# SHB are taking the joy out of beekeeping



## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

There are a lot of changes I have to make in the way I do things now that SHB are here. 

When I do cut-outs and I set the honey comb out for the yard bees to rob out I can't let the comb set for long periods of time waiting for me to render it down. In the past I would let it go until I had enough comb and the spare time to work it down. I'd take it to the farm and melt it while I was there working the bees. Now I am afraid to transport SHB in the wax to another location that does not have them.

Last week I put 80 drawn wood and wax frames and about 100 pounds of old comb in a bonfire just so not to have it laying around hatching beetles. What a fire that was!

Now when I open a hive I waste time smashing beetles instead of getting to the job at hand.

I used to be able to save and share frames of pollen with new hives or with caught swarms. Now when I open the nucs I have to look through the pollen for SHB larva.

Now I spend time trying to figure out how to reduce my exposure to the beetles; how to trap them or how to keep them from getting a hold in my hives.

I now have to wonder why a story and a half hive chock full of bees have the most beetles in the yard.

And the biggest dilemma; how, if, and where to take the backyard hives without contaminating a new area. I would normally take the developing hives from my backyard to the farm or other out yards, but I don't want to spread the SHB to my other locations, or is it just an inevitable fact of life that is going to happen anyway?

WWIDD?


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## drobbins (Jun 1, 2005)

so I take it that your extensive use of Permacomb doesnt seem to help with this problem? I'm using more and more HSC and was hoping it would make life hard for shb. I have some in my hives but they haven't really been a problem so far. I don't know whether to attribute that to the plastic combs or some other variable

Dave


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

have they not discovered freezers in kansas yet?

I do supect that plastic frames will not make the shb problem any better.

bill writes:
or is it just an inevitable fact of live that is going to happen anyway?

tecumseh sezs: yep.

plus...during the warmer months of the year the shb has made doing cut outs almost entirely a waste of effort.


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## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

drobbins said:


> so I take it that your extensive use of Permacomb doesnt seem to help with this problem? I'm using more and more HSC and was hoping it would make life hard for shb. I have some in my hives but they haven't really been a problem so far. I don't know whether to attribute that to the plastic combs or some other variable
> 
> Dave


In relation to PC; when you are inspecting a frame of PC and the beetle is crawling from one cell to another, if you time it right you can squish it on the edge of the cell without hurting the comb.

The white plastic makes it very easy to see the beetles in the comb, unfortunately I bought 500 black HSC. 

Laying a frame of PC under the SBB makes a trap for the beetles to hide in. Making the rounds in the evening with a trash bag I can put the frame in the bag and rap it on something hard and dislodge the beetles into the bag and toss the bag into the chest freezer I had to buy to freeze frames in. Like I needed another expense or a freezer.


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

I can relate. The only difference with my situation is that I just started beekeeping this year. So I came along at a time when almost all the major pests of bees were already present and have had to factor them in from the beginning. I am getting into it just as most people have gotten out. Which is true to my contrarian nature. 

I think we just have to accept reality and dealing with SHB is part of the price of doing what we do. I would love to commit SHB genocide but I realize that they are here and are going to be here; The only thing I can do is try to check them. Hopefully the bees will develop some coping strategies on their own which will be handed down genetically.

In the meantime all I can do is try to maintain strong hives and put traps on. For me I regret that I will never be able to experience doing carefree splits or nurse along weak nucs without having a trap in place and crossing my fingers.

I guess I should count my blessings and be glad in the fact that AHB have not yet arrived in my area (they are knocking on the door) so that I can at least get my first experience of the joy of catching swarms in bait hives for a few seasons before that too is taken away.

That will be the day when I pack up and move further north.


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## power napper (Apr 2, 2005)

Sorry to hear about the small hive beetle problems. There may be hope on the horizon according to what the latest American Bee Journal article on page 801 "My New HIve Beetle Trap" by Jerry Freeman.


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## Gene Weitzel (Dec 6, 2005)

When SHB have been in your area long enough, you accept them as a fact of life. In my area, any hive that is not strong enough to deal with them on their own is not worth keeping and either gets combined or dies out. I have had little luck with traps or other controls as they all seem to be a waste of time. It has been my experience that a hive that is struggling with SHB has some other underlying issue that is causing it to be weakened to the point that the SHB get ahead of them. There are occasional exceptions where a strong hive will seemingly just "get tired" of dealing with them and abscond (I've had it happen once a year for the last couple of years). I must admit I do still get some satisfaction out of smashing them with my hive tool, or watching the larvae "wig out" when I set an infested frame on a fire ant mound, but neither seems to help a whole lot in keeping them out of the hives. So far, strong hives and plenty of sunshine as has been previously promoted seem to be the best medicine. By strong, I don't necessarily mean big, as it is a function of the number of bees available to protect their real estate. I tend to keep my hives/nucs just a little crowded for this reason which does requires a little more attention to keep them from "hitting the trees".


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## Drugstore (Dec 6, 2005)

*How do you clean up SHB slimed hives*

This has been a good year and a bad year for me.
I have made lots of honey, but I have lost 8 double deep hives to SHB. Some had two or three meduim supers on them.
These hives are still heavy with honey.
These things have invaded some of my strongest hives.
The ones with the most bees,brood,pollen, honey and they did it almost over night.
High humitity seems to really trigger them.
I have bagged all my supers and frozen them to kill the SHB and the eggs.
I used several chest type freezers.
Now comes the clean up and it is a really a putred, rotten mess.
I have heard that you can drop the cleaned frames ( wax removed) in boiling lye water to clean them.
I am thinking about burning the frames, but hate to burn the brood boxes and supers also.
Do any of you Beeks have any advice as to how to clean this mess.
What about a clorox bath?
I have kept bees for 38 years and I have never seen anything like this.
Any advice will be appreciated.


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## Gene Weitzel (Dec 6, 2005)

Drugstore said:


> This has been a good year and a bad year for me.
> I have made lots of honey, but I have lost 8 double deep hives to SHB. Some had two or three meduim supers on them.
> These hives are still heavy with honey.
> These things have invaded some of my strongest hives.
> ...


A pressure washer does a pretty good job on the boxes and supers. I have never burned the frames, just removed any wax that was unusable. Then I stack the frames (shb larvae and all) on a large fire ant mound and leave them for a few days, once the ants are done with them they usually can be re-used "as is" (the bees can handle the rest of the cleanup on them). The only disadvantage is that if my dogs are not vigilant enough, the varmints (mostly raccoons) will get into them and tear up any good comb that was left. I have been thinking about putting together a wire cage that I could set over them to keep the varmints out.


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## Drugstore (Dec 6, 2005)

*Thanks for the reply*

Gene,
Thanks for the reply.
I sent this out wrong. It should have been a new post.
The pressure cleaner sounds like a good Idea.
I will try it. I hope that it will take the yellow stain from from the boxes.
It seems to penetrate the wood. 
I guess the yellow stain comes from the pollen. 
I have lots of fire ants and I am sure they can take care of the beetles and shb lava, but the frames have a sour smell about them. How do you get rid of that?
The odor might be an attractant for more beetles.
I eat my own honey and to tell you the truth, I do not want to eat honey from those frames. They are nasty.
It is un-believeable what SHB can do to a clean hive of bees. 
What kind of shb prevention do you use?


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## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

I need fire ants...


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## Gene Weitzel (Dec 6, 2005)

Drugstore said:


> Gene,
> Thanks for the reply.
> I sent this out wrong. It should have been a new post.
> The pressure cleaner sounds like a good Idea.
> ...


You would be amazed at how much the fire ants are able to clean up the frames and then how much further the bees clean them up when you re-use them. However, if you are still not convinced and you are not concerned about saving any of the comb, after the ant treatment, scrape all the comb off of them and lay them out in a sunny spot for a week or so (you may want to flip them over midweek). The sunshine will bleach most of the leftover "yuck" out of them, the disadvantage of this is some of the frames may warp out of shape and be unusable anyway.

As I mentioned before, I currently don't use any prevention (as in chemicals or traps), I just keep the "real estate" that the bees have to protect from the beetles as low as possible. Unless the hive is really strong, I remove honey supers as they are filled so the bees only need to guard the comb that they are actively filling. You have to be quite vigil in rectifying queenless hives quickly by re-queening or combining. When a hive swarms, you have to be sure to reduce their real estate appropriately. Even with all this, some hives will just decide the beetles have gotten to be too much trouble and abscond. If you are lucky and you notice this right away, you can usually save the honey and comb by freezing it and then distributing it to other hives. I have lost one or two hives to absconding each year for the last 2 years (interestingly it has been more often than not the single strain bees like russians or carnis that I have purchased that abscond due to the beetles rather than the ferals).


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