Unkleray's

This time of year robbing can be a serious problem. There are very
few nectar sources available, so the bees take every advantage they can for food.
First, reduce the hive entrance down to an inch or so. It requires fewer guard bees to defend a smaller opening.
Next, keep plenty of feed on the bees. If they are not experiencing a shortage of food, they are less likely to to rob.
Also, whenever you are inspecting your hives (and I hope you are) don’t leave them open while you do other things. Do what you need to and close them up. When left open, foraging bees can and will smell honey inside of the open hive. If they are desperate, they will surely start looking for a way in.
The best offence for robbing is good planning.

If you look at it from a hive’s perspective, the deciding factor will be if the hive is strong or weak.  Honeybees will attempt to maintain a temperature of around 95 degrees year round. In the winter, this temperature is of the cluster, not the hive. When it’s cold, the hive will cluster together and flex their wing muscles to generate heat. The bees on the inside of the cluster will work their way to the outside, thereby moving the rest towards the center. They will continue this action causing the cluster to stay warm.  So if you have a strong hive, the answer to your question is no, you do not need to cover the screen bottom board.

But, we all know that wintertime can mean hives that are not so strong.   I’ve seen people do all sorts of creative things. I’ve seen them put plywood or cardboard under the hive as well as sliding it into the front opening to cover the screen.

Let’s think about this in simplistic terms. What if, on those very, very cold nights you simply sit the hive on the ground in front of the hive stand? In Florida, the ground rarely gets below 60 degrees, so you have a nature made insulator. Rarely is it extremely cold more than one or two days, so you simply put the hive back on the stand and there has been zero work involved.

The quickest way to control carpenter ants is to move your hive into a sunny area.   Most of the time, carpenter ants are found where there is decaying wood or decomposing vegetation. This rarely occurs in a sunny area.

As far as treatments, a highly recommended treatment to control ants is Diatomaceous Earth.  Diatomaceous Earth consists of fossilized remains of Diatoms, a hard shelled algae. This finely ground powder rapidly absorbs lipids, breaking down the exoskeletons of insects such as ants.

A feeder at the hive is the preferable method for a couple of reasons.   First and foremost, if a hive is weak, using a community feeder never gives the hive a chance to get stronger because the bees continue to compete for food. If you feed a weak hive at the hive, you can control how much nutrition the bees get. Another thing to consider whenever using a community hive is the chance to spread diseases with the other bees using the feeder.  They may not always be your bees.

That being said, there are times whenever both can be considered.

As in most questions in beekeeping, this one has several possibilities and a couple of parameters to consider.

First, I’m assuming you only have one deep box of brood and there is a strong nectar flow in your area.

Whenever your hive has built out to around 70% or 80% capacity or 7 or 8 frames of brood (assuming a 10 frame box) you should consider supering the hive.  I am a proponent of adding two supers whenever first needed because in a strong nectar flow, the bees can fill a box with honey in an amazingly short time. However, only add supers whenever there is a strong nectar flow as the spare space in a hive can harbor problems such as diseases and pests.

Once you add the initial boxes, continue to add supers whenever they reach approximately 70% capacity.

Another thing to consider is if you use a queen excluder, be sure to monitor the brood density of your brood box.  Keep it at the same 70% ratio to help avoid swarming.

The third thing you can consider is adding another deep box on the hive without an excluder to allow the queen to increase the brood considerably. Whenever both boxes have plenty of brood, it will be easy to do a split. This would be an alternative to a honey super if you are more interested in making more bees than making honey.

Everything considered, I believe the bees prefer wax foundation. That’s not to say there isn’t a place in the hive for plastic.

Whenever you chose one over the other, there are things to consider such as the labor involved in wiring wax foundation as well as when using wax the bees will remove 15% to 20% around the parimeter. Therefore you realize less brood or honey per frame. The bees have been known to chew it out whenever there isn’t a nectar flow and it isn’t as durable.

Plastic foundation is not as readily accepted by the bees, but more durable, easier to use and the bees may use more of the space available.

The actual cost of the foundation is similar, but in using wax, you need wire, a wiring jig, and a couple of other hardware type items.

So, for sake of simplicity, a lot of people use plastic.

One thing to consider is if using plastic, some people prefer to paint a thin coat of wax on both sides of the foundation in addition to what comes on them  to give the bees sort of a head start in building out the foundation.

With that said, I personally use both. However, my recommendation is not to mix them until they are built out. The bees will tend to build out the wax foundation first and ignore the plastic.

Durraguilt is wax foundation with a very thin plastic sheet between the layers.  If damaged, the bees tend not to repair it. For this reason, I am not a fan.