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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Phil DeGuzman <phil.deguzman AT gmail.com>
  • To: "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] Decommissioning Hives
  • Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 15:34:01 -0400

 So this year marked my first attempt at treating my hives for Varroa. I  chose ApiGuard based on many recommendations (and trying to keep my hives as natural as possible). Unfortunately I took some bad advice (more about that below) and my once thriving hives are now completely dead.

So my question is how to store my hive equipment until I decide to resume beekeeping. I have some wax moths that have taken up residence in some of my frames (luckily they are not yet eating into the wood). I have taken all the frames where I found evidence of moth larvae and put them in a sunny spot (removed them from the hive bodies). I heard that offsetting the hive bodies will prevent wax moths but not sure if that will eliminate them once they take up residence. My intent is to store the hive bodies and drawn comb in a storage shed.

So the bad advice that I will never follow again: I was told at the beekeeping store to put "shims" in the hive to allow the bees to access the apiguard more easily. This seemed logical, but in hindsight it was foolish. Deeper reading of the instructions and online information indicates that you want the hive more closed up to allow the Thymol to settle into the hive (so install the IPM board in beneath the screened bottom board, install entrance reducer, and place the apiguard on top of the brood chamber using an empty super to allow best access to the apiguard. In my case, I put the apiguard on the inner cover and added shims to allow the bees to access it. Things looked fine after two weeks when I set out the second part of the treatment. But I assume they got robbed out because the shims created a big top-level opening...both hives were completely empty of bees, brood and stores when I checked them after the second two-week treatment period...but there were about 5% of frames with wax moths.

So if you have any advice on storage of beehives I'm interested in how to eliminate wax moths and then store what is left of the drawn comb.

Thanks!
Phil

--
"There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all." ― Peter F. Drucker



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