A Strange Find in SHB Trap

Today I went to check on Sebastian's hives.  We had put a new SHB trap on one of those hives on April 21.  I wanted to see if the trap were working and I wanted to see if either hive needed a new box.

 We are in the middle of the Atlanta nectar flow but the weather has beaten the tulip poplar blossoms off of the trees and hasn't really been conducive to nectar collection - cold nights, drippy days.


















I pulled out the oil trap in the new SHB trap first and this is what I saw:

In case you are confused, those are NOT small hive beetles - those are earwigs drowned in oil.  I didn't see a single small hive beetle either in the hive or in the trap!

The hive was doing fine but did not need a new box.

The second hive - the survivor there from last year - was doing great.  There was lots of brood.  As is true in hives with slatted racks, the queen had laid the frames from end to end.   What I mean by that is that she had brood from the end bar on one end to the end bar on the other end!

Not only that, the frame below with solid brood on both sides was the last frame in the box, right by the side of the box.  

The frame on the far side of the box was solid honey.  I moved it out and replaced it with a foundationless frame. I then moved that honey filled frame into the middle of a new box fitted with foundationless frames.  We'll see if they fill it up.

I then went to Stonehurst to see how the hive there was doing.  Here's what the top box looked like:

I moved one of these up into an empty box and added a box to this hive.  I also met the very nice new innkeepers, Paul and Lorrie.  Caroline and Gary have retired so I'll get to know this new couple as I work the bees over there.  

I also made a quick stop at Morningside to add a box to that fantastic hive.  Here's how it looks now:

Trying Out a New Small Hive Beetle Trap

Jeff and I decided to try out a "new" small hive beetle trap.  I put the "new" in quotes because I think I have owned the kit for this trap for three years, but never have used it.  It is from David Miller in Jackson, Tennessee and I bought it at the Young Harris bee institute about three years ago (maybe four???) 

Jeff put it together and we decided to test it on one of Sebastian's hives, so we installed it on Sunday.  We'll follow up and let you know if/how it is effective. 

Below Jeff is deciding which extension to use - it came with an extension to make it useful on an eight frame hive which is what we are running at Sebastian's house (and everywhere).

Here Jeff is adding the section which is screwed onto the trap.  The trap goes on the front entry of the hive.  It provides an entrance for the bees with a screened floor so that the small hive beetles fall through the screen as they enter the hive.

Below you can see the trap attached to the hive, waiting for the bees to notice their new entrance.

Jeff slid in the oil trap.  It comes in on the side, is comprised of three chambers, each filled with oil to drown the icky creatures.  

The bees were a bit confused about their entrance, but they were beginning to figure it out when we left the apiary.

The trap kit included some soft screen to put over the inner cover opening to keep SHBs from entering through the top.  We didn't have a staple gun with us so we didn't put that on the hive, but may at our next visit (I have to get over my fear of the staple gun which is IMMENSE).  However, advice in the kit says that the bees may propolize the soft screen.......hmmm, now there's a rationalization for not getting out the staple gun!

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.

Good News Nuc

There's good news and there's good news! The little nuc started on Monday from Julia's two frames of brood and my two of honey and one of empty cells (poverty stricken resources in the beeyard) has claimed their space. They should have had a frame of pollen, but I didn't have one to put in there.  They are working hard to move the pine needles that I put at their door to help them remember where they live.



And when I opened the nuc, they had released the queen and cleaned out the two dead workers' bodies. The food I left them was all used up. I didn't go into the box. If the queen is getting started, more power to her and I'll leave her in peace for a bit.



So I added new syrup to the Boardman's and this photo looks like I left the queen cage in there - oops, I think I did. Well, I'll get it on the next inspection.



Generally the bees in the nuc looked happy, content and were going about their bee-business.



In the hive I thought was queenless, I had reduced the hive to three boxes on Monday. I put in a baggie feeder and two beetle traps. One was an AJs and the other was the Sonny-Mel beetle trap I made a couple of years ago.

The Sonny-Mel trap is made from a Rubbermaid/Tupperware type sandwich container, with 3/8" holes opened in the sides with a soldering iron. You put lure in an upturned bottle cap and put it in the sandwich box. Then you pour in mineral oil, put the top on the sandwich container, now beetle trap, and place it on the top bars. The beetles are attracted to the lure and die in the oil.

The disadvantages of the S-M trap is that you have to surround it with a shim or an empty hive box and that it's a little bit of a pain to make. The advantages of it are that it sits on the top bars so it is where the beetles are usually found in the hive; it doesn't change the ventilation of the hive like a tray under the SBB does; it's a cheap solution that works; it's easy to fill (unlike any other SHB trap; it's reusable, and it's not awkward to put it onto the hive (like most SHB traps).  And after all, it's quite gratifying to see the dead beetles;

This is a three day beetle kill and there are the most beetles under the glare on the right side.  That stuff in the bottle cap is fermented banana peel with cider vinegar and sugar. I refreshed the lure, but didn't empty the dead beetles.

The only curious/bad news of the day is that the bees in the not-really-queenless hive did not touch the full baggie of sugar syrup I put in there on Monday.....There are lots of bees, a queen, and some honey that has been invaded by the hive beetle.  Seems like they would have dived into the sugar syrup.  I don't know what is wrong with this hive.

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.

Small Hive Beetle Podcast and Article

Last night I spent a fun couple of hours listening and participating in a podcast featuring Jerry Freeman's small hive beetle trap. I've used it on my hives and have been impressed. As I said on the podcast, his trap captures a lot of beetles at once and in that way is very effective.

If you'd like to listen to the podcast in its entirety, here it is.

On the WildlifePro network, there is a scheduled once a month beekeeping podcast. I'll go back - it was fun and informative. People could call in and talk or join in "chat" mode and submit questions for Jerry (and occasionally ---- me!!) that way.

I had thought a lot about all the ways I've tried to combat the small hive beetle and decided to try writing an Ehow article to separate my thoughts on each of the traps I've used. You can read it here.

Such a pest the SHB is. I delight every time I kill one and my usual response to ending the life of any creature is not delight!

I'll be on a Podcast About SHB on Thursday

I'm thrilled that I've been invited by "Robo" on Beemaster to be a part of a podcast he will be presenting on Thursday, September 10 at 8 PM Eastern time.

The focus of the podcast is on the small hive beetle and how the various traps work. Jerry Freeman, developer of the Freeman Beetle Trap, will be a guest to talk about his trap and I'm supposed to talk about all the many different traps I've used and the advantages/disadvantages of each.

• What: WpN Beekeeping Podcast - Small Hive Beetle Control
• When: Thursday, September 10, 8PM EST
• Where: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/16456
  

If you'd like to join the conversation or just listen, click HERE to find out how to call in while we are talking.

This should be fun.

AJ's Beetle Eater and the Saga of the SHB

The AJ's beetle eaters have been in my home hives for a week, so I thought I should check them out. I was amazed to find dead beetles but not dead bees. The beetle eater is smaller than most traps so it doesn't get as many. My Bermuda was full of small hive beetles under the top cover - I didn't see any deeper in the hive. So the beetles killed by these two traps in this hive were only a small percentage of the total.

However, the Freeman trap (the oil filled tray under the SBB) and the Sonny-Mel trap (that I built from a sandwich box) both had their share of bees that died, drowned in the oil. So to the AJ trap's success, I saw no dead bees in any of the four trays I inspected today.



Here is the set of dead bodies poured out of just one trap in the Bermuda hive. It has my worst infestation. There are very few SHBs in Mellona and I only saw 2 in Aristaeus2.


I was so happy that I refilled the traps and put them back in the hive.


Advantages of AJ's Beetle Eater, so far:
1. No dead bees
2. Lots of dead SHBs
3. Fits easily between frames

Disadvantages of AJ's BE

1. It's hard not to get oil everywhere while filling the trap
2. I end up with lots of oil on my gloves which either means I change gloves after filling the traps, don't wear gloves while filling them, or figure out a spill free way to do the delicate job
3. It's hard, if the bees have propolized the trap to the frame, to lift it out from between the frames. On 50% of the removals, the zipper top popped off and I dripped oil on the bees.
4. The small capacity means that it should be emptied frequently and means that it can't possibly get as many SHBs as one might wish

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!

Blue Heron Inspection June 28

On Sunday we held a Blue Heron inspection of our three hives there. There were several goals for the inspection.

1. Julia wanted to taste the honey from her hive, so we planned to take a couple of frames off of it. This gave us an opportunity to show how to remove a frame from the hives without using chemicals or anything very violent - like a blower - to get the bees off of the frame.

2. We wanted to use hive #2 to look into the hive to see the development of the hive. This meant we planned to look for eggs, larvae, the queen, the state of the hive.

3. Hive #3 looks from the outside like it is not thriving and we wanted to understand why. In addition, Jerry Freeman sent me a new small hive beetle trap. Since this is a weak looking hive, it is subject to being damaged by the small hive beetle. I planned to take this hive apart and replace the current screened bottom board with the Freeman beetle trap.

It was about 100 degrees in the field at Blue Heron and we all sweated our way through the inspection.

I did not light the smoker for the first hive because we were taking off honey frames. The smoker sends a smoke smell into the hive which the bees can clean up over time, but if you are taking off honey frames, they will have a smoke smell if you use the smoker, so I never use a smoker when I am robbing the hive.

After removing the frames of honey from Julia's hive, I then lit the smoker, puffed at the door of the second hive, set the smoker down, and completely forgot about it. I never used it again. When I opened the third hive, one of the guests reminded me that I hadn't used it.

In spite of using no smoke, we had a very peaceful inspection of three hives. I explained to everyone that I rarely use smoke and the bees do just fine. As long as you move slowly and take some care with what you do, why should you need to smoke them?

With these goals in mind, please enjoy the slide show with pictures thanks to Julia. Click on the slideshow to see the pictures full sized and with captions.



So did we meet the goals of the inspection?

1. We removed two frames of honey for Julia

2. We saw eggs and tiny larvae in the second hive and saw great brood patterns, confirming the thriving nature of that hive

3. We determined that hive #3 is probably on its third queen and she has barely started laying. We did see very young (tiny C-shaped larvae) proving the existence of a functioning queen. She probably broke out of the queen cell, went on her mating flight, and has just gotten started. However, we'll keep an eye on this hive for the possible need for queen resources or extra frames of bees before the end of July.

4. We installed the SBB for the Freeman trap but didn't put the tray in or arm it with oil. We only saw one hive beetle and it's too hot to deprive the bees of the ventilation from the SBB.

Note to self: Buy ventilated inner covers for all of my hives. Julia's hive looked so cool and comfy.

This inspection is the last one Julia and I will be doing at Blue Heron for the Metro club this year. We've had a great time and I hope you've enjoyed our slide shows.

Major (but easily fixed) problem with the Freeman SHB

A few days ago, I removed the Freeman trap on my Bermuda hive to allow the bees to have more ventilation. I'm not seeing any SHBs in any of my hives right now so using the trap didn't seem necessary for the moment.

To my horror, I pulled the trap out and there were hundreds of dead bees in the trap. I was so upset that I pulled the trap out and dumped the contents in a cookie sheet before I remembered to take a picture.

The picture below shows about 1/3 of the bees that were dead. My hands were shaky - they are all the time but the camera wasn't adjusting for it for some reason, although it has that capability. Anyway you can at least see the bodies.


This morning I could see many bees exiting the hive from the back. Bermuda is a huge hive - seven boxes - so I didn't want bees in my face and just held the camera down and took a picture without looking myself. You can see in the picture that the screen part of the screened bottom board is just hanging down about 1/2 inch - allowing the bees easy exit from the hive.

They were even using the back entrance they created to removed a rubber band from a frame. However, I guess that when the trap was in place, bees who entered or left that way also often fell into the vat of oil below the screen and they drowned.



I knew even with the honey flow in full force, I would have to take the hive apart and address this problem today.

I opened up the hive and took off all the boxes and stacked them. When I got to the trap, I took it off of the hive and turned it over.

As you can see the screen isn't attached to the frame. That was true all the way across the frame. The screen wire in the front entry was stapled with a staple gun to the wood beneath so this problem does not occur in the front. I got out my trusty staple gun and attached the screen to the wood frame, turned it over and began to restack the hive boxes.

I do hope I didn't injure the queen or kill too many bees in the process. The hive is boiling over with bees and honey.

The beetle trap is very effective on beetles although it was hard to see the SHB bodies for looking at the dead bee bodies. I don't see SHB in this hive and in between the dead bees were lots of dead SHBs.

I do think this is a major problem in the use of this trap and caught me by surprise. Although the trap works for the SHB, it should also be bee-friendly.

Jerry should not send out the traps without both screened edges being affixed to the wood. Perhaps in his eagerness to send me mine as a tester, he neglected this one thing and other traps he has sent out have both edges stapled.

As I did on all my hives today, I did take the opportunity to give a powdered sugar shake to the brood boxes for this hive.

Hive Check Easter Sunday

The tulip poplar flow began in Atlanta last week, so I am anxious that my hives take advantage of this, our best honey flow. I checked the boxes yesterday afternoon to see if any new boxes were needed.

On Saturday I had put a new box on Aristaeus2 (the swarm hive from last year) so I didn't expect it to need anything. I did peek in, but the bees were not happy to see me since I had disturbed them only the day before!

My daughter is getting married and I won't be paying attention to the bees next weekend, so before I get totally distracted by the wedding, I'll put a new box on both Bermuda and Mellona. Each of those hives is very active.

In Bermuda, with four boxes on the hive, the queen was avidly laying in the third box. The fourth box given to them to invite honey production still has three undrawn frames. I attributed the lack of wax work to the weather in the earlier part of last week when we had two nights in the 20s/30s - probably slowed them down a lot. So given warmer weather is on the way, I'll put a new box on Bermuda before I leave for the wedding.

Mellona also has a few undrawn frames in the top box and a very actively laying queen. I saw eggs everywhere. I'll, for the same reasons as Bermuda, give her a new box on Tuesday or Wednesday before I leave for the wedding.

When I lifted one of the honey frames out of Mellona, I unintentionally ripped wax off of the tops of a 1 1/2 inch vertical strip of honey stored. The bees anxiously recollected the honey from the tops of the frames. In the picture below they are congregating around a drip of honey.



In Aristaeus2 they were drawing wax in the new box I had given them. I'm sorry for the unfocused picture. I think the camera thought I wanted it to focus on the deck rather than the honeycomb! I'll try to pay better attention to the focus next time because I loved seeing the bees in action.



In Blue Heron news, I added a box to both hives on Friday morning and added a box to Julia's hive. Her hive still had undrawn frames and seemed lackluster by comparison to the other two. There have been four swarms seen or captured in the vicinity of the Blue Heron hives and I wonder if her hive has swarmed.

While I was there on Saturday, (and I didn't have my camera #$&#$&) Kevin, the overseer of the garden, was moving a swarm that he collected on Friday night just before the tornadic rains came down. He had had it in a temporary box arrangement and was moving it to a real hive box.

The swarm was hived in a cluster around the queen in the hive box but a handful about the size of a baseball remained on the tree where they had been found. He, his brother Peter, and I looked carefully through the "baseball" and didn't see a queen. We surmised that the bees were still drawn to the queen pheromone that remained where she had been on the branch.

Our decision was to cut the branch and move it bees and all to sit in front of the hive to see if the bees would move to the stronger smell of the queen from within the hive. I wish I had pictures.

Lesson learned: Always have the camera in the car (and an extra hive tool) - you never know!

SHB note: Still not a sign of small hive beetles in the hive with the Freeman trap on it. To be fair, I didn't see a single small hive beetle in any hive yesterday.

Freeman Beetle Trap

Today I opened up my hive named Bermuda. This is the hive with the Freeman beetle trap on it. I fully expected to find SHBs under the inner cover as I usually do. I did not see a single beetle in this hive today. Instead I found many dead beetles in the oil tray, along with a lot of other hive debris. Hooray!



A closer view of the oil and debris in the tray:

Trying Out the New SHB Trap

Today I had time to go to Costco to get oil for my Freeman SHB trap. I put the oil in the trap. The tray slides out easily from the back of the bottom board. It was covered in hive debris since it has been on the hive for a week. I dumped the debris and tapped the edge of the tray against the deck rail, but as you can see, some debris is still in the tray.

I filled the tray - the instructions say to fill it half full. Since it slants down due to gravity, I actually had to fill it almost to the top on the edge fartherest from the hive in order to have enough oil in the tray. Sliding it filled with oil back into the hive was difficult. I wished that I had something the level of the opening to rest it on while I filled it. The backward slant made pushing the filled tray into the hive sort of awkward.



Once it was pushed in, I also followed the instruction and pulled it back toward me about 1/8 of an inch to keep it from taking on water on rainy days.


To fill the tray took this much of a five quart bottle of oil, the cheapest they had at Costco. The oil cost $6.99 so I'm guessing it will cost about $3.50 to fill a tray each time you do it. Jerry suggested getting throw-away oil from fast food places, and I am sure there are cheaper ways than Costco, but that is easiest for me, so I wanted to try it following what I would ordinarily do.



Note: I just got this email from Jerry Freeman of the Freeman SHB trap:

Linda,

From your picture, the tray is pulled too far out the back. In the proper position, it will be 1/4" inside the back and 1/8" from the landing board at the front. This sounds confusing so I'll try to get a picture of this on my web site.

Thanks,

Jerry

It's raining in Atlanta now, but I'll go push the trap further in as soon as I can!

I won't check this hive again until next weekend - I'll post pictures to see if there are dead Small Hive Beetles. Jerry is sure there will be.

Splits and a New Small Hive Beetle Trap

My hive, Persephone, has had a hard time of it. When I saw the queen earlier before our two cold snaps and snow in the last three weeks, I should have moved the hive to a nuc. I didn't and today when I opened the hive, there were few bees, no queen, no brood, no larvae. The hive looked done in. There were solid frames of honey, though, and bees still defending the hive against intruders.

I didn't do anything to the hive today, but shut it up and decided that it probably was a goner. I do see defenders on the landing working hard to keep intruders out, so I'm not totally sure the hive is done.

However, I'd like four hives and now with three exploding-with-bees hives, I decided to make a walk-away split. Michael Bush describes a walk-away split this way:

"A walk away split. You take a frame of eggs, two frames of emerging brood and two frames of pollen and honey and put them in a 5 frame nuc, shake in some extra nurse bees (making sure you don't get the queen), put the lid on and walk away. Come back in four weeks and see if the queen is laying."

So I took two frames of brood and lots of eggs from Mellona and one frame of brood and lots of eggs from Aristaeus2. I took two frames of honey and pollen from Bermuda. I put these five frames in this nuc.

Now the bees in the nuc have the resources to make their own queen. Hopefully they'll take the cells with eggs in them and make several of them into queen cells. The bees determine what eggs will be workers and what eggs will be queens. Without a queen, they make one and she's in business in 33 days.

Borrowing from Michael Bush, here is what he labels "Beekeeping Math:"

The egg for the queen hatches in 3 1/2 days
The queen cell is capped in 8+1 day
She emerges in 16+1 day
She is laying in 28 + 5 days



I hope I put enough bees in the nuc - I was paranoid about accidentally getting the queen from the hive from which I was taking the frames. Although the picture doesn't show it, I did reduce the entry before I ended my beekeeping chores today.

Also another beekeeper, Jerry Freeman, who is apparently also an inventor, sent me his small hive beetle trap which I installed today on Bermuda. Bermuda is my strongest hive and is full of small hive beetles.

This trap has a tray in the bottom that you put oil into and then the beetles fall in and die. It doubles as a screened bottom board as well. I didn't have any oil today, so the trap isn't yet functional, but I was taking the hive down to the bottom today, so it was a good time to change out the screened bottom board.



The picture below shows how the tray slides in and out of the bottom board. When I add the oil, we'll see how well it works. This is a great hive to test it because it has always had SHB - not ever in such quantity as to overwhelm or have much impact on the hive, but I'd still like to drown those little guys in oil!



When I went through Bermuda, I found nothing in the bottom box besides empty comb. The bees had moved up to the next boxes during the winter. I removed that bottom box. The rest of the hive included two full boxes of brood, pollen, larvae, eggs and a third box of mostly unused comb. The top box is all honey. I plan to checkerboard the top two boxes to help discourage swarming.

So what you see (from the bottom up) is the hive stand, the Freeman trap, the slatted rack, and four boxes. The box I removed is sitting in front of the hive until tomorrow so that the few bees at remained in it can return to the hive.