A Bee escape board is a nifty device to make harvesting honey easier.
This week, I harvested my first batch of honey. The first step in this process is to clear the comb of any bees.
Traditionally, this has been done using a device called a bee board. This device looks like the screen for a window. It gets painted with a nasty smelling substance and then placed on top of the open hive just before harvesting. The smell drives many of the bees deeper into the hive and the bee keeper removes rest with a brush.
A bee board is effective and commercial bee keepers use them because they drive bees off the comb relatively quickly, which is important if you have many hives to harvest in a given day. However, for home beekeepers with just a few hives, there's an alternative method called a bee escape board.
The bee escape board works over a period of 24-36 hours. There are a number of different models, but they all work on the same principle. You place the board under the section of the hive that you want to harvest. The board has one or more gates that channel bees to the lower section of the hive and make it difficult for them to return -- kind of like a one way valve. Over a period of hours the bees get channeled out and the bee keeper can remove honey comb that is relatively free of bees.
One advantage of the bee escape board is that it does not require the use of smelly chemicals. More importantly from my perspective, it helps you avoid angry bees; let's face it, bees don't want you to steal their honey and get aggressive when you remove the comb from the hive. Using a bee escape minimizes your bee encounters and lowers the risk of a sting. Got to like that!
A photo of the model of bee escape I use is shown below. The bees enter from the top and get channeled through the little red cones on the underside of the board. The ends of the cones are relatively narrow, so its more difficult for the bees to pass back through the cones once they have emerged on the other side.
I found that this bee escape board to be very effective; after 36 hours on the hive, I removed the top cover and discovered only about 10 bees remaining.
If you are new to bee keeping and don't plan on having many hives, a bee escape board is probably worth considering.
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