The books / Pests, Predators and Robbing / chapter 12 of 14
Mice in October
All chapters
- The dangerous weeks
- What a dearth looks like from the hive
- How robbing starts
- The beekeeper rings the bell
- Recognising it
- The entrance reducer
- The robbing screen
- When it is already bad
- Wasps through the year
- Strong colonies repel, weak ones fall
- The trap that works is the spring one
- Mice in October
- Bears
- Leaving them alone
A mouse looking for winter shelter is drawn to exactly the thing a broodless winter cluster offers: a warm, quiet, food-rich box that nothing is actively patrolling. Once inside, a mouse builds a nest in the lower box through the coldest months, shredding comb and frames for material and stressing a cluster that has no way to evict it until spring.
The fix is a metal strip with holes small enough to keep mice out but large enough for bees to pass, and the timing is simple to remember: put it on the same day you do your colony's last fall feeding, so there is no gap where the entrance is briefly memorable to a mouse looking for a home.