Laurence Edwards explains why a ventilated screen is essential when moving bee colonies. Strong colonies can overheat and collapse within 30 minutes during transport without one. The cedar frame with galvanized mesh costs under £20 and creates airflow to keep hives cool.
In this video, I'm going to talk to you about the greatest single investment that you can make if you're transporting your bees from apiary to apiary. So what we have here is a ventilated screen.
Now you might have seen me moving colonies between apiaries before without the use of a ventilated screen. I am definitely not doing that anymore.
I have had too many colonies that have been severely damaged even moving them a short distance without a ventilated screen. And I think when you're doing it with nucleus colonies, it's not quite as bad and you can get away with it when you've got a smaller colony. But if you are moving big strong colonies of bees, full brood boxes, maybe with supers on as well, they can overheat so, so quickly. So in this video, I just want to show you my new purchase that I got from Thorn Beekeeping. Paid for it myself, and I find that the ones that you get from Thorn are up there with some of the best that you can get. They're made of cedar, they're made really well, they're very solid.
I've got myself 10 of them because I'm selling some of my colonies this year, and I've got myself a stash to use when I'm transporting bees from apiary apery.
So they're an incredibly simple construction made from western red cedar and galvanized mesh. The bees definitely can't get through the holes in that mesh either, and what it does is it gives you the ability to be able to move your colonies whilst maintaining ventilation through the bottom if you've got an open mesh floor, and then more importantly through the top as well, which gives the bees the ability to actually give them a throughput of air from the bottom to the top or vice versa And then the big extra that you get with these ventilated screens is the ability to spray water on the top of them. The best way of transporting bees is keeping that ventilation open top and bottom, but then also having a spray bottle on hand. If they're big strong colonies, you can absolutely soak them prior to putting them in the back of the pickup truck or a car. And then it works kind of like an air conditioning system in that the bees use that moisture and they fan their wings to drive that moisture off.
And in the process of doing that, you get this cooling effect that brings the temperature down.
I've had it on at least 2 occasions where I've moved bees from apiary to apiary without putting these ventilated screens on, and within about 30 minutes the colony had completely collapsed in on itself. The wax starts falling down, the honey melts out over the bees, and you get this kind of exponential inability of the bees to counteract what's going on.
So it happens in a small portion of the hive, and then it happens to an even bigger portion, and then before you know it, it's just completely out of control. By adding on a ventilated screen, you really do mitigate the risk of any mishaps when you're transporting the bees around, and I think every single beekeeper should have a good stash of them just to make sure that you don't get any nasty surprises when you're moving your bees around.
So as I said, I got this one from Thorn Beekeeping, paid for it myself full price, came in at around just under £20, which might seem a lot for what it is, and you could definitely have a go at making these yourself. Very, very simple construction. All you need to make sure you're doing is maintaining the bee space, single bee space of 8mm on one side or on both And make sure that the mesh you're using is the correct size mesh and the bees can't get through it. If you follow both of those tips there, they should be relatively easy to make yourself.
I'm moving away from making anything though because I just don't have the time. I much prefer to buy them from a company like Thorne, know that they're going to be good quality, know that they're going to be the right size, know that they're going to work really well.
If you want to take a look at a video where a nucleus colony didn't make it through and it didn't have a ventilated screen, check out this colony here that died in a matter of minutes.
