Thanks to Mike Rossander and Paul Hosticka for pointing out some of
the problems that could occur if one leaves an escape board in place
for a week; I wouldn't want anyone to have a bad experience doing
that. They point out:
- If it gets hot, the quality of the honey could degrade, and in an
extreme case the wax might melt, since there are no longer any
bees present in the super to regulate the temperature.
- Small hive beetles could get free run of the super.
- Robbing could be incited, especially if the lid is shimmed for
ventilation, and especially if there are many hives in the
apiary.
Those are very good points, but for the most part they don't apply to
my situation for now:
- While we sometimes have heat waves in Montreal, it doesn't
usually get hotter here than the brood nest temperature.
- My hive is in full sun only in the morning.
- We don't yet have a real problem with SHB in this province
(there have been a few sightings, which have caused immediate
quarantine), so that's a non-issue for now, though I recognize
it likely won't remain that way.
- I don't shim the lid for ventilation, but provide an explicit
secondary entrance with a slatted super shim; when I put in the
escape board, the slatted super shim is placed somewhere below it.
- If you count my entire street as an "apiary", there's one other hive
100 feet to the west of me, and three more about 500 feet to the
east; that doesn't count any feral hives I'm not aware of, but I'm
in the suburbs, so there might not be any nearby at all. In any
case, it would be very hard for robbers to get into the closed
box.
So I think I'm probably okay to keep doing this until SHB comes to
town, though I'm glad you guys brought up all those good points!
Anne Bennett, backyard beekeeper, Montreal.
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