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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: "birdcr AT concentric.net" <birdcr AT concentric.net>
  • To: Thomas Grizzle <griz AT mindspring.com>, ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Worried (Needlessly?)
  • Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 13:10:36 -0500 (CDT)


Tom,

This is what I'd do, been fighting SHB here for a year. I've not
won the battle with the beetles but I manage to keep just ahead of
them.

First if you can move the hive to more sun or trim the trees
around the hive to get more sun. Beetles love the shade and
humidity.

What I'd do right now is open the hive and go over each frame one
by one. Set your hive cover upside where it is comfortable and
place one corner of your frames on the cover near the center of
the cover. So hold the frame with one hand and rotate the frame
and look for beetles, flick them onto the cover one at a time,
smash them before they fly off and repeat until each frame has no
beetles. Inspect the frames as you go for larva or clusters of
eggs. I'm betting you'll kill at least 75 beetles.

Next I'd order a beetle trap system. I recently found out about
beetlejail.com they have top of frame traps that you can bait and
reuse for $2 each. The also have a pretty cool beetle trap for the
bottom board, but pricey at $40. The $2 baitable traps(free
shipping) I sent a check off today for 10 of them, no credit card
system, augh... My friend in Caswell County highly recommended
it.

Other beetle trap IPM bottom board available can be found at
greenbeehives.com or freemanbeetletrap.com, I have two of the
greenbeehive traps and they work well and only $24. Busy Bee sells
beetle trap IPM boards, to be honest they suck, need modification.
I'm mentoring a new beekeeper and he cleaned his trap out last
Saturday, this morning 200-300 dead bees inside it. The problem is
the plastic tray sags front and back and the bees get inside. You
can shim the back to close it up, but the front needs removed from
the hive to add wood to it so the bees can't get inside. Next week
during inspection were are changing it out with one I modified.

Good luck,

Randy Emmitt
www.rlephoto.blogspot.com


On Sat Aug 25 10:11:48 CDT 2012, Thomas Grizzle
<griz AT mindspring.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I need some wisdom from the group. Today for the first time
> when I went
> into my hive to give them a quart of sugar water early in the
> morning (at
> about 7:00 AM), I did not like what I found. It is usually much
> later in
> the day. Some background..
>
> I purchased bees from Busy Bee and started one hive from scratch
> (all
> foundation comb) in April of this year. I started with one deep
> and used a
> screened top feeder super, feeding about 10-15 pounds of sugar
> initially.
> About a month into it, I realized that the screen allowed small
> hive beetle
> to have unlimited access to the sugar water without the bees
> being able
> chase them away and I had a couple dozen running around. So I
> abandoned
> this feeder and started using a front feeder at the entrance with
> an
> inverted quart jar. After doing this a month or so I received a
> book
> (Beekeeper's Handbook) which said it is not a good idea to feed
> this way due
> to robbing, so I changed again about a month ago. At this point
> I have a
> deep with the brood, a second deep on top of that they are
> supposed to be
> drawing out the comb in (but it is slow going), and then an inner
> cover.
> Then I put the quart feeder over the opening in the inner cover,
> place a
> third deep box around that (w/o frames), a second inner cover
> over top of
> this empty deep containing the feeder, and then the outer cover.
> I have
> been giving 1-2 quarts a week of about 1:1 (water:sugar).
>
> Today, when I opened the first inner cover, probably 25-30 small
> hive
> beetles ran for cover ("hands of doom" came down for about 10 of
> the little
> bastards). This prompted me to look deeper into the hive. The
> second deep
> was very light, no honey or fully drawn comb yet, but lots of
> efforts in
> this regard with partially drawn comb, and bees all over the 10
> frames. In
> the lowest deep, I did a random sampling of frames (looked at 4
> across the
> 10) and could not find much honey or pollen. There were capped
> brood and a
> good population of bees (it was early AM before they forage),
> hard to say
> how many but way more than I'd purchased originally by several
> fold. I
> looked and could not see eggs, but I have never been able to see
> them yet.
> Did not look for the queen.
>
> So what would Scooby doo? Do I feed like heck and since I have
> a good
> population, that should keep the SHB in check? I plan to give
> them a quart
> every day for the next couple of weeks. Should I up the
> concentration to a
> 1:2 (water:sugar), just to give them the added calories? Should
> I think
> about other nutritionals? Should I attack the SHB issue?
>
> I understand the responses to these questions may conflict,
> i.e., one person
> may think I should do x, y and z and another may think w, x and
> y, but that
> is ok, I'd like to hear the full breadth of opinions, so please
> don't be
> inhibited.
>
> Much appreciated. I'll email again in a month or so with the
> outcome. Tom Grizzle
>
>
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