Laurence Edwards explains when to install mouse guards on hives. Installing them too early blocks ivy pollen that bees need for winter, so wait until colonies cluster in late October. Use under-floor entrances or queen-excluder settings instead if possible.
In this video, I'm gonna tell you when to put your mouse guards on your colonies and tell you why it's very, very dangerous to do it too early. So a mouse guard on a normal colony is just a piece of metal that will allow the bees to fly through, but means that any vermin can't get into your colony. And vermin going into your colony over winter can wipe out a colony, especially if it's not a prolific, big, strong colony. So you might think, well, just get them on early. The earlier you put them on, the lower the chances of any vermin entering into that nuc. which means that it can only be good, right? Put them on early and you eradicate that risk completely. However, there's one massive downside to putting them on too early, and it's what is happening in this apiary today. So really, really strong nuc here, lots of strong nucs in this apiary. In fact, you can buy them, overwintered nucs, blackmountainhoney.co.uk. But what is happening in this apiary at the moment is that the bees are foraging on the ivy. You can see it coming in, bees streaming through, absolutely loving the ivy in this apiary. You can see it because of the light yellow colored pollen going into this colony here. Now if I was to turn this entrance disc round here and to put it onto the queen excluder setting, and that coincidentally is the way that I would put my mousetraps on, on my nucs, I always turn them to the queen excluder setting for the winter. But if you do it too early, and you can try it out in your apiaries for a day, it's quite fun to watch, do it too early and all you see down there is piles and piles and piles of ivy pollen. Now ivy pollen is so important for the bee health over winter. It's their final source of protein, and unless they get a good batch of it, they can't get that rapid spring growth unless you get really favorable conditions in the spring. So the last thing I want to do is restrict the amount of protein-rich ivy pollen going into this nucleus in order to stop mice going in when it's an active colony. There's no way a mouse is going in there, because if it did, The bees would kill it immediately. Mice only become a real problem when the bees cluster up for winter and they're kind of like, no, we can't move, it's too cold. Oh, there's a mouse down there, and they say, no, it is too cold to move. And then the mouse kind of wreaks havoc and eats the combs, and it can, it can kill a colony and completely wipe it out if you get a little family of mice in there. So I do advocate the use of mouse guards on colonies with big entrances. On underfloor entrances where you just have an 8mm gap, You don't even need them. It's brilliant. Everyone should have an underfloor entrance. The Suyenti floor as well, 8mm gap, so you never get mice in there. And then on my Nucleus colonies, I don't put mouse guards on, but I just turn the queen excluder function on, which means that kind of 99% of the time the mice don't even bother trying to chew through. Although obviously it is made of plastic, they could just chew through. Don't put your mouse guard on too early. Run it in with your management plan. Take the honey off middle of August, Put your Apivar strips in, trickle feed that colony for 8 weeks, let them make the most of the ivy nectar and the ivy pollen, come back middle of October, take your Apivar strips out, final feed, and that is the point when you should put your mouse guards on.
