Small Hive Beetles

I can’t say enough bad things about small hive beetles (SHB) because they’re the pests that wiped out my two hives. The loss comes down to good housekeeping. I failed miserably.

I believe one of my hives absconded because of the larvae were eating the honey stores and virtually taking over the hives. Who knows what happened to the other one; it was a new nuc that I had recently purchased. They died out or left.

I’ve never seen so many larvae. This was an expensive lesson — in many, many ways.

As for as cleaning the frames, I followed a fellow beek’s advice, Mark Smith of Flatwoods Bee Farm, I put the frames in with my chickens, sat back and watched the show. The chickens pecked everyone of those little larvae out of the frames.

First I put the frames on large, flat cardboard boxes, after being in the sun for several hours, the remaining larvae hid from the sun by crawling down beneath the frame. They were on the cardboard — easy pickings for chickens. I turned the frames over two or three times then let the chickens clean them up.

The sites below are the ones I turned to when I needed to know how to kill these bugs and clean up my hives.

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/the-small-hive-beetle-a-pest-of-honey-bee-colonies

Click to access FSA-7075.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_hive_beetle

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One thought on “Small Hive Beetles

  1. reidward

    Just make sure that you keep the bees space to only that which is neccessary. hive beetles can take over really fast, but I haven’t had a hive yet that has been infested with hive beetles when the have just the right amount of space. Check me out at Ward Bros. Honey Co. Great blog by the way!

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