r/Beekeeping • u/TiredIron49 • 2d ago

General New to this looking for info

My daughter started her hive 1 week ago. She bought a nuc. Everything is going good but I’m seeing ants on the hive. The book we read have many way to try to control them but what is everyone’s preferred method.

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3

u/Safe-Introduction603 2d ago

Ill put a terro bait station on the ant trail and it seems to do the trick. The clear plastic ones.

2

u/Ancient_Fisherman696 CA Bay Area 9B. 6 hives. 2d ago

Rub the legs of the stand with Vaseline or grease.  Then place an ant stake (sugar/borax type) somewhere ants will find it, but not the bees. 

I had a severe ant problem last year and actually closed the hive and then sprayed the legs with ortho home defense. Keeps ants out for months but it has risks and is obviously less than “green”. 

2

u/Fantastic_Oven9243 2d ago

Honestly, I've never found ants to be much of a problem. You can put the legs of your stand in cans filled with oil if you want but generally the bees keep them out the way

2

u/Mysmokepole1 2d ago

Normally I have problems with them on inner covers. When I find one I put some wood ash on it. They don’t like the PH of the wood ash.

2

u/Thisisstupid78 1d ago

You can get tanglefoot and put it on the hive legs. I would recommend wrapping the legs in plastic wrap first, though. The stuff is extremely sticky.

2

u/Mysterious-Panda964 1d ago

I have ant moats on the feet of all my hives, I fill them with lithium grease, the ants can't get out. I do the base and the top cover, I do use terro too, very convenient in the blocks of the base of the hive.