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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: "birdcr AT concentric.net" <birdcr AT concentric.net>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org, NaturalBeesinNC AT yahoogroups.com
  • Subject: [ocba] cutting losses & beetle management
  • Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 20:00:52 -0500 (CDT)


Folks,
This morning I cut my losses on one of the five hives here. For
nearly two months they have tried to recover, a new queen that
failed was the last straw.

I checked it on Thursday only drone brood and what looked like
failed worker brood, lots of beetles I killed maybe 30-40. The
hive still had 4 frames solid of bees and 4 medium frames nearly
full of nectar. One deep frame was creepy with beetles going in
and out of the cells.

Today I gave it another deep inspection looking for change, more
nectar was the best I could report.

Having beetle problems in this hive I knew I needed to do
something, Busy Bee's beetle trap bottom board was full of dead
bees, it needs improvement I do not recommend it, more on it
later.

On Thursday I killed the beetles in my top bar hive one bar at a
time. I took out the back side bars first and one at a time I
knocked the beetles onto the bars and quickly smashed them. 22 of
the 24 bars later I had killed 78 beetles! The last two bars had
the queen and no beetles. This morning i gave them syrup and found
no beetles.

So this langstroth hive had a 10 frame deep and super. I laid the
cover upside down and took out frame by frame and flicked the
beetles onto the cover and smashed them. 20 frames later I had
killed 75 beetles you could not find any more beetles on any
frames.

So I'm ready to combine these queen-less girls to another hive
teaming with bees and with a shortage of drawn comb. Newspapered
them and combined. The combs showed no visible sign of slimming or
beetle chewing.

The took down hive the Busy Bee beetle trap bottom board had at
least 40-50 beetle larva of all sizes, gross believe me. I build a
fire and scrapped the oil and larva into the fire. The plastic
tray was completely full of mostly dead bees, dead beetles and
squirming larva. Recently I figured out you can take a wood shim
and slide it under the plastic tray at the door to close up the
opening that let bees in. I think there are other places bees can
get in and once the bees leave I'm giving it a good look. I found
that by installing a piece of wood 1 1/4 inch wide x 1 3/4 inch
tall and 14 3/4 inches long under the bottom board where the
plastic tray ends in the front seals the beetle trap from letting
in any bees.

Seems like too much work controlling beetles here. I'm considering
finding a close by location that is much sunnier for my 4 hives
here. I have 2 other hives at other locations that are much
sunnier but can not add more hives to these locations.

I know they don't make as much honey, but my top bar hive is so
much easier to manage and I usually can do an inspection a kill
only a few bees. The langs have so much lifting too, my back hurts
as I type.

Cheers,
Randy Emmitt
www.rlephoto.blogspot.com


  • [ocba] cutting losses & beetle management, birdcr AT concentric.net, 08/18/2012

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