A Mouse In The House

[Jen]

Have been observing one of my nucs for a couple weeks now. This same entrance reducer on the left is on the ground by 10:00am every day. I'm pretty sure it's a mouse. I don't know if the mouse is living in the nuc now and coming out in the morning.. or living somewhere else and going in each morning. If I lock down the entrance reducers with a nail or screw, I may lock the mouse in and it will eat the honey. I'm not sure what the bees will do with the mouse now that they are in cluster.

[apisbees]

Is the bottom board removable? if not on the next warm afternoon take out the frames and make sure it is gone. look for clutter (mouse house material)on the BB.

[Jen]

Yes it is, it will simply be propolized shut, I can pry that open. I'll have hubby help tilt it back a bit and look for debri on the floor first. If there is debri, then maybe I should take the frames out and make sure mouse get's out of there. Then I can secure a screw or two nails to the entrance reducers so mouse can't get in again.

Good Plan Apis! As Always   

[apisbees]

a mouse can get through 3/8" x 1/2" space so keep the entrance small

[neillsayers]

Put a stethoscope on the hive and listen carefully. If you hear bees shreiking "EEEEEEK!", that's the sounds of girls jumping up on furniture and freaking about a mouse in the house!


Sorry, Jen, I couldn't help myself.

[Wandering Man]

Could be the girls invited the mouse in to get rid of the remaining drones:

[neillsayers]

WM,

Poor little mouse, all she wanted is a safe and quiet place to raise a family! Is that too mauch to ask?

[Some Day]

Instead of just a warm house I prefer to give them a swimming pool also.

[Wandering Man]

I'd always heard about drowning rats as a way to get rid of them.  Then I caught on in a live trap one day.  The trap was longer than I expected, and I ended up having to fill a 30 gallon trash can to drown the rat.  It took forever to get the can full enough to cover the trap. 

And then I made the mistake of looking at the rat.

Nope, I'll never drown another critter. 

[rober]

my granddad made a similar trap when I was a kid. he caught several mice in snap traps, weighed them & put a piece of lead on the outboard end of the gangplank that was light enough to drop the mouse & raise the gangplank back up.
wandering man-get a storage tub. works great for drowning skunks, squirrels, etc.

[Wandering Man]

my granddad made a similar trap when I was a kid. he caught several mice in snap traps, weighed them & put a piece of lead on the outboard end of the gangplank that was light enough to drop the mouse & raise the gangplank back up.
wandering man-get a storage tub. works great for drowning skunks, squirrels, etc.

[shudder]   

Fortunately, I've not found a need to drown any more critters.  After watching the struggle that rat put up, and the length of time it took to drown, I like a quicker death. 

I've got a weaker heart than I had previously thought.

[Jen]

Your not alone WM, I have a problem with drowning anything. A few winters ago a couple of rats raided my bee shed. Ate up all the drawn wax I worked so hard to get that summer, not to mention all the poo they left behind. It was nasty!

But I still couldn't drown them. Got large rat traps filled with pbutter and cheese, that got em! without knowing what hit em.

However, this one youtube showed how to make a 'walk the plank' bucket trap, and they used antifreeze instead of water. Supposedly the rats drown right away because of the thickness of the antifreeze.

[neillsayers]

This thread has reminded me of a situation I found myself in many years ago-about thirty I think. I was milking a goodly amout of goats and the spilled feed generated a veritable swarm of mice. They were everywhere. I placed some traps but even with those they were breeding faster than I could control. A neighbor of mine lent me one of these:
  https://www.amazon.com/Kness-101-0-002-Ketch-All-Mousetrap/dp/B00004RA4D

You crank it up and set it against a wall- no bait. A mouse comes across it and travels through the hole, set a trip lever that scoops it into a holding chamber. Then more mice come along and enter to find there lost brethren. The crank allows it to trip 20-22 times I think. Well.... next day I had a full trap. What to do with 20 trapped mice. I dropped them in a tank and later cleaned it out. Did it one more time and after that I was so traumatized I cleaned it and brought it back.

 I put out the word that I needed a really good mousing cat and within a week I had one. That cat, named Barn Cat or BC for short, wiped out the vermin and forever will be remembered by me in my own personal Cat Hall of Fame.

[Jen]

Love that story Neil, letting nature take it course. And I can imagine a very happy cat 

[neillsayers]

Jen,
Have you determined if a mouse is in your hive?

[Jen]

Hey Neil... funny you ask. We have been gone for a couple days. When we got up this morning I noticed that the entrance reducers stayed in place for those two days, hmmm? Then later in the day hubby finds me in the house and says "Bad news! We have a rat in the back yard." Sure enough, we go to see, and there is a juvenile rat eating up all of my sunflower seeds in the bird feeder that is just a few feet away from my nucs. So rat found another tasty source while we were gone.


Then rat decided to camp out in the bird house further up in the tree. We opened the glass door and rat ran up the tree and jumped into the bird house. PERFECT! Hubby ran to get the ladder and some duct tape and we trapped the rat in the bird house. Hubby took rat for a long ride into the hills.

So I'm not sure I should open up the nucs to see if there is another rat? think I'll keep an eye out for more rat mischief, then open the up. 

[rober]

how wide is the entrance gap in your nuc? you rarely have 1 rat or mouse & a rat can do a lot of damage in a short time. i'd check it now. if do not want to drown them get some snap traps. relocating vermin usually creates a problem for someone else & in some states it is illegal.

[Jen]

Hey Rober, since we found the entrance reducer moved or dropped off the bottom board, we now have the reducers down to the width of one bee. So it will be obvious if there is another rat. Today I'm going to shine a flash light in all the bottom boards to see if there is any rat poo or mischief left behind. If the bottom boards are clean then I won't crack open the hives.

Hubby disposed of live entombed rat several miles up into the woods, no where near housing, there won't be a prob for any other residence.

However, we have a couple rat snap traps set in the garage now, and one under the nucs just in case.