Apimaye propolis trap for harvesting propolis
Apimaye propolis trap for harvesting propolis
These are fantastic. In the wet tropic in Australia the bees are able to create the right ventilation and the propolis catches and kills a lot of hive beetle from above ( and from below).
Figured that I should make an update to clarify the one negative from my earlier review.
The top position on the latches do work with the propolis traps, but it's just really tight on newer boxes.
I've been using the propolis traps a lot over the last month to combine swarms or splits from stronger hives into weaker hives both with and without queens. I found that some of my older boxes were working just fine with the propolis traps, and then realized that even the newer boxes will work, but you just have to use a little more force to close the latches.
I've also used the propolis trap as a double screen prior to swapping out with a queen excluder to make a double queen hive. The entrances on the deep boxes are perfect for helping to do this and the propolis trap is significantly less expensive and easier to store than a double screen.
I'm really happy I bought a bunch of these!
These are very useful, and I started last year with 2 of these for each hive. I probably only needed 1 per hive plus an extra or two, but you can't really beat the price either compared to what you'd pay elsewhere for the same quality propolis trap.
I use one of these propolis traps on the tops of my hives even when I am not using feeders. I always like to keep an extra deep super on top of my hives that I stack frames in during inspections, so the propolis trap keeps the bees out of the extra super and also gives me an easy way to puff in a little smoke before releasing the bees.
This propolis trap is thick enough that bees don't fight each other through it, and I have used it for combining hives rather than newspaper. Newspaper is hard to work with if there is any wind and that makes a bit of a mess after the combine is done. The propolis trap will hold it's position even in wind while you are grabbing the other box and it comes out of the hive in one piece when you are finished with combining the colonies.
I use the frame spaces below the propolis trap to hold it off of the tops of the frames.
The only real negative that I can say for the trap is that it is too thick to use the upper latch hooks and when using the lower latch hooks the latch doesn't really snap into place as when fitting in a queen excluder or a feeder between boxes. I haven't had a problem with the latches coming undone, but if someone worries about bears, they might want to shim it to fit tight.
