# Possible to treat Wax moth ?



## samak (Sep 15, 2006)

In a few beekeeping books, they mention ways to deal with wax moths in stored equipment. But, they did not mention what to do if you have wax moths inside hives. Is it possible, or even necessary to treat it if you have wax moths inside the hive? Can the bees fight off the wax moths from the hive?


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## samak (Sep 15, 2006)

Also, some say that if you have wax moth in the hive, it means that your hives are weak and that you should combine it with another hive.


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## Sherpa1 (Dec 10, 2005)

About a month ago I found wax moths in my hives. They had infested the combs and were making webs. The problem was that the hive had gone queenless for some reason and I had not noticed the situation. The population of bees had dropped significantly. I removed the infested combs (which still had plenty of stored pollen) and froze them for 24 hours. This killed the wax moth larva. I then removed the webbing from the comb and cleaned it as best as I could. At the time that I removed the infested comb, I also reduced this previous two deep hive to one deep. The next day, I did a newspaper combine with a single deep hive that had a good laying queen and had about 6 full frames. I replaced the frames that had not been drawn with the cleaned frames with pollen from the first hive. I checked the hive yesterday and everything is great. The infested combs have been cleaned and repaired by the bees and the brood pattern is great.
To answer your second question, I would suspect that if wax moths have become established in the comb, then there was a problem with the hive. If you don't have enough bees to fill the hive space, then the wax moths will move in. I would freeze the comb and do a combine.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The problem with "treating" wax moth is that if there are wax moths in the combs, then the hive is too weak. Getting rid of the wax moths won't alleviate that. Reducing the space they are occupying will help. Of course they are now fighting an infestation as well. Bt (Certan etc.) will kill wax moths and can be sprayed on the combs, but using that by itself will not solve the underlying problem.


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## Robert Brenchley (Apr 23, 2000)

If it's a weak colony then that has to be dealt with. But it might equally well be a split or a nuc which hasn't had time to build up. I don't bother about a bit of lesser waxmoth in the corners, but a heavy infestation of greater gets the Certan treatment. After that, I start worrying about why they managed to build up.


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