The following day, I noticed the yellow jackets going through the space of the screened bottom board and the monitoring board on hive #8. I decided to do more preventative measures. On a side note, in my last post, I failed to mention that I did place entrance reducers on each of the hives to limit the insect traffic into the entrances which also allows the bees to better defend their hives.
So, to get back on track, on the following day, I went up to observe the activity that is going on with these 3 hives. There were a lot of yellow jackets that were trying to going through the space in the bottom entrance and the monitoring board on hive #8 and hive #6, and on hive #4, the entrance reducer was pushed out, telling me there was most likely a struggle there.
My plan of action was to take my smoker, light it up, and smoke the back of the bottom boards to aggravate the yellow jackets out of the space. It worked, from what I could tell at least 100 yellow jackets decided that they didn’t want to be there. I closed up the area with a board, made sure that there weren’t spaces that they can sneak through. Later in the evening, when activity was not at its highest peak, I repeated the same treatment and a few more flew out and I re-boarded the area. Those hives must have been feeling like the floor was on lava, and seriously, their lives were at stake. Hive #4, I did the same treatment, not as many flying out, and I also reduced their entrance to the smallest sized entrance, the size where 1 or 2 bees can get through so they can better defend it. Of course I was wearing my BPE while doing this, aka Bee Protective Equipment.
My bees are not out of the woods, but they are in a better place than they were a few days ago. The bees at Burr Farm, there are no signs of distress, or yellow jackets invading, which I’m happy about. I’ll have to keep an eye on the bees here.
Thank you for reading and as always bee kind.
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