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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: "birdcr AT concentric.net" <birdcr AT concentric.net>
  • To: NaturalBeesinNC AT yahoogroups.com, ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ocba] Beetles and Busy Bee's beetle IPM board
  • Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2012 11:55:25 -0500 (CDT)

Folks,

Many times we buy things hoping they will do exactly what we want
them to do. In the case of Busy Bee's "house" beetle trap IMP
bottom board it is a complete and utter failure, at least the 2 I
bought and 1 Scott bought.

These fail to keep the bees out. Not keeping the bees out you end
up with a plastic tray full of dead bees, food for beetles. Today
I learned more on that when I replaced the bottom board with a
greenbeehives.com beetle trap IPM board I had not been using.

So the entire top of the bottom board was swarming with beetles.
I turned it over and where the plastic rests under the wood frame
I found over 50 beetles huddling in three places right next to an
endless food source, dead bees in the plastic tray.

A few weeks ago I modified one of these beetle IPM boards by
adding a piece of wood so that when the plastic tray slides into
the front it becomes tightly sandwiched between the wood top and
bottom. This keeps the bees out in the front at least in theory as
I have not tried it on a hive yet. The back of the tray also lets
in bees, I found a shim or scrap of wood can force it tight, at
Scott's we used a piece of mulch.

So my inspection today of one hive bustling with bees I killed
over 200 adult small hive beetles, 125 of those were on frames and
the rest on the useless beetle trap bottom board made by Busy
Bee.

I did not see any beetle or moth larva, this made me at least feel
good. I did not look at 10-14 frames in this 10 frame hive with 2
deeps and 2 supers. Saw an excellent capped brood pattern but did
not find and younger (week old) bee grubs, eggs or the queen. The
bees were not happy with my changing up all the boxes. They were
capping 2 super frames with honey, filling many with nectar and
had lots of pollen.

So as I was closing up I did a powdered sugar shack on all 4 boxes
of bees. I'd heard that this makes the bees chase the beetles more
as well as dropping varroa mites. I added cooking oil to the new
Greenbeehives.com trap and checked it 45 mins later, found at
least 100 more dead beetles! So I think this is a very quick and
effective way of dropping beetle loads also. 300 dead beetles in
one hive in one day, hopefully my bee yard is greatly reduced of
beetles now.

So if you have beetle problems and are currently using this beetle
trap IPM bottom board, I'd highly recommend returning it,
repairing it or replacing it. Call me at 919 698 6099 if you'd
like more details on my fix for these boards.

The attached photos show the black death tray of the Busy Bee
beetle tray and the greenbeehives.com full of dead beetles in oil
45 mins after a powdered sugar treatment. I'll be doing a post on
my blog on the repairs to this trap soon.

Regards,
Randy Emmitt

Rougemont, NC
www.rlephoto.blogspot.com

Attachment: 2587_bee_deathtrap_ds.jpg
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Attachment: 2592_geenbeehives_trap_ds.jpg
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  • [ocba] Beetles and Busy Bee's beetle IPM board, birdcr AT concentric.net, 09/02/2012

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