My Under Floor Entrance Was Missing ONE Thing!

If you want to stop those wasps killing your bees, this is the video for you. So for every single production colony that I use in my bee farming operation, I use an underfloor entrance just like this. The best thing you can do to protect against wasps is having big strong colonies at all times and an easily defendable entrance like the underfloor entrance. Somebody showed me a modification. They actually put it on a comment on Facebook and they said you could modify that floor really easily with a simple insert that would really help this floor combat wasps. Put them along the sidewall here of the underfloor entrance. Entrance, and then place a sheet underneath to trap all of the bees in. I will put it onto a beehive, and we will see what we catch at the end of the year. Obviously, stick around until the end to see that one. This is a Canadian bee escape. The idea being bee comes in through here, or a wasp goes through the spout, and then struggles to come back through the other way. What is really important with wasp behavior is for the wasp to be able to see what is going on inside. Hence this piece of Perspex here. So I'm going to slightly modify the idea. I'm going to put some entrances in like that, so maybe one entrance there and one entrance there, and then I'm going to put a couple of viewing windows. So I'm just going to cut a hole out, stick some Perspex on with some hot glue. So don't hate on this video if you're out for saving the wasps. I like to save the wasps too, I just don't want them killing my bees. So I've cut 2 holes on either side for the Canadian bee escapes to go in. Like that. I'm gonna glue one there and I'm gonna glue one there. Same on the other side, but I'm just gonna drill the bigger holes first for the Perspex screen. So one hole here to let the wasps— one's just flown by— see in, and then these 2 outer ones are going to be for the bee escapes. So I'm going to cut it with the angle grinder and I only want to cut a little square off it. Really simple, just take your clear bit of Perspex and place it over the hole like that. You can screw it, you can tape it, you can do whatever you want. I've got loads of hot glue that I know is going to hold there, so I'm just going to put a little bit of hot glue around the edge and then hold it into position. So a bit of hot glue like that, you can see, and then just place it directly over the hole and just make sure that it is completely sealed. So I'll talk to you a bit about how the bees flow in and out and the wasps of this beehive at the end, but for fixing, you want to fix the Perspex from the inside, and then from the outside you want to fix the Canadian bee escapes. So you want the biggest side of the cone on the outside and the smallest part of the cone on the inside. So I'm just going to place it there. Not all of those bee escapes are the same size. I'm not going to give you measurements. You know the score. Just get it looking like that. So I'm going to place that one in there. So I'll leave that to set properly for about 5 minutes, and I'll show you how I'm going to use this new setup to catch some wasps. So while we wait for it to dry, let me talk you through how an underfloor entrance works. It's really, really simple. As the bees fly along, they'll come into this internal landing board here, and then all they do is they go in, turn upwards, and then come through this slot here. That's all it is. It's just a 90-degree entrance, and you're maintaining an 8mm gap there, which is a single bee space, which is a very easy-to-defend entrance for the bees. If I increase this dimension here to the same as this dimension around here, which is about 25mm, The underfloor entrance would become pointless. This is the important dimension here. If you're looking at this and thinking that does not look like a beehive, this is just the floor. So what happens is we put our boxes on top like that, put as many as you want on, and then that is the only way into the beehive. So if we look at it side on, it gives you a good understanding of what we're trying to do in this video. The bees come through this way, through the entrance, and then they come up here. So all of this space over here, All the way down, all the way across there, this big square, it's dead space. Doesn't really serve any purpose for the beehive because— but no more! If we turn it around, there is the void. You can see all of this area here. It's designed in this way that you can put a tray in, a monitoring tray, if you want to build it with a monitoring tray. And I thought a really easy way of doing it, I've got some offcuts of Perspex. I'm just going to stick it on there and I'll staple it in position knowing full well I'm going to have to remove this again. But now my Perspex is in place, I've got my chamber completely sealed up. The idea being the wasps are going to come along, take a look through here, see loads of their mates in there, go in there, and they are not going to come back out. Let's get this onto a beehive and see how many wasps we can catch. So this is going to be super simple. This floor that I've got in place at the moment is a standard underfloor entrance. I'm just going to switch them over. So there we go, everything in place. I've chosen this colony because it's not very strong. It's only on like 8 or 9 frames, early July at the moment, so one of the weaker ones in the apiary. I'm going to do nothing. It's the 1st of July today. I'm going to come back middle of August, end of August, maybe even September, and we will see what we find. Do not go anywhere. I have a feeling this is going to work very well indeed. So what a year it's been for wasps! I've never seen wasp nests this big and I've never seen so many. This trap I think is going to prove really valuable to a lot of beekeepers. It's been on this beehive now, a really small dwindling beehive that's not very well defended, for about 3 weeks and I can see wasp activity already in the little viewing window. So this colony here has actually fared quite well. It's not dwindled at all. There's still No eggs in there, no larva, no queen. Really, this colony here should be obliterated by the wasps. Let's have a look underneath and see what is going on. So before I show you what we've actually caught in the wasp trap down there, I'm just going to take the brood box off and let's have a look what's on the bottom of the mesh floor. When a colony is under attack from wasps, you're likely to see a few wasps down there, so that's going to give us a good indication if this colony is actually struggling. So this is what the floor is looking like. There are a few wasps there, not A huge amount, but maybe 10 or so wasps and a few dead bees as well. The dead bees there indicate that there's probably some sort of battle going on. So there is 100% a wasp issue with this colony. They are being targeted by wasps. So I'm not taking off the plastic. I'm not going to disassemble the trap yet. But look at that. Look at all the dead wasps at the bottom of the trap. That is a serious handful of wasps. That's probably like a tennis ball size. So the trap is doing what it's supposed to do, and we've not really reached the proper wasp season yet. So I'll stack everything back up. I'll give it 2 months when those wasps get really, really bad, and we'll see how many we can trap. And I have to say, from first impressions, this trap here is working very well. So it's been about 2 months since I put the wasp underfloor entrance in, and oh my goodness, has it been a good season for wasps! They have been taking over every single colony that they can. And you know what? I'm pretty sure they've actually taken over this colony here. But the proof is in the pudding. It's not about the wasps that are in the beehive. It is about the wasps that are going to be downstairs in that trap to prove if it made any difference at all. I'll redo the test next year on a bigger, stronger colony. But before we do that, let's get inside and see how many wasps we've actually caught. So as you can see, this colony here has been completely robbed out by wasps. We've got wasps all the way along the top, dead wasps in the side, and they have stripped this colony back To nothing. Every single frame that I'm taking out there is empty. A bit of pollen falling out where the wasps haven't managed to access it, but most of it is gone. We've got brood where the bees have just absconded and left it, and obviously this is never going to hatch. So I'm just going through all of these frames here, and it looks like the colony's been taken down to about a 2 or 3 frame size before they finally absconded or lost the battle with the wasps. Now I didn't Take action here because I knew this was a small dwindling colony and I also knew that I had my wasp underfloor entrance on and I'm trying to do this video. If this was my colony, I would have taken them away and I would have not let the wasps win this battle. But I want to do this to show you and hopefully prove that the floor is a good effective tool. But this is such an important point in the video. It's not a silver bullet. This colony here was under attack by wasps and it has lost even with this floor. When you're dealing with wasps, you need to make sure you have strong, Robust colonies at all times. This one here was a little bit too weak. So if I take the full brood box off and place it over here, you will see the remnants of an almighty battle. All of these dead bees here will have been taken down by the wasps. Some of them may have even starved if they've hung around after the wasps have taken all of their honey. You can see we do have the odd wasp that gets involved in that battle. It's not always the wasps that win everything. But you can see here, look, lots and lots of old dead bees. So I'm going to discard all of these dead bees and wasps from the top because it's underneath where I really want to see how many wasps and bees have been collected. Obviously we don't want there to be many bees in there and hopefully there's a good amount of wasps. So now that I've taken all those dead bees and wasps off, you can actually look inside and see how many wasps have been caught. Remember, these Canadian Bee Escapes here allow bees or wasps or anything in and And then this viewing window is designed to attract the wasps in so that they can see that there's other wasps inside. So I'm going to get this floor on a table, we'll disassemble it, and we'll take a look inside and see what we've caught. So I have to say, I am really happy and really impressed with these traps here. All of these wasps and all of these bees that you see here are what have been caught through the Canadian Beescapes. And my concern was I thought it was going to catch way too many bees and not enough wasps. But when you start looking through this material here, there's the odd bee, but pretty much the other 98-99% are wasps. So it's actually a highly effective trap and a really useful addition to the underfloor entrances, something that I certainly will add to my underfloor entrances going forward. I'm going to get this board out the way and let's take a closer look at all of these wasps that this trap has caught over the last 2 months. So taking a look at all of this catch here, getting a real close-up look at it, it's definitely well over 90% wasp. And for me, if I'm going to put something into that mix to try and defend against the wasps, it has to be very much targeted on the species that I'm trying to defend against. I don't want flies in here, I don't want moths in here, I definitely don't want bees in here, or any other pollinators at at all. I just want to give those bees a little bit extra help to defend against the wasps when it comes to the really bad point in the year. Canadian beer skates in the side of an underfloor entrance definitely looks like a useful tool when it comes to dealing with these.