Best Robbing Center

I've gone through a few different methods of setting out sticky items for the bees to lick clean, from empty pails to emptied sticky honey frames.

There are a few issues that come up when leaving frames outside, mostly rain and wind that flaps the tarp around (often blowing it right off) and then there's the wild animals looking for a meal.


At The Pines bee yard my traditional method of setting frames on a table wouldn't work.  This yard has some clever acrobatic raccoons which have shown me they can get into anything I set up no matter how high I set it up.

I put my problem solving to work and I thought over different methods but all of them had pitfalls.

Then one morning quite unexpectedly  I woke up with the solution.

I had two large outdoor rabbit hutches which I was not using.  They had single roofs which would take care of rain and snow and they have a wire face which would keep the raccoons out.  The lid was even hinged so I could lift it and set the frames inside.  Perfect solution.

I put one in each yard.  One yard we call The Pines because of it's soaring pine trees.  It's beautiful there just to sit and watch nature and the bees.  I put that rabbit hutch on top of a large wood box and weighted everything with bricks.  The black tarp helps to add heat from the sun.

So far it's stood up well... but raccoons are problem solvers too.  Time will tell