Pests in the Hive - Ants and SHB

One of my hives at Stonehurst is the subject of a UGA study (along with a number of other beekeepers' hives).  The researcher came last week and emailed me that he thought the hives were so infested with SHB that they would not survive the winter.

I went over today with the only small hive beetle trap I could quickly find that didn't need an Imrie shim.  It was an AJ's trap.  I recently won two beetle traps like AJ's from Buster's Bees at a Tara Beekeepers meeting, but I couldn't find them today.

I opened the smallest hive and there were SHB EVERYWHERE on the top cover and in the corners.  I didn't see the SHB in the actual hive, which was comforting.  First I used a funny suction instrument that John Jones gave me.  I tried....I really did, but I only sucked one SHB all the way into the bottle.  The rest were in the suction tube and I had no idea how to manage them.  So I gave up on the method and installed the AJ's.

The good news is that the larger hive (fartherest away in the picture) felt heavy and when I opened it, there was not a single SHB.  In the smaller hive beside the smoker, were the tons of SHB - probably at least 150 on the top cover.

I left the hive with an oil filled AJs and we'll see if it catches any of them.  I also put a surround box with a rapid feeder filled with last year's honey on the small hive.


After that I went to Sebastian's to see if that hive needed food.  I opened it to find that ants had taken up residence:

I wish you would LOOK at all the ants.  Funny thing, they weren't in the rapid feeder and there was still some crystallized honey in it.  I had two jars of last year's honey so I refilled the rapid feeder.

I think I'll go back and sprinkle cinnamon all over the inner cover.

At the bee club meeting this week, the president asked who wasn't feeding their bees.  I didn't know whether to raise my hand or not.  I'm not feeding mine in the way she meant - with sugar syrup.  I am feeding the ones that are light on stores with last year's honey.

After the bee meeting in Massachusetts, I want to raise bees that aren't dependent on my interference and don't need sugar syrup to make it through.  I also was scanty in my harvest this year to make sure that the bees are OK for the winter.

And on the deck, another inspection

This not-exactly-queenless hive is not doing well, but I don't understand what is going on. They have a queen who isn't laying. They've had a small hive beetle problem but that appears much more under control. They aren't consuming the sugar syrup I've had on there for two weeks.

What's going on?

The Sonny-Mel trap is accumulating dead beetles by the day. I saw no beetles under the cover and only two on the under side of the inner cover. There are lots of dead ones in the trap below. I also had an AJ's on this hive and it was full. I refreshed the lure in the Sonny-Mel trap and put more oil in the AJs. I also added a second AJ's beetle trap.



I didn't go deep into this box. I pulled up two frames of honey from the bottom box, so they do have some honey. Maybe that's why they aren't laying or consuming.



The nuc hive is going great guns. They had emptied the two Boardman's feeders. I replenished their supplies.



In the hive there is laying going on and you can see at least five eggs in this picture and two tiny c-shaped larvae. The eggs are at 2 and 3 o'clock. The queen is eager.


I keep thinking about Don K in Lula who points proudly to his nuc hive with five boxes on it and says, "How much closer to a tree can you get?" His nuc hive is very productive. I am going to add another box to this nuc hive and have a tree hive on my deck myself!

Don's Queen is Doing Well in the Little Nuc

The little blue nuc hive with Don's queen is doing well.  I opened it today and saw five SHBs immediately.  I gave them the hive tool treatment.  I checked the AJ's traps (I have two on the hive) and both had lots of SHB in them.  I mixed apple cider and oil and put it in the traps and replaced them on the hive.

The hive was only occupying the bottom box.  However, the queen is laying nicely as you can see in the photos below.  There's lots of brood as well as new eggs.



I am hesitant to feed at this time of year - even inside the hive because of the possibility of robbing occurring in the dearth of nectar.  But I may feed these girls with a sandwich baggie feeder to help them build up a little.



I am pleased they are doing well and only looked at this one frame before closing up the hive.  I thought there would be no point in possibly causing injury to bees or the queen by inspecting further and I had seen what I needed to see.

Ditto: Queenless No More in Second Now-Nuc Hive

I saw bees in the queen cage last night but didn't check to see what the situation was because it was getting dark and rainy. This morning I found that there was definitely a released queen. A path had been eaten through the sugar, but there were bees in the queen cage.



Just to be on the safe side, I removed the queen cage and closed up the hive.  I took the cork out of the corked end of the queen cage while I held my finger over the open sugar end.  Then I slid the entire cage into the hive at the entry.

Maybe the bees were still drawn to traces of queen pheromone still in the cage - who knows?

Given the fate of the L hive, I didn't like seeing the small hive beetle in the queen cage and returned to the hive and installed AJs beetle traps for a safeguard or at least a start to IPM management of this SHB problem.

The way this bee season has gone, I only expect to get some honey from the Easter hive.  The other six hives will hopefully build up for the winter.

Valerie and Jeff's top bar, Topsy, backs up to a kudzu mess and they may get some of that purple kudzu honey - you never can tell with bees, as Winnie the Pooh said so wisely.  I may get some sourwood type honey from the Rabun county hive, but we'll see.  I'm going up this weekend and will optimistically take an extra box for those girls.

Bugs in the Beehive

I found a new way to fill the AJ's beetle eater trap. I have this gravy measuring cup that is designed to separate gravy and fat. Since it has a tiny pouring lip, I decided to try to fill the trap with it and it worked beautifully.



But before I put anything back into the hive, I noticed this cockroach in Mellona on the inside of the telescoping cover - gross.


Under Mellona's top cover there were tons of SHBs - see how many there are. I squashed a lot of them with my fingers (gloved!) and with my hive tool.



I dumped dead beetles out of the AJs beetle eaters all over my deck railing. Maybe the wren will eat them. There were so many that it looks like piles of seeds gathered on the deck rail.

Death to the Hive Beetle!

I opened my hives to find small hive beetles in every hive this weekend. I don't have any traps in place on the hives at home, but clearly now is the time. I smashed beetles with my hive tool and generally created beetle mayhem all over the inner cover.

Here are some dead hive beetles, smashed with the mighty hive tool!



In this second picture, you can see a bee in the lower right hand corner curling herself around the hive beetle in an effort to deter him.

I must have smashed about 30 of the horrible creatures and then left them for dead on the inner cover.

I have some AJ's beetle eaters and installed them on the three deck hives. The AJ's beetle eater is a black container of oil closed with a plastic screen to let the hive beetles in but keep the bees out. I will look later in the week and see if they are working. It hangs between the frames and looks like a large black zipper.


I was opening the hives to get honey to harvest. The pickings were slim - I took five frames of honey off of Bermuda because in the 10 frame super, that's all there were. It's a bad year for honey. There were tons of SHB that came into the house with the honey frames. I must have smashed at least 10 -12 on each frame of honey.

Horrors!