The Return of the Small Hive Beetle and the Continued Saga of Proteus Bee

The small hive beetles are out in force. I got new plastic sandwich containers and used my soldering iron this morning to make 3/16" holes in the four sides of the box. I baited them with Sonny-Mel lure and put FGMO in the bottom. I put the traps in Proteus A, Mellona and Bermuda. At the same time I smashed 5 or 6 beetles in each hive and saw many more
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I don't know how to think about Proteus Bee. Last week it looked as if they didn't have a queen but there were numerous opened queen cups in the hive as well as a ripped out the side queen cell. But most of the frames are drawn but empty and there are only about three frames with bees on them. I put the above frame into Proteus Bee from Bermuda. It has lots of capped brood and also has eggs and tiny brood around the edges.

There were two emerging bees on this frame. I found it amusing to think that they thought they were arriving in one hive and in fact will find themselves in another.

I looked all through Proteus Bee and just as I was thinking I should combine it with Proteus A and make them one hive again, I saw a cell with about 3 day old larva in it and couldn't. I'll wait another week to make a decision. It is now late in the season for them to build up enough to make it through the winter. Hmmmm, we'll have to see next week.