In this instructional video, the presenter explains how to prevent wasp attacks on honey bee colonies, emphasizing that the key is to keep colonies strong throughout the season rather than relying on a single device. He introduces the 3‑D‑printed Bee Sentry, a simple entrance‑reduction tool that can deter wasps but is not a cure‑all, especially for weak or queen‑less hives. The speaker outlines the seasonal dynamics: wasp pressure spikes after the spring swarming period when many colonies become weakened, making them vulnerable in late summer. He advises beekeepers to strengthen colonies in April–May, combine weak nests, ensure they are queen‑right, dramatically reduce hive entrances, and avoid spilling syrup that attracts robbers. By proactively managing colony health early, the presenter claims that wasp losses become rare, whereas waiting until August or September makes defense much harder. The overall message is that early, comprehensive colony management is far more effective than retrofitting devices like the Bee Sentry.
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If you're struggling with wasps, then this is the video for you. If your colony of bees is being overrun by wasps late on in the summer, then you have left it too late to set them up to defend themselves. Now first up, if you're wondering what this little device here is called, this is the Bee Sentry, and it's just a really simple 3D-printed device that you can place on to reduce the entrance down and fool wasps from being able to get in. I'll place that back down there for the moment, and let's come back to the current day. It is the back end of April at the moment, and we have a big open gaping entrance with all the bees coming in and going out, and everything is easy. April and May beekeeping really does lure people into this false sense of security, which is beekeeping is easy. You just put your beehive there and stack your boxes up and you collect your honey. And then all of a sudden swarming season hits. Half of the bees go find a nice chimney somewhere, and they leave behind some swarm cells in here. Now maybe the weather does what it's just done there and the sun goes away and the clouds come back and it gets a bit drizzly and the queens don't go out and mate properly. And before you had this big, strong, vibrant beehive with no robbing bees, and now it's half the size, it's dwindling, the bees are getting older, and all of a sudden the wasps and the robbing bees from all around are trying to get in. Can you imagine how easy it would be to get into this beehive here with this huge, massive gaping entrance at the front? Now what a lot of people do at this point is they'll go and get something like the Bee Sentry and they'll say, okay, well let's reduce the entrance down. And you can do it in any way. You can reduce it down to a single bee space. You can use a device like this, which just means the bees have to kind of go under and up and in, and it's supposedly good for stopping the wasps getting in. But none of these things really do a massive amount when it comes to dealing with the wasps. They'll still find their way into the weak colonies. So if you're watching this in In August and you're thinking, well, what do I actually do now? You need to go back a few months and set your colonies up to be strong enough to defend against wasps under all conditions. Now that might be useless for you this year, but believe me, when you come to set your bees up again next year and you understand how easy it is in April and May, and then you understand the risk of that swarming season coming in and setting colonies back in that way where they've not got a queen and they're dwindling down at the time when the wasp pressure and the robbing pressure is ramping up, You start to realize that things like this, the bee sentry, although very, very good to reduce the amount of wasps going into a robbing hive, isn't a silver bullet. It's not something that you can just chuck into a weak colony and say, okay, well, I'm going to put this in and it fixes everything. They will work it out and they will end up killing all of the bees inside. So setting colonies up to protect themselves from wasps really is very easy. They just have to be strong at all times. And the ones that swarm, the ones that don't requeen themselves, the ones that are struggling at that time of the year, you need to go in before the wasps cause damage, combine Bind them up with other colonies, make them queen right again, reduce the entrances right down as much as you can, avoid spilling any syrup anywhere, and that should naturally reduce the wasp pressure on all of your beehives. It's very, very rare that I come across a colony now that has lost the battle to wasps because I set them up properly in April and May, and I don't focus on adding contraptions like the bee sentry here to colonies where I just know they're not going to be able to survive. Dealing with wasps is very, very easy if you do it in April and May. It is very difficult if you leave it until August or September.
