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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Zac Morris <zac AT zacwolf.com>
  • To: Just Bee <marty AT justbeenc.com>
  • Cc: "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Small Hive Beetles
  • Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:45:32 -0400

I was afraid veg oil might go rancid when it started to heat up.  How often do you change it?  So you have any build-up issues using it?  The mineral oil has been really great.  Odorless and I find many drug stores have their store-brand on sale very often. :)

-Zac


On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 4:01 PM, Just Bee <marty AT justbeenc.com> wrote:
Glad the sit worked.

I love the oil trays thought I get mine from greenhives.com

I also use veggie oil instead. The smell is reported to confuse tracheal mites.

Great to hear you are SHB free heading into summer. 
Marty

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 27, 2013, at 3:01 PM, Zac Morris <zac AT zacwolf.com> wrote:

So I ended last season with a bit of a SHB problem.  The bees were mostly running them, and I couldn't find any larva/fermented honey.

So I opened them this Spring and the problem had gotten worse.  Still no discernible larva/fermented honey, but the numbers had gone way up.

I had purchased a new queen, to re-queen; but when I went to install her I found an open (very well formed) supercedure queen cell, but I couldn't find her.  The hive was down to 10 frames.  Blair came over and helped me find the queen, and advised me to split the hive down to two five frame nucs (to help clear the SHB).

Meanwhile I also purchased some of the 10 frame "oil tray" SHB hive bottoms from Bailey's.  Filled them with mineral oil, then after a week I moved the five frame nucs each back to a 10 frame deep.

When I did the move I noticed less than 10 SHB in each hive, so moving them down to the 5 frame helped the most, but after two weeks over the new bottoms I'm happy to report 10 frames full of honey/brood, and NO SHB!

Thanks!
-Zac

P.S. I also cleared my carpenter ant problem by cutting four-inch lengths of 1.5" PVC pipe, then put each down in a large canned chicken "tin", that I filled with mineral oil.  I then put my 12x16 cinder-block on four of those (which gave it a lot of stability), then put my hives on top of that.
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