Although I live in one of the not so arctic areas of the US, but THIS winter had a few extreme cold snaps, and I improvised a wind break for the beehives. I was mostly worried about the wind, as these are first year hives.
Beehive wind and rain protection. The hive setup
The winds were deeply chilling, and I got out my old sheets, couch covers, and bundled up to go and cover them before night came. It was vurrrry windy (30 MPH), and I took sheets of solid foam insulation to cover the sides on the bottoms because I have ventilated bottom boards.
Beehive number ONE (the Italians) with wind and rain protection
Then I covered the entire hive, including the front entrance clear to the ground floor with couch covers and sheets. My aim was not to completely seal the hive, but to break the wind.
Beehive number 3 with winter protection from wind and rain
When days come that it isn’t really badly cold, I just lift the front to expose the entrance so the bees can get out and do their “business”, whatever that might be.
NOTE: the things on the top of the hives are scavenged from an old hot tub cover, and are foam covered with Naugahide upolstery material. They are waterproof, and can be used for shade if needed, or rain and snow. I’ve had them for several years and they also come in handy to set things on top of when I’m tending hives any time of the year. You just don’t put your smoker up there.
Last year when we had our huge beetle infestation my husband, overwhelmed at the mess, said he was “tired of squishing beetles” and invented me a BEETLE SWEEPER! This year with my new bees, I have been using it every few weeks in my beehives, clear up to when the bees are left alone in the fall for the winter. It works really good.
Brand and power of sweeper
He took a small, low powered sweeper, and cut the end off of a transmission fluid funnel like this one:
Transmission fluid funnel used to make nozzle
He then inserted it into the tip of the hose and secured it with electrical tape wound really tightly.
Nozzle with cut off end taped inside of it
And this is the result:
Finished small hive beetle sweeper
I just lift the top lid of the bee hive and lay it down quickly so that the beetles that might be in the lid do not scatter or fly off. And you have to be VERY careful to avoid the bees because it will suck them up too. And you can’t release the bees without releasing the beetles, so they are gone. But you’ll get the hang of it after sucking up a few bees. You will learn to gauge just how close you can come without commiting a bad thing.
Me using the hive beetle sweeper on my own hives
I have found that if I do this on a regular basis, after a while lifting the lid and examining shows only a few beetles. I think it’s having a good effect on the population. Keep in mind, I also have bottom oil traps too.
Honey bees can gather the nectar in more than 300 flower types in the United States.
A honey bee must tap 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey.
The average worker honey bee makes 1 1/2 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
A honey bee visits between 50-100 flowers during one collection trip.
To make one pound of honey, honey bees must gather 10 pounds of nectar.
Honey has a tendency to granulate due to its natural properties. Granulation does not affect the taste or purity of honey.
Granulated honey can be restored to liquid form by carefully placing the jar in a pan of very warm water. (not too hot, cause that can ruin the taste and the vitamins and enzymes)
Store your honey in a dry cupboard. Do not refrigerate honey. Cold temperatures hasten granulation.
Honey does not benefit from pasteurization because it is naturally low in bacteria and other microbes.
Honey contains no fat, no cholesterol, no gluten and no sulfates or sulfites.
Honey is primarily composed of carbohydrates.
Honey is a natural sugar and is easier to digest. Honey is 100% pure and natural. It is made entirely by honeybees from flower nectars.
For all inquiries regarding the use of honey in medical conditions such as diabetes, weight control, etc., please consult your physician.
Honey was found in the tomb of King Tut (fl. c.1350 , king of ancient Egypt, of the XVIII dynasty) and was still edible since honey never spoils.
Due to the high level of fructose, honey is 25% sweeter than table sugar.
Honey is created by honey bees who mix plant nectar, with their own bee enzymes and then evaporate excess water.
Honey has different flavors and colors, depending on the location and kinds of flowers the bees visit.
To the ancients, honey was a source of health, a sign of purity and a symbol of strength and virility.
Nectar can contain 80 percent water, which the bees fan with their wings to evaporate most of.
Honey is antiseptic, antibiotic, and acidic
Natural honey will form into granular sugars
Honey can be used as a preservative
Honey can be used as a sugar substitute
Honey can be used as a facial beauty mask
Honey is used by some people for allergies. But supposedly only honey from your local sources
NOTE – I understand from hearing from other sources that honey should not be fed to children under the age of 12 months. I’ll research this further.
I finally got the third hive installed yesterday, but not without a wierd problem. I had everything in place to put the last bee package into the last hive, and brushed the bees off of the queen cage. Normally, you pull out the cork in the candy end, and there is still the candy plugging the end of the queen cage. Then you insert this cage between a couple of frames and during the course of a few days the queen eats herself out and goes into the hive.
Problem is, I took the cork out, and there WAS no candy in it. The queen crawled out, and FLEW!! My-O-My was I upset. I partially covered the top of the hive in case she wasn’t in there and wanted to come back, and made a frantic phone call to the people I ordered the bees from. Worry, worry, worry.
My bee hive setup.
They told me that they had run out of regular queen cages, and this one was called a “California cage”. No candy in this one. The way I was supposed to put the queen in was to take the cork out and immediately put my thumb over the opening to prevent her from escaping. Then I was to push the cage into the front of the hive and let her crawl into the hive. Gee, I would have never figured that one out.
Anyways . . . he said that I should observe for three days, and listen to see if they were keeping a low hum instead of an upset hum. If not he’s see about getting me another queen. Okay, now I know what to do here. That did help, and I calmed down.
I almost forgot. In my upset over drippy feeders, feeders that drown my bees, hard bee candy they needed water to process, etc, etc… I came up with another idea. I took some large square cake pans and 1-2 in thick foam padding, and a razor blade and cut it to fit the inside of the pan, leaving 1/2 inch in all sides for a trough. Then I took and cut v shaped grooves almost through the foam. That left foam for them to stand on, and even if they got in the syrup they could easily pull themselves out of it. It seems to be working pretty good.
FOAM FEEDER – The foam looks like you could eat it too.
Then I set the pans on top of an inner cover that has a center hole, and the bees come up and get the syrup! I have to fill it every two days or so though. I’m going to fix some kind of float so that I can fill the pan deeper with syrup, and have the foam float to the top, and back down again as the bees consume the syrup.
First new hive, Italian bees, all stragglers vacating the box after dumping.
WHY I PICKED THE BEE BREEDS I DID
I said previously that all my bees didn’t make it because of the beetles, and that I’d be ordering bees to start fresh with this winter, and I did, but in a totally unexpected way. THIS time I decided I was going to try some new kinds of bees instead of my normal Russians. I always loved Russians, but then I’d never had any other kind. And although I didn’t worry about Varroa Mites, they were not immune to beetles, and they were very, very SWARMY. Sometimes even though I did the early checks, giving more room, checkerboarding techniques, etc, they might even swarm several times per hive. Sometimes they would swarm late in the season. And when they got too many beetles they were out of there!
So I explored some of the others, researching and running all over the internet getting opinions. I thought hmmmm. . . CARNIOLANS. But couldn’t find anyone close to get pure forms of. Then I thought VSH resistant types. But ultimately, I ordered some Italians from Georgia Bee, because I was just plain curious.
Georgia Bees (Italians) on the front porch of their castle!
Then I found another breed that wasn’t even a breed. They were from Wolf Creek Apiary, and were called survivor bees, a combination of feral, Russian, Carniolan, Italian. In other words tough like a mutt dog! In addition, they were purported to never have been raised with pesticides, and also were raised on small cell foundation. They said they were gentle, productive, bug resistant, etc. I was really attracted to that. And here is the reason why:
I do not have an isolated bee yard, and in fact my Russians weren’t originally pure bred. And I have not requeened by ordering a queen yet, so they basically breed with whatever is running around out there anyway. I just end up with mutt bees in the end, because my queens breed wherever they want. I may do the requeening, but without killing any of the original queens, as for instance if I just do a split. But I figured I’d just get some tried and tested mutts from somewhere that at least knew the traits their bees had.
GEORGIA BEES
April 14th I when to the post office, got my bees, and went home to install the Italians from Georgia Bees. Golden in color, and very gentle. Not so much after they took posession of the hive, but that is normal for any bee I think. But definitely not stingy. NOTE: For some reason the queen didn’t have any “attendants” in her cage with her. Possibly an oversight, but she didn’t have any girlfriends inside with her to take care of her. Just all the strange bees in the whole cage outside HER cage.
From Wolf Creek. So gentle I installed without gloves or suit or smoke.
WOLF CREEK APIARY
April 20th we went to meet Ruth Seaborn and her husband of Wolf Creek Apiary from up around Nashville, and met her in the parking lot in Memphis. They were delivering a large batch of bees to some beekeepers around Arkansas, and she said I could save shipping if I just met her and she’d bring my one little package of their bees. We called it an outing, and took off for a day of getting bees!
They had brought many many cages of bees for a bee club also, and one woman came just to pick up some queens she had ordered. I asked a lot of questions, and Ruth is the greatest. You can tell they care a lot for the bees they raise. Her husband calls them “his girls”. (so do I) She also brought some of the essential oils I ordered which were Peppermint, and Lemongrass oils, which can make the bees attracted to the food, and I guess much else. I figured I could use them for anything, not just bees.
I was so impressed with how healthy the bees looked that I remembered that I wished I had ordered two boxes instead of one, and she said I could order another one right then and THERE. Very nice, I sure did so, because I didn’t want to wait until next year. Now that is handy. Normally by this time of year (April), nobody HAS any bees to order.
SPRING HIVE BEETLE OBSERVATION
Hey, I had my FREEMAN BEETLE TRAP, the oil pan one under the first hive I installed in April. We had, last year, sprayed nematodes, sterilized all equipment, and I was hoping that they all died from not having a hive to overwinter in. Well, I think they lived somewhere around that I missed, because I find it hard to believe that 15 beetles came with a box of bees. But my Freeman Beetle trap caught that many and I killed just two. One in the hive lid, and the other scampering on the deck by the bee hive. I BELIEVE THESE BEETLES HATCHED AND CAME OUT OF THE SOIL OF MY YARD, not the bees I ordered, but I can’t proove it. If that’s true, then the nematodes either didn’t kill them all last year, or they overwintered somewhere else. I couldn’t afford to nematode my whole yard.
THE FREEMAN BEETLE TRAP FROM LAST YEAR
I can say that this a really GREAT beetle catcher/killer. It differs from the regular under the hive oil pan trap, in that the screened bottom goes all the way to the edge, and there are no ledges for the beetles to hang out on. The bees can then just herd and push them off through the screen as they enter the trap. But I advise continuing to check the lid of the hive and crushing or vacuuming those so that they don’t reproduce.
I’ll keep you all posted on what happens with them.
Endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, the small hive beetle, Aethina tumida was first discovered in the United States in 1996 and has now spread to many U.S. states including, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Virginia and Hawaii. The small hive beetle has become established in the state of Texas as well. The movement of migratory beekeepers from Florida may have transported the beetle to other states. Recent findings also indicate transport of the beetles in packages.
Internationally, the Small Hive Beetle has spread to Australia being first identified at Richmond, NSW in 2002. Subsequently it has affected many areas of Queensland and New South Wales.[1] It is speculated that a combination of importing queens from other countries and beekeepers moving their hives has caused the spread.
In Canada, the Small hive beetle has been detected in Manitoba (2002 and 2006), Alberta (2006), Québec (2008, 2009), and Ontario (2010). In the Prairie Provinces, measures were taken to control the pest and Small hive beetle failed to establish a population. It is still to be determined whether Small hive beetle has been able to establish a resident population in Ontario or Québec.[2]
Waaaalllll . . . I’ve been out of contact for a bit. Still have my last hive but it’s got very few bees. I got my Freeman Beetle trap, and in these few months have changed it out several times, recycling the oil after straining out the bits. The hive collected hundreds of beetles that flew back to lay eggs.
Small hive beetles initially trapped by the Freeman trap
This is what it looked like once a week for several times. These were NOT beetles that were in the hive, but those that entered after I sanitized it and reduced its size.
Small hive beetles strained from oil for a head count
I now open the hive periodically and dust with powdered sugar to roust the bees into chasing beetles, which consequently drop off into the oil trying to get away from them.
And, after feeding the bees on the front of the hive, which instigated robbing from (I don’t know where they came from, since I only have one hive), I put a spacer on the top, and fed them from zip lock bags with holes in them. This, and reducing the front entrance down to two bees width, solved the robbing, and, I suspect being able to defend against more beetles!
BIG NOTE HERE, and the main reason I am reposting is that I found out, through feeding squeezed out wax remains, and from examining the oil dead beetles something very interesting. LOOK HERE
The SMALLER of the three dead beetles is a BABY
When I compared what was in the oil, I found that many of the beetles were smaller, lighter, and would be impossible to even see if you were looking for a regular sized hive beetle. The same goes for the larvae. The larvae vary in size just as much, and can hide in cracks you could stick a razor blade into. So y’all keep an eye out and bring your magnifier to the hives, because you wouldn’t even see these babies! I know I didn’t, and it made me regret that I left two of the original frames in the last hive.
ON A GOOD NOTE I think my remaining bees have made about three queen cells. But the remaining bees would only fill one honey super, period. I don’t think they will survive the winter if not fed religiously. I definitely am going to have to order a couple of packages of bees in a month or so for next years starting over . . . Just call my last hive an experiment, because that’s what it’s been.
ANOTHER NOTE They say that small hive beetle can’t survive a cold winter without the bees to keep them warm, as they live within the bee cluster. So if my last hive dies, maybe the beetles will die too?
Got my beetle trap. Unadvised and as I did the frames, I used a glue gun to track down any cracks in the construction to prevent the beetles from hiding from the bees. I only found the normal amount, just along the sides and bottom. Did not do this on the grooves for the sliding tray by the way, so that the tray will slide in and out as designed. It is hot, hot, hot, here in West Tennessee. My nematodes also arrived, and I am watering the ground beneath my hive patio before I put them on the ground. Hope they lived through the shipping in this hot weather. I looked at them under high magnification and can just make out masses of them in the gel packs. But I can’t tell if they are moving . . . They are very tiny and hairlike.
Leave a comment at the bottom of the page. I like that the mostest.
SMALL HIVE BEETLE EMERGENCY INFORMATION !!!!
This information needs to get out there to the bee community as soon as possible. I am posting this in the midst of doing my own control measures right now.
I am a hobbyist beekeeper, have been keeping hives since about 2008. I started with one hive and in four years they multiplied to six. I did have hive beetles here and there, but did the hive bottom and top traps which kept them (I thought) in control.
This year I had to go on vacation and before leaving I did the normal honey thing and put an extra empty super just below the uncapped filled one because I didn’t have time to do anything else before leaving town. I did this on all the hives, even the ones that were splits from the spring. I was worried about swarming and them running out of room to store honey. I assumed the uncapped would be capped when I got back in a week, and I could just take it off the hives.
Soo . . . I got back, checked the hives, and several of them had very little bees coming and going. One hive swarmed (JULY), and this alarmed me also. Several days later one of the strongest hives had HERDS of bees on the front hanging off of it. I thought maybe they might just be that way because in the heat, (we’ve had a drought and over 100 degree temps), they were just hot.
My husband said they were also going to swarm, so I got into my suit early in the morning and started opening hives. I found that every hive was overcome and slimed with beetles, larvae, and I only had one queened hive left out of five.
One hive had ten forlorned bees in it, some beetles, ants, cockroaches, and the beginning of moths.
The second had 50 or so bees in it, and lots of beetles.
The third was FULL of larvae, beetles, and a handfull of bees.
The fourth had no bees and was full of larvae and beetles
And the fifth and remaining hive had bees on the front, beetles and larvae inside, and was slimed just like the rest. However, it had a queen and the bees were pretty strong.
THE NASTY CLEAN UP (EQUIPMENT AND PROCESS)
I started with the most infested, and when I pulled out the beetle oil trap that was underneath, I swear there was a layer of beetle larvae two inches thick, which I poured into hot soapy water to kill them. I also knocked any stray beetles into this and put the lid on each time in between checking to see if anyone crawling out needed to be smashed. It was midmorning, and the temps were in the 100 plus degrees. Hot, hot, hot, work.
I also used a modified vacuum cleaner which my husband made up to suck up all the beetles that tried to get away. This works VERY well by the way. The nozzle was made about 1/2 inch in diameter with an adaptor. Shoo the bees away with your hand before aiming, not the nozzle (grin) The vacuum works GOOD.
RESCUING THE LAST HIVE
I then got a fresh hive body, fresh frames, and one fresh super with fresh frames in it, set it next to that hive of the hive that had a queen left and lots of bees. I brushed as many bees into this hive, trying not to brush beetles into it (an almost losing battle), and with a large and small empty totes ready with hot soapy water in them. I scraped the ruined comb and as much of the larvae and beetles into the smaller one, and then put the frames into the larger one and covered it with lids as I worked.
I cleaned out beneath the infested hive and then put it also into the tote when I got all the bees moved into the new one. The I moved the whole mess away from the area and placed the new clean hive with bees back in the original place.
PUTTING IT ALL BACK IN PLACE
I cleaned the old hive bottom beetle trap, replaced it with fresh oil. That night I researched like a mad person about what causes what again. I found a bunch of new information on the life cycle of these nasty beetles, and it gave me a start on how to go about what I needed to do to start over again.
GO TO THIS LINK PLEASE. I am telling you Mr. Freeman and his beetle trap website http://www.freemanbeetletrap.com/menu_page has one answer that make a bunch of sense, and that IS. Bees can herd beetles and contain them to a point they can’t get on the honey and lay eggs so much. His trap has no ledges for beetles to hide on or in, and this helps the bees to get at them, knocking them into the oil of the trap. I have a beetle trap, but it has ledges on it. I ordered one today for my remaining hive. He called me back and spoke with me extensively, and was really great in answering all my questions about his trap and any other beetle information.
He also says dusting with powdered sugar enrages the bees so that they chase beetles into the oil. Good point, and I did that also. And yes, they did get mad at me for it. (Dummies)
MY INFORMATION AND NEW DISCOVERIES
As we power washed the dirty frames and equipment, and attempted to kill the larvae and beetles, we discovered several things.
Bee hive frames getting ready for powerwash because of beetle contamination
THEY ARE DASTARDLY HARD TO KILL.
Some say use water and drown them. I use HOT SOAPY WATER and drown them (it shocks them). Some say use 50/50 bleach solution. Yep, it works, but not totally in that concentration. Some larvae still survived for some reason, so I used full strength on em. I earlier tried several spray cleaners, and chemicals from my kitchen and bathroom cabinet and they just annoyed them. The larvae I swear can SNORKLE!
MR FREEMAN IS MORE THAN RIGHT ABOUT CRACKS AND CREVICES THE BEETLES HIDE IN
THE GROOVE ALONG THE BOTTOM AND TOP OF THE FRAMES
As we cleaned the frames, we found larvae down inside the grooves of where the plastic foundation seated, both bottom and top. Some were not big mature larvae either, and would be easy to miss on first glance. There were bunches of them all along those grooves, and you might think you had a frame cleaned and then see them crawl out 2 minutes later. They use these cracks to breed and hide from the bees when they are chased.
Hive beetle garage
BOTH OPENING CRACKS WHERE THE FOUNDATION MEETS EITHER SIDE. The bees had frantically tried to propolis (seal) all such cracks, and it was heavy here.
NAIL HOLES, AND PARTS WHERE JOINTS MEET These are tiny, but each one has a place that a few beetles hide, and so do the larvae.
Yet another dirty corner where they reproduce
MY RECOMMENDATION (which may not be expedient for commercial beekeepers at all) Just examine ALL cracks there, in your hive body, and especially in the lid. I have eliminated ALL inner covers, because they are just places for the beetles to hide from the bees. But I am not an expert on this and it is only my personal decision born of paranoia.
I went to Walmart and got a large hot glue gun, long hot glue sticks (ten packages). We cleaned most of the nasties, propolis, extra wax, and bugs off the frames. Put a large piece of cardboard on the kitchen table and a spotlight. Then proceeded to hot glue every darned crack in the equipment and frames.
Set up to close cracks against hive beetles
This takes a lot of time, but when you are through, you are eliminating places for any varmint to hide. We filled all around the plastic frame foundation, both ends, top and bottom, nail holes, etc . . . In the case of those plastic frames, filled all the casting holes on each end.
Bee hive frame corner after closing cracks with hot glue
NOTE ABOUT PLASTIC FRAMES:
They don’t have cracks around the foundation part of the frame, but when I took them out of a beetle infested hive, each casting hole held not just several, but at least 15 beetles were hiding from the light. I killed them with a five in one tool, sharp end wallowing it back and forth until they were crushed. But those are the holes that take the most hot glue to fill and sometimes you got to go over it several times to find all of the missed spots.
My husband and I are still in the process of doing this, and if I had know this before I put the hive back together, I’d have not put the frames in unglued and fixed. Too late, they are building new comb on them right now and I am reluctant to disturb them, lest the queen get killed in the process.
He is now taking the foundation OUT of the frames to clean them, then I scrape them and rinse. The crack where it rests, top and bottom harbor larvae and beetles to the max. My husband is a gem of a man, and is doing the hardest work to clean up this mess.
PRESENT CONCLUSION
I’m telling you, I’m so mad at these bugs. They eat baby bees and eggs, and you end up with no queen in the hive. Which is why I now have only one queened hive out of five. I have extreme sympathy for the commercial beekeepers that did not see this coming. I thing someone needs to manufacture or invent some new equipment that has less crevices and cracks during this invasion. I am resolved that I will not give up beekeeping.
Last bee hive standing after 5 hives overcome by hive beetles
My last bee hive has no drawn foundation, but it has a queen, plenty of healthy bees, and all they have to do is fight off the beetles and store enough honey for winter. Poor things.
ADDITIONAL NOTES, PARASITIC NEMATODES
I have also ordered 10,000 predatory nematodes, which are hive beetle larvae predators that negate needing poison, to apply
beneath the ground around my hive area. I have been told they kill the larvae in a horrible way, which suits me to peeces.
Bee hive frames clean of hive beetle contamination
I am pressed for time and right now can’t post all the links, but search on small hive beetle, traps, solutions, information, etc. But I will tonite try to post this in as many places as possible. There are SO many bee websites, blogs, and places online.
Bee hive brood boxes and supers that had been used before hive beetle contamination
We are inventing things and brainstorming existing traps and additional ideas as I speak, so take heart. I think it’s the backyard beekeepers that have more time to do so. We aren’t all scientists, but combining all the information everyone has helps to get solutions. Good luck to all of you beekeepers out there and I’ll keep in touch if I or my hub invent something more that helps with the beetles.
UPDATE: I have ordered my Freeman Beetle Trap, done dusted the bees with powdered sugar, been feeding them, and they seem to be in pretty decent shape. Also ordered some nematodes, and am considering putting some of those CD case traps baited with roach bait under and around the ground way under the hive area. The CD cases have openings that are way too small for a bee to enter, and I’ve heard they work good too. (no poison IN the hive in other words)
UPDATE 2014: See my other posts on what I did later on.
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