# Why are dead bees missing their heads?



## Beregondo (Jun 21, 2011)

If you haven't already read Randy Oliver's articles on Varroa Management at his website, I think that you may find the helpful:

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/varroa-management/varroa-ipm-strategies/

Have fun.
Enjoy your bees.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Beregondo said:


> If you haven't already read Randy Oliver's articles on Varroa Management at his website, I think that you may find the helpful:
> 
> http://scientificbeekeeping.com/varroa-management/varroa-ipm-strategies/
> 
> ...


I'm not seeing headless bees referenced there. Are you saying this is a sign of varroa?


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Looks like this question was posed before, but never really answered:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?278188-Thousands-of-dead-bees-without-heads

Maybe there is no answer. Weird. My other die-out mostly consisted of bees head first in every comb cell, probably trying to keep warm. But in this one, a hive full of body parts.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Shrews. I watched them eat hundreds of dead bees here all winter.

Keep an eye out for them because some of them are very small and they adore bee brood. Very bad boys (and girls.) And they have to eat every couple of minutes, twenty-four hours a day. Their activity level is as frenetic as you might imagine with that kind of food-compulsion.

I Googled "shrews in NY" and got an eyeful. You could try that, or "shrews in NH".


Why do you think the lower parts died? Lack of food, too much moisture, unable to move high enough in the stack (i.e. they were stuck in cold part of the hive ) And were these the stacks with the quilt box filling pulled away from the sides of the box?

Still 3 out of 5 will give you a good starting point this year. So nice to finally have a stretch of milder weather, isn't it? I expect nearly 70 tomorrow. Yee-ha!

Enj.


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## janellesHoneyRockets (Sep 6, 2013)

Hello could also be yellow jackets they do that too.good luck


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

enjambres said:


> Shrews. I watched them eat hundreds of dead bees here all winter.
> 
> Keep an eye out for them because some of them are very small and they adore bee brood. Very bad boys (and girls.) And they have to eat every couple of minutes, twenty-four hours a day. Their activity level is as frenetic as you might imagine with that kind of food-compulsion.
> 
> ...


SHREWS??!? Oh no! I knew I had vole issues here, but I never knew about shrews.... BLEH.

I saw a site that said 3/8" hardware cloth will prevent shrews from entering the hive, but I had Brushy Mountain mouse guards on all winter and those have 3/8" holes, so I don't know.

I sure hope they don't go after my other hives! I see that as long as the bees aren't clustered, they can defend themselves, but they can't in a cluster (still cold at night, their most active time of day).

Enj, you have seen the shrews in action? What do you do about it? I wonder if switching to only top entrances would cure that problem. I see that shrews climb trees, but maybe not bee boxes????

About the bottom die outs, I had read here that stacked hives are a moisture problem waiting to happen, and probably the 2" gap around the shavings didn't help either, so changes for next winter. 

I may have to do a new topic called Any hints on dealing with shrews? Altho I see it's mostly a very northern critter and into Canada.

Yuck yuck yuck.

P.S. - This hive was closest to the brush end of the beeyard. In fact, I moved that hive stand totally today because it's gotten too overgrown in that area. So shrews would probably prefer where that hive had been.


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## rwlaw (May 4, 2009)

If you had a problem with 3/8 openings, you had pygmy shrews after the hives. I had shrew evidence this year but my reducers wouldn't let them by. So I'm sure my problem is the northern short tail shrew which is larger.
http://www.michiganbees.org/2014/northern-shrew-and-bee-hives/
http://beeinformed.org/2014/04/the-...-problems-in-canadian-overwintering-colonies/


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

The Michigan article really nails it too, because my deadout contained piles of dead bees in the corners of the hive, like this stated. If they're pygmies, I wonder if they're less able to scale a hive body, just take out the lower entrance.


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## trapperdirk (Nov 3, 2013)

You can catch and kill shrews with simple mouse traps (snap type). Baiting with peanut butter works well. They are relatively solitary, but a new one may move in to the territory quickly.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Well, I decided that for now, to protect my other hives, I'm going to duct tape the entrances at night and remove the duct tape in the morning. I have 3 hives left and I don't want to take any chances.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Yes, shrews. Varroa do not eat their heads...


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## Boomhawr (Jul 28, 2014)

Put something over the entrance before you use duct tape. New to beekeeping, but not to the use of duct tape. You'll end up with bees stuck to it as they try to find their way out.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Yup, wish I'd thought of that, will do tomorrow.


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## Boomhawr (Jul 28, 2014)

Well???? How did it work out?


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Boomhawr said:


> Well???? How did it work out?


The prognosis? Pygmy shrews for sure. Here's the basics:

2nd smallest mammal on earth (2 inches long).
Insectivores (they eat all kinds of bugs).
They eat every 20 minutes round the clock (the 24 hour clock) and if they go an hour without eating they'll starve, their metabolism is so high.
They pick the bees off the cluster when the bees are lethargic and can't defend themselves. In summer the bees can defend themselves, so they're only a problem mainly in spring but I guess in winter too.
They do not live in the hives, they just enter the hives to eat and then leave.
They put their protruding nose (kind of like an elephant) in between the head and thorax and munch the bee guts, that's why you find the bees in pieces.
They can get into a 1 cm opening.
The best predators are anything that eats mice, like cats, owls, hawks.
They seem to live from Canada down into the northern United States.
You can tell it's a pygmy shrew by the signs: bee body parts (almost none left whole), packed in clumps in the corners of frames where the shrew will take its prey to eat and then go get another one, shrew poop which kind of looks like mouse poop but less cylindrical, and if you look closely, you might find a whole bee with a hole between the head and thorax.

I had never heard of them before, but boy are they a menace. So every night until it's warm enough for them not to cluster, I am sealing off the hive entrances, and every morning I am opening them back up. One pygmy shrew can eat around a pound of bees over 4 months. 

Next winter I will not use the 3/8" hole mouse guards. I will put screen over the bottom entrance so they still get ventilation, and I will leave the top entrance open, altho pygmy shrews can also climb trees, so they may be able to climb hive boxes, I don't know, but it would be harder for them.

Also, the hive that was targeted was the one closest to the brush that was getting too overgrown, so it probably made an easy passageway for the shrews. I'm not putting a hive in that location again.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Get chickens to clear out the vegetation and then get a cat.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

The vegetation is primarily blackberry bramble with prickers, the chickens don't seem to be too interested. And there are some cat allergies here, otherwise I would have about 50 of them, because voles also do a number in the vegetable patch...


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## trapperdirk (Nov 3, 2013)

I still recommend putting a mouse trap along with the duct tap. You're going to be heading to the hive to take the tape off anyways, might as well pick off a shrew while you're at it, and the victor snap traps can't cost more than a dollar apiece.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Yeah, you might be right about that trapperdirk. Last summer I left mousetraps in the garden area for the voles, and every morning I'd find the peanut butter gone and not even a thank you note. I don't think they make them like they used to, or maybe they were just cheapies. I'll have to get some more.


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## trapperdirk (Nov 3, 2013)

Buy victor brand if you can find them. You can also smear peanut butter on the bait trigger then wrap in a small square of old panty hose to make them work a bit more.

Good hunting!


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

NewbeeInNH said:


> The vegetation is primarily blackberry bramble with prickers,


This is what you have around your hives? How do you work them? You only need a 2-3 ft clearance around the hives.


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## photobiker (Mar 23, 2015)

I have used peanut butter and mouse traps to catch voles for a number of years. When I find their entrance, in the ground, I put the trap by the hole and put a bucket over it with a brick on it to keep other animals from getting to the peanut butter. A number of birds and other rodents like peanut butter.

Don't know if Pygmy shrews live in the ground or not but this brings dinner to the front door. These little guys might be too small to set off the your traps or get completely missed when the trap go off.


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

It's too bad about the cat allergy. My barn cats bring them in from time to time with one dead one on the shop floor last night. My chickens eat them when they find them in the woods as well.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Acebird said:


> This is what you have around your hives? How do you work them? You only need a 2-3 ft clearance around the hives.


This is what has encroached around the hives. Mainly in the back of the hives (where there's an old rock wall, NH can be VERY rocky). That bramble SPREADS and is really hard to get rid of. Especially with the thorns. I don't like weed whacking next to the hives and a lawnmower won't fit around them. But they're becoming more of a pain as they snag my beesuit. I need to go out there with a good set of hedgeclippers and whack those things to the ground, but it will have to be on a regular basis. I'm trying to pull blackberry brambles out of my rock garden elsewhere, and they have really long, connected roots. I had no idea they were so tough.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Ravenseye said:


> It's too bad about the cat allergy. My barn cats bring them in from time to time with one dead one on the shop floor last night. My chickens eat them when they find them in the woods as well.


I read in my internet research on pygmy shrews that they tunnel right under the snow. In winter I don't suppose they'd be vulnerable to cats or chickens. I don't even know what they eat in winter.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

It is very unlikely you will get rid of blackberries once they get established. I wouldn't think you would want to. It makes awesome jam. I would suggest moving the hives a few feet.

You need a cat and not a house cat but an outdoor cat. They will wipe out the critters and there won't be any that even see winter. Don't feed him gourmet cat food let him work for it. No one is allergic to an outdoor cat. But most everyone is allergic to an indoor cat or so they think.


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## yukonjack (Mar 12, 2015)

Discovered bee parts around the front of our hive the last couple days.
We have a top entrance (inner cover notch) and a one inch bottom entrance, that has a #4 hardware cloth improvised mouse guard.
I initially thought skunk, as movement of the mouse guard was what first attracted my attention.
But this morning there were legs and heads outside the hive, so now I'm thinking shrew.

Being in the North, is it too late to close the bottom entrance and expect them to use only the top?

We'll be putting on a quilt box and feeding rim (with an entrance) in the net week or so the upper entrance will change from a notch to a 1 inch hole in the rim, if that matters.

Any luck/advice on the mousetrap/peanut butter as a shrew-trap?

Thanks in advance


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Yukon - I never did use the mousetraps because once the bees don't have to cluster anymore, they can do pretty well defending themselves. It's when they're clustered that the shrews have such a great chance to pick them off, one by one. 

Some people only use top entrances and never use bottoms, so I don't think that would be a problem, and if they fly out the top I'm pretty sure they'll know how to fly back in. Maybe you'd want to close the bottom in the evening, so they fly out the top. Plus, at least mine anyway aren't flying much right now, it's been damp and chilly and cloudy. 

I just got an electric fence for bears, so now I'm thinking the shrews won't have as many predators able to reach them as they did before.... But hopefully the shrews will run outside the fence enough to get eaten by something else. If they're still there. My shrews were a problem in early spring. It would be really nice if they found a home somewhere else. Wishful thinking.


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## rwlaw (May 4, 2009)

It seems that last winter has opened their beady little eyes to hives as a food source. I'm seeing activity around my hives as well.
I had good luck with pitfall traps for them this summer. What I did was find a run (tunnel in the grass) and buried a gallon paint can, baited the underside of the rim with bacon grease and in they tumbled.
I have 1x3 pc's for entrance reducers, dadoed the centers out to 3/8" high and they never got past them last winter. I'm not taking any chances tho, making new ones that give a 5/16" entrance. There was one deadout that the reducer was loose and they got by it and made a mess of the place, so I'm screwing them to the bottom board if they're a loose fit.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

yukonjack said:


> Discovered bee parts around the front of our hive the last couple days.
> We have a top entrance (inner cover notch) and a one inch bottom entrance, that has a #4 hardware cloth improvised mouse guard.
> I initially thought skunk, as movement of the mouse guard was what first attracted my attention.
> But this morning there were legs and heads outside the hive, so now I'm thinking shrew.


Can your bees go through a 1/4" hardware cloth hole? Mine can't. Maybe the bees are getting stuck outside the bottom entrance and being eaten at night by the shrews. I also don't think you should close off the bottom entrance. I've never figured out exactly why some think an upper entrance alone is proper hive management. Personally, after 40+ years wintering many hundreds of honey bee colonies along the Canadian border, with an upper entrance notch in the inner cover, and a wide open bottom entrance with 1/2" hardware cloth wedge, and a 10% loss last winter, and never a moisture problem or mouse problem...I wouldn't listen to the _professionals_ who claim upper entrances alone are the way to go. I think it's foolish and another one of those false claims promulgated by internet gurus who seem to have to do everything differently....just because. Or maybe to sell their books. Whatever, don't believe everything you read.

My opinion, but certainly open to challenges if there's a reasonable explanation that can be come up with, through experience, and not just a repetition of some dogmatic claim by a few folks that don't have the experience wintering bees in the north. Sorry to rant, but I will no longer sit by silently while newbies are fed bologna.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

I think a notch in the inner cover is not big enough if it is the only entrance. I believe it will seriously reduce the size of your colony. To me a mouse guard should be made of metal. I make mine out of siding wrap bent in a Z angle with 3/8 holes punched in the top and front legs whole width of the entrance.


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## Colino (May 28, 2013)

Michael Palmer said:


> My opinion, but certainly open to challenges if there's a reasonable explanation that can be come up with, through experience, and not just a repetition of some dogmatic claim by a few folks that don't have the experience wintering bees in the north. Sorry to rant, but I will no longer sit by silently while newbies are fed bologna.


Thank you Michael, it's about time somebody said this.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> I've never figured out exactly why some think an upper entrance alone is proper hive management.


It is a different hive management. One I don't employ but I can see the logic for it's advantages which have been stated in other threads. Why must everything be proper? Are we all Englishmen?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

What advantages are those Ace?


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

Michael Palmer said:


> What advantages are those Ace?


opcorn:


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

You wouldn't use top entrance only's this time of year? The bottom entrances will be covered with snow soon anyway.

I would think if you have a shrew problem, blocking off the bottom entrance during colder weather would be the best way to protect against them while they're in a cluster. I could see using top entrances from late fall through early spring for just this reason, and then opening the bottom entrances for traffic issues in the warmer weather.

No?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Maybe, but if the bees are oriented to the bottom entrance, those that are will get stuck out at the bottom...especially now that it's getting colder and it doesn't take long for them to chilled enough so they can't fly up to the top entrance...after figuring out where to go.

Now, if you place a mouse guard in the entrance...like that 1/2" hardware cloth wedge that I use, the bees will be able to use the bottom entrance if that's where they've oriented, and the top entrance if that's where they've oriented. Once the bottom entrance is blocked with ice and snow, the bees have already ceased flight for the year and it won't matter anyway.

But you can't just close up the bottom entrance in marginally cold weather, and expect good results. 

Does that make sense?


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> What advantages are those Ace?


There are plenty of threads on it stating the advantages. Maybe most of them you don't agree with but you can't deny that it gets the entrance elevated off the ground. As I say I don't use a top entrance as a major entrance to the hive but I wouldn't crucify those that do.



> But you can't just close up the bottom entrance in marginally cold weather, and expect good results.
> 
> Does that make sense?


Yes it does. I would not advise a switch at this time of year.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Michael Palmer said:


> Does that make sense?


It does make sense but I hope it's not too hard and dry because I am going to be moving some small hives close together for winter and I hope the move isn't going to leave them homeless and chilled.

1/2" inch tho isn't enough to guard against these horrible pygmy shrews. They got into my 3/8" Brushy Mountain mouseguards in the fall. That's the problem.

I hate those things. I hope they're gone. I hesitate to check.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Acebird said:


> There are plenty of threads on it stating the advantages.


Yes, so you said. What are they?

The correct word would not be crucify. I'm disagreeing and want reasons why. 

One reason not to....

Hive debris. How do the bees carry hive debris out of the hive. All they up and out the top entrance? Not all of it they can't. And what is left behind is just wonderful for small hive beetles.

Of course there's always the location of the active brood rearing cluster. The bees locate this near an entrance. Dr Bob Southwick, SUNY Albany, showed many years ago that one could move the center of brood rearing up and down within the hive by opening or closing auger holes in the hive bodies. Open an auger hole higher on the hive, and the active brood rearing cluster moves up. Lower, and the cluster moves down.

I want the core of my brood nests lower in the hive, rather than higher in the hive.

And so Ace, your turn. What are the benefits of having only an upper entrance?


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> Yes, so you said. What are they?
> 
> One reason not to....
> 
> Hive debris. How do the bees carry hive debris out of the hive.


How do they get it out when it is a tree? The entrance on a natural hive in not normally right on the bottom of the hive.

Advantages:

One could say more honey, less loss of time climbing the stack.
One could say healthier, the whole colony doesn't have to crawl through the crap at the bottom of the hive every day.
One could say less chance of varroa jumping back on bees at the bottom once they got knocked to the bottom.
One could say more secure from predators having the entrance elevated.

I use to drill holes in my boxes, count them on the left hive. There are five. The one on the right side has 3 in the top box alone. It looks to me that the bees are in the bottom.
http://i697.photobucket.com/albums/vv333/acebird1/Inspection 2011/HiveinSeptember003.jpg
Whether the holes are there or not there I find my bees in the top in the spring time and in the bottom in the fall. That has not changed even though I now close all these holes.

With these two hives pictured I found the brood nest toward the back of the hive away from the holes which is the reason I don't do it anymore.

Most of the discussions on threads that I have read place the upper entrance between the brood nest and the honey supers they are not all the way to the top of the hive.

Why do you want me to repeat what I read or think on the subject when you could just go visit the threads where the comments are made? Make your case there where newbies that you are worried about might want to try the practice. I have no desire to go to a single upper entrance the conventional method is working for me.


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## yukonjack (Mar 12, 2015)

Michael, NewBee,
Thanks you for your input.

The mouse guard is indeed a 1/2 inch square hardware cloth wire mesh ( not #4 size as I typed earlier ).
It is affixed to the top of the bottom entrance reducer, and the landing board at about a 45 degree angle, and then bent toward the entrance.
So the wire hypotenuse of the system isn't actually a straight line, it's bent inward toward the smaller entrance on the reducer.
Bees flow relatively freely through the wire and out the sides beneath the wire.

Our bees, from a package this May, almost exclusively use the lower entrance even though they've had the upper entrance since shortly after installation. Hence my question.

I'm predisposed to keep both entrances open as long as its not the shrew-equvalent of a beer-funnel. I had planned to place a lean-to wedge over the bottom entrance to keep the snow from blocking it. But these are the machinations of a rank amateur.

This rodent (assuming that what is leaving the bee detritus on the hive's doorstep) just happened to come at the time of year that I'm concerned about how well we tended the bees and prepared them to survive the winter (or maybe meddled with them too much so that they can't take care of themselves as they'd like).

Thanks again for all the input.
I'm going to try to find a way to trap whatever is getting at the bees and avoid dinking around with the hive too much at this point.


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## yukonjack (Mar 12, 2015)

Small addition;

I have no real idea what is leaving the bee carcass near the hive.
I "self-diagnosed" on the Interwebs.
I too, read that pygmy shrews can get through wire mesh as small as 1 cm square, but I don't know if the perpetrator has been in the hive itself. I tend to doubt it since there seem to be plenty of bees, and they don't seem angry or agitated when we're up close and personal with the closed hive. It warmed up today and many bees were in the air.

Given our daily temps here in NH, I'd rather not pull boxes to inspect the bottom frames of the bottom brood box, but the thought of a bee-eating pygmy rodent getting through my mouse guard unabated doesn't settle well either.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Wasn't it beautiful today? I took the opportunity to do a little cleanup in the beeyard.

With the shrews, I found that they stuffed the bee carcasses in the corners of the frames. That's another clue, piles of carcasses massed up. And, on the dead bodies outside the hive, you can look for the hole in the thorax, which is the part of the bee they like to eat.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

yukonjack said:


> I too, read that pygmy shrews can get through wire mesh as small as 1 cm square, but I don't know if the perpetrator has been in the hive itself.


The mouse guard I mentioned is 3/8 holes (slightly smaller than 1cm) not a square. The thin sheet metal makes sharp edges when punched. It might be a deterrent.


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Acebird said:


> How do they get it out when it is a tree? The entrance on a natural hive in not normally right on the bottom of the hive.
> 
> I have to disagree Ace top entrances are not common in nature such as a bee tree. In 4 decades removing bees from trees any hive with a top entrance I've remove from a tree wasn't worth the trouble best way to describe it would be shb city. This year I've started mentoring some new people some whom are Beesource members. Some of these people bought into the top entrance only style. Quit frankly what a disaster! The hives smelt like death because the bees could not and did not remove the dead bees and again shb city. It took an awful amount of trouble to save these hives more than I'll go through with mine but I hate to see someone lose their first hives. I let these people know if they went back to top entrances only then find another mentor. Let me mention their honey stores, nothing worth harvesting way to much pollen stored with the honey


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Advantages:

>>One could say more honey, less loss of time climbing the stack.

If you think that, then you don't know how the forager/receiver team works. The forager unloads to a receiver who...as you say...climbs the stack. Except they don't climb the stack right off but rather place the incoming wherever they can, and go receive another load. Bottom combs, edges of combs, top combs, emerging brood comb. Everywhere. Then after the flow ends for the day, they move it up and out of the broodnest. So, no slowdown.

>>One could say healthier, the whole colony doesn't have to crawl through the crap at the bottom of the hive every day.

Right, because they don't go there. It's still there putrefying. With a bottom entrance, they haul it out the front door and dump it off the landing board like this....













>>One could say less chance of varroa jumping back on bees at the bottom once they got knocked to the bottom.

Never seen a varroa mite crawl? Quick little beggars, aren't they.


>>One could say more secure from predators having the entrance elevated.

Maybe the only benefit of solo upper entrance.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Acebird said:


> How do they get it out when it is a tree? The entrance on a natural hive in not normally right on the bottom of the hive.





In case it is hard to read. Small entrances, close to the ground, at or near bottom of cavity.

This is from Tom Seeley's book _Honeybee Democracy_ derived from data of actual dissected honey bee colonies.


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## Bee Bliss (Jun 9, 2010)

I very much appreciate this thread. I guess we had shrews one year as I recognized the thin strands of you-know-what on the tops of some of the frames after winter. 

We had been contemplating going with an upper entrance or both upper and lower and based on what I read here, that won't happen. Are we supposed to brush snow away from a bottom entrance or let them get buried? What about boards leaning against the hives and sort of covering the bottom entrances?

Thanks Michael Palmer and everyone!


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Notch your inner cover will give them an entrance they can use in deep snow. Most of our discussion was about a top entrance only. Top entrance in your case would be a good thing used along with a bottom entrance. A board might work but you know how that snow likes to drift.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> Then after the flow ends for the day, they move it up and out of the broodnest. So, no slowdown.


[edit]
If the top entrance was just above the brood nest and you were nadiering (bottom supering) the empty super would be right close by so there may not be that second transfer. Anything closer to the final destination would be more efficient. Pollination services are more efficient. The food source is close to the hives. When ever you have efficiency you have more production.

Now in my case I use SBB. There isn't this house cleaning done by the bees with the exception of dead bees that are not sitting in moisture rotting away. That mucky picture you painted all goes away with SBB.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

I had a problem a couple years ago with them. I trapped them with mouse traps baited with a mixture of peanut butter and tuna. Stick a couple around your hives. Those little *^&() can also crawl up the hive and get in the top entrance.


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

In Septicemia the bees literally come apart. Septicemia is a disease itself, but there are many other bee diseases that cause the septicemia symptoms. It could even be Nosema Cerrana.


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## yukonjack (Mar 12, 2015)

dsegrest said:


> In Septicemia the bees literally come apart. Septicemia is a disease itself, but there are many other bee diseases that cause the septicemia symptoms. It could even be Nosema Cerrana.


Well.
Aren't you a ray of sunshine this morning! (smile)

These remains were scattered about the front of the hive. No more than 18 inches from the entrance. And something had been / is tugging on the wire mouse guard.

I'm still thinking rodent.


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