Hive tools, and keeping them clean

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The kit you actually need

Shorter than the catalogue suggests. A hive tool, a smoker, something to keep bees off your face, gloves, and a brush. Everything else can wait until you know why you want it.

Hive tools come in a few patterns. The plain flat one with a scraper at one end and a hook at the other does everything. A J-type gives you more purchase for lifting frames. Which you prefer is a matter of hands, not merit. Buy more than one, for a reason that comes up below.

Suits and veils are a personal decision, and the honest position is that no beekeeping clothing keeps every sting out. Buy the level of cover that lets you work calmly, because a nervous beekeeper is clumsy and clumsiness costs bees.

Gloves are a disease decision

This one surprises people. The NBU’s preferred option is disposable nitrile gloves, precisely because you can throw them away between inspections. Washing-up gloves are acceptable if you clean them between colonies, along with your hive tool. 1

Leather gloves are not recommended, and the NBU gives two reasons. They cannot be cleaned properly, so they carry disease from colony to colony. And they make it hard to pick frames up neatly, which means jolted frames and squashed bees. If you do wear leather, put disposables over the top.

The NBU is also honest that bees can sting through nitrile, and that double gloving gives more protection.

Cleaning is not disinfecting

The NBU draws this distinction deliberately, and it is the key to the whole subject. Cleaning is routine, and it happens on every apiary visit. Disinfecting is what you do when disease is or has been present. 1

Washing kit in soda crystals cleans it. It does not disinfect it, unless boxes are actually simmered in the solution, which the NBU accepts is not practical for many beekeepers.

The soda bucket

The standard NBU cleaning solution is 1 kg of soda crystals in 4.5 litres of water, which is washing soda in a gallon of water. Use hot water where you need to shift propolis. 1

Kept sealed, a plain soda solution stays usable for about four weeks. 3

Bee inspectors add bleach to that bucket for field use. Their mix is 150 ml of 4.5% sodium hypochlorite added to the same 1 kg of soda in 4.5 litres, giving a final strength of about 0.125%. That is enough to kill the bacterium that causes European foulbrood and stop it being carried between colonies, provided hive tools soak for at least 20 minutes. 1

Once you add bleach, the bucket is good for 24 hours, not four weeks.

And there is the reason to own several hive tools. If a proper soak takes twenty minutes, one tool means either waiting or skipping it. Rotate between them as you work down the row.

Between every colony

Clean the hive tool in the soda bucket between colonies, using a stainless steel scourer to shift propolis. The wax and propolis matter because that is what harbours pathogens. 1

Scraping comes first

Whatever you plan to do afterwards, get the wax and propolis off first. Organic matter physically gets in the way of disinfection and stops bleach reaching the surface. 2

Propolis is much easier to remove cold, because it goes brittle. A frosty morning is a good time to scrape boxes.

Scrape onto newspaper and burn the scrapings, rather than leaving them in the apiary.

Scorching

For wooden boxes, a blowtorch is the practical disinfection method. Heat the timber until it goes a uniform coffee brown, using the tip of the blue flame to boil off remaining propolis. You are not trying to set fire to it. Be thorough in the corners and cracks, because that is where everything hides. 2

Wood only. Never a plastic or polystyrene hive, and take plastic frame runners out first. The NBU suggests simply replacing dirty runners rather than trying to clean them.

Bleaching

For plastic and poly, bleach does the job that scorching does for wood. Household bleach is about 3 to 5% sodium hypochlorite and wants diluting to 0.5%. 2

Dilute it in cool water. Sodium hypochlorite breaks down faster when it is heated, so hot water weakens the very thing you are relying on. Hot water is for rinsing afterwards.

Then rinse with plenty of hot water and leave everything to dry outside in the sun, so no residue is left behind.

Frames and excluders

Empty frames: scrape them, then wash in the soda solution with a dash of washing-up liquid and a wire brush. There is a more thorough version where the solution is heated above 80 °C and the frames are submerged for a few minutes. If you do that, wear gloves and eye protection, because hot soda solution is not something to splash about. 2

Queen excluders depend on the type. Scrape them cold first. Wire ones can be scorched, but go carefully where they are soldered so you do not melt the joints. Plastic ones get bleached. Zinc slotted ones must be burned if foulbrood has been present, and can otherwise be scrubbed in soda.

Where foulbrood has been involved, brood frames are not cleaned. They are burned. Registering on BeeBase covers what happens when foulbrood turns up near you.

Freezing dismantled kit

Before cleaning a dismantled hive, the NBU suggests putting the parts in a chest freezer to kill wax moth and other insect pests: at least 48 hours at minus 20 °C. 2

The NBU gives 24 hours for comb in sealed bags, and we suggest 48 there too, so the times end up the same. What is different here is the temperature. Minus 20 °C is specified for woodwork and is not given anywhere for comb, and the reason is thickness. A frame of comb in a bag chills quickly. Dismantled woodwork takes far longer to get cold all the way through. Cleaning, freezing and storing supers covers the comb case.

Second-hand kit

This is where beekeepers get badly caught, usually by a bargain.

The NBU strongly recommends that all second-hand equipment is disinfected before use, to a standard high enough to kill American foulbrood spores. Not just cleaned. 2

The reason is the timescale. AFB spores stay viable in the environment for decades, so kit that has sat in a barn since the last owner gave up can still start an outbreak. Chalkbrood spores can persist for something like fifteen years. 5

And the flat rule that follows: never use second-hand comb. The NBU states it without qualification. Boxes can be scorched. Comb cannot be made safe. 4

The short version

• Nitrile gloves you throw away. Not leather.
• 1 kg soda crystals in 4.5 litres. Four weeks sealed, or 24 hours once bleach is in it.
• Inspectors’ mix adds 150 ml of bleach, and hive tools need a 20 minute soak. Own several tools.
• Putting a hive tool in the smoker sterilises nothing.
• Scrape first. Cold propolis comes off easier.
• Scorch wood to coffee brown. Bleach plastic, diluted in cool water.
• Second-hand boxes get disinfected. Second-hand comb gets refused.