> Subject: Re: [BEE-L] open bottom boards
>
>
> Greetings,
> I would have thought that the size of the openings was very important. My
> feeling would be that the varroa would not readily fall through fly
> screening. Most of the references to screened bottoms seem to use
> 8 openings

As I wrote I do not see the bottom board as a varroa treatment. The 8
openings is of course the size if you want to monitor the varroa dropdown,
but then you also need to have a sticky paper underneath to keep ants and
the like away from removing the Varroa before you can monitor the dropdown.
In the start of my varroa fight I of course also had an eye on the varroa
drop, but to do that in my set-up I had to do it exact as those with a solid
bottom board. That means putting in a temporary varroa screen over a
container to store the drop down in. It gave me of course some troubles
because there was not much space, so I had to temporary give more space from
screen to the bottom of the frames.

Now where this stage of my varroa treatment is dropped I just by screen what
is available in the hardware store. I do not think the size of the openings
with in reasonable borders means anything to the bees. I had one hive where
the rusty mesh fell of and at the time to take action for wintering this
hive was in no way affected of this missing mesh.

Best regards
Jorn Johanesson

Multilingual software for beekeeping since 1997

hive note- queen breeding and handheld computer beekeeping software

Now with five entries for the Drone providers and a queen time table for
each breeding queen.

home page = HTTP://apimo.dk
e-mail [log in to unmask]

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and  other info ---
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::