrong with bottom entrances if you have no mice or skunk problems you like to mow in front of your hives and you don't mind shoveling snow on when it's deep and you have some kind of top vent.

Detrius builds up over winter on hives with bottom entrances also. But it can also clog the entrances. It gets cleaned up in the spring by both eventually, but usually the beekeeper dumps it off in during the spring inspection.

> you like to mow in front of your hives

So how exactly does one work an apiary of
30 hives in waist-high grass?

It is suprising how quickly the grass you walk through lays down and stays there. All of the grass right up to the actual fenced in space the hives are in is kept down by the horses. All the grass in the fenced in Apiary tends to get walked down by me. It would be difficult to get a mower in the small space between the hives and the fence or the front row of hives and the back row of hives, if I wanted to, which I don't. Besides the brome doesn't get waist high. If it's really in my way I can always lay a lid on it and after working that hive move the lid to the next hive. But, if it was really tall, after doing this once it tends to stay laying down the rest of the season.

it is nice that both of you guys argue with a smile

> Tell us more of your situation and reasons for
wanting to move the entrance.

I am keeping my bees on a trailer and because of the wheel bases it would be best for them to arrive higher than lower. But I like to be vague when I ask quesitons because I usually get answers to questions I don't know to ask. I'm still quite green at this.

Dave

If you use upper entrances and also keep the lower entrance open you will observe (1) in the spring and early summer the upper entrance is almost exclusively used and (2) in the heat of the summer the bottom entrance is almost exclusively used.

In the heat of the summer the bees fan the hot humid air OUT of the hives via the upper entrances. By mid-fall, both entrances will be freely used.

If there is no bottom entrance, some hives will remove all debris through the top entrance. In my case, this is 'most' hives. But some will let quite a bit of debris build up.

I think there are two disadvantages to upper entrances (1) it is hell to draw comb for the first 4-6" immediately next to the upper entrance. Whether for comb honey or brood/extracting. This can 'easily' be resolved by reversing the hive bodies. (2) If the beekeeper uses queen excluders, supercedure queens (or queens after a swarm) will ALWAYS end up above the queen excluder.

That said, the improved ventilation almost always trumps the disadvantages, particularly when summers are hot with high humidity, or when winters are cold so that condensation might occur inside the hive. For overwintering, I have upper entrances on 100% of my 200 hives. During the summer I run upper entrances on all hives (including those run for comb honey) EXCEPT those being used to draw foundation for brood.

There is also the difference of a 1" notch and a 16" wide entrance.

You have to spend twice as much money on pollen traps.