Ok, I am a rookie this year. I installed four new packages about a week and a half ago. I have been in the hives a couple of times already and everything seems to be doing fine. My question is how long do I leave the entrance reducers on the entrances? Is it ok to go ahead and remove them now or should I wait?
If they are causing massive congestion at the entrance then go ahead and remove them or enlarge the opening. If they aren't causing major congestion, I would leave them alone, they will reduce the chances of robbing.
I haven't seen any massive congestion. I am using jar feeders on top of the inner cover. Do you think there would be a chance of robbing in that situation?
usually you don't have robbing with hive top, more so with boardman feeders. I kept the entrance reduced all last summer on mine without any problems.
When you see colonies going in and out of a wall say, often the hole is just a 1/2" crack and they do just fine. Once the nectar flow diminishes you will have robbing of your weaker hive by some neighborhood strong hive if you don't reduce the entrance.
Being lazy, I tend to leave a reducer in year long once I put them in a hive. Bees are fine. I also leave screen bottoms open year long also for the same reason.
I used to remove the entrance reducers once the nectar flow was on, but with all the robbing I have had of my hives, now I just keep them on the 4" size all year long. If I am feeding, I reduce them even more.
Thought I read somewhere that heavy conjestion at the entrance could trigger swarming.. maybe not
Before the use of screened bottom boards the entrance was one of the only ways a hive could get ventilation and removing the reducer was needed during the summer for better air flow in a hive. Now with SBB's in use a smaller entrance will work just fine on even a really large hive. I open up the entrances on my hives during a necture flow just to give the bees more room to land but I don't think I really need to.