Screened bottom boards — do you leave the tray out the whole summer or keep it in?
Galway, second year, three hives all on screened bottom boards. I've had the sticky trays in constantly because I like doing mite drop counts, but a fella at the association meeting said I'm 'stewing my bees' and the whole point of the screen is to leave it open all summer.
Then someone else at the same table said open floors in our wet windy Atlantic weather just chill the brood and the bees have to work harder. Great, thanks lads, very helpful.
So what's the actual practice? Tray out all summer and in for winter? Always out? And if the tray lives out, when do you slide it in — just for the few days before a count, or does that mess up the numbers?
#screened-bottom-board#ventilation#mite-count
▲ 10 votes💬 4 replies✅ Solved
4 replies
CorkBeeRon · Jul 25, 2026 · ✅ Accepted answer
Cork here, so same weather as you. Out from roughly May to September, in for winter — that's my rule and most of the association's. Open floors in summer help ventilation and any mite that grooms off falls to the grass instead of riding an escalator back up. Your brood-chilling fella is half right, but about spring and autumn, not July. Slide the tray in 3–7 days before you want a count; a 24-hour snapshot is too noisy to mean much anyway.
BuckfastLinda · Jul 25, 2026
Same practice in Flanders, one addition: tray goes IN whenever I vaporise oxalic, or half the vapour drifts straight out the bottom. And natural drop counts are a rough compass, not a speedometer — I treat them as 'rising or falling', and do a wash when the answer matters. Don't let the convenient number replace the accurate one.
AlpineCarnica · Jul 25, 2026
Contrarian minority view: I run solid floors in the Alps and my screened experiments showed no difference in colony outcomes, only in my firewood bill for making floors. The bees manage either way. Point being — this is a low-stakes choice, do what suits your climate and habits and don't let anyone at a meeting tell you you're stewing anything.
GalwayBees · Jul 26, 2026
Trays came out this morning, and I've marked the calendar to slide them back in for a proper 5-day count in mid-August plus before any winter oxalic. Also quietly enjoying that the two fellas at the meeting were BOTH sort of right. Classic.