Practical experience dealing with hive beetles

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Fusion_power

Field Bee
Joined
Jan 13, 2016
Messages
774
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82
Location
Hamilton, AL U.S.A.
Hive Type
Other
Number of Hives
24
I'm writing this to give some hands on experience working bees in an area that has hive beetles (Aethina Tumida). I am in Northwest Alabama, U.S.A. which is roughly at the same latitude as Morocco, Africa. My climate is temperate with winter lows around -10C and summer highs near 45C. Spring pollen is usually available the second week of February with a major flow starting about April 20th and lasting until June 1st. June is sporadic with minor flows that rarely produce a surplus. July and August give a nectar dearth but with some pollen available from maize and other plants. Goldenrod blooms in late September followed by aster. We don't normally get a surplus from the fall blooms, but there is usually enough to tide the bees over to next spring.

Hive beetles are a nuisance most times of the year but can become invasive from roughly July through October. They will be present in a hive hiding in cracks and crevices where the bees can't get to them. They have been present in this area for about 10 years but did not cause much trouble until this year. What changed? There has been an explosion of both wax moths and hive beetles in this area. I suspect a beekeeper let several colonies get weak and the hive beetles and wax moths then destroyed the colonies and moved on to other beekeeper's colonies. We also had a very mild winter which suggests warmer winters are favorable to beetle growth and survival.

What do I mean by an "explosion" of moths and beetles? I went out behind my house a few weeks ago about 10:00 pm at night. My house has a rear roof overhang that covers roughly a 3 X 5 meter area. That area was so covered in wax moths that the wall and roof were a pulsing mass of moths. I estimate their numbers in the tens of thousands. Other beekeepers in this area have reported similar experiences. Hive beetles began showing up in my hives by the hundreds about 6 weeks ago. It is impossible to open a hive without finding a few hundred beetles hiding under the edge of the cover or in the rebate where the frame ears rest. This is a major difference from previous years when beetles rarely were above 100 in a hive.

Beetles are opportunist invaders. They wait until the hive is disrupted, then lay several thousands of eggs that hatch into slime spreading larvae. The larvae preferentially feed on sealed brood and pollen in and near the brood nest. They don't feed directly on honey, but will slime the surface of sealed combs. When they are through, the combs are coated with slime and covered in beetle pheromones.

What works to keep beetles under control? Beetle traps have been designed to let the beetles crawl in where they are exposed to various killing materials such as vegetable oil, diatomaceous earth, or chemicals such as fipronil which is deadly to bees. A piece of cardboard cut so the holes are exposed can be used as a beetle trap. The beetles will crawl into the ribs of the cardboard which can then be removed and burned.

Some bees express resistance to hive beetles. The behavior I've seen is for a bee to grab a beetle and buzz wings to spin rapidly while trying to sting the beetle. This trait tends to be variably expressed in my bees suggesting that selection for enhanced resistance is feasible. Beetles tend to run out the entrance and fly away if aggressively pursued by bees.

The beekeeper can take several steps to prevent beetle damage. The first is to maintain queenright healthy colonies, especially from mid-year through November. A colony that goes queenless will be ok for about 3 to 4 weeks until all brood has hatched. They will at some point produce laying workers which will provide a brood area for the beetles to lay eggs. From the first beetle egg laying until total slime out takes about 2 weeks.

Another very helpful measure is to remove all honey promptly and get it extracted and combs placed into storage. Beetles are not attracted to stored combs that have not been used to produce brood. Bees should be maintained on the number of combs they can cover. My colonies currently average covering about 5 or 6 Dadant size frames. I cut them all down to this size using dividers and placing removed combs into protected storage. Leaving empty areas in the hive are not a problem so long as there is no nectar flow. A frame or two of foundation can be placed in the hive if the bees are likely to need it for storage.

Keep the hive floor clean. Check the hive regularly and if any debris has built up, remove it. Beetles will lay eggs in hive debris, then the beetle larvae will crawl up onto the combs to feed.

If you find a slimed out hive, do something about the combs promptly. I've been placing them into a strong plastic bag and freezing them for a week to kill the larvae and eggs. This interrupts reproduction which cuts down the number of beetles next year.

Be very careful if raising queens. A weak mating nuc or any "disrupted" hive is a candidate for beetle invasion. I've found that making up mating nucs with 3 full size frames of bees and brood is sufficient to prevent problems. This is much more bees and brood than most queen producers can spare! This is during my seasonal dearth so splitting a dozen colonies into 20 or 30 nucs does not cost my honey crop.
 
So true, but it would be more relevant when the time comes for us in the UK. Maybe turn it into a sticky. ;)

I have same opinion. Too horrible story to read. Now mere waiting that beetle to come is bad.

Fusion, do you use traps against wax moths?
Are they bigger moths or minor?

.
 
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Both greater and lesser wax moths are present in the U.S. but I have never had to take any special precautions for them. A strong colony of bees is more than adequate to keep them under control. Wax moth larvae are good fish bait so I sometimes keep a few of them in a can to catch bream. Otherwise, I ignore them.

Those combs I put in the freezer that are infested with beetle larvae can't be put back on a colony. They are loaded with beetle pheromones which trigger an immediate mass invasion and egg laying if they are given back to a colony. I put the combs out so the bees can clean up any honey and then spray them with Dipel (bacillus Thuringensis) to protect against wax moths and let them sit in the shade for a week, then spray them off with a gentle water spray. They can then be put back on a colony to be cleaned up and rehabilitated.

Beetles can live on many kinds of fruit so measures to prevent them getting into the hive do not cause them to starve.

The best beetle resistance I've seen so far was in a heavily africanized colony in Mexico. Think about this carefully before rejecting the idea of cross breeding. It may not be necessary. Bees that express the hygienic trait to a high degree also tend to have few problems with beetles.

The best potential for controlling hive beetles may be genetic modification. If a beetle were modified with a gene to cause all offspring to be male and if it were also given a "gene drive", the theory is that the beetles would wipe themselves out in a few years. I'm not advocating this approach, just pointing out that it is one possible option for future consideration.
 
Now that is a particularly stupid bit of 'advice' b!

Things like this illustrate a different attitude towards apiary hygiene between our countries.

I once saw the SHB while on a course at Sand Hutton with a load of bee inspectors. It was quite a privilege to be allowed into the facility where they were kept.
We were told that any small cracks or joints between hive parts were where they would prefer to lay their eggs.
 
I should have mentioned that there is no AFB in this area so the risk of spreading disease is minimal.

I'm seeing far higher populations of beetles this year than ever in the past. The greatest damage they do is eating eggs before they hatch. This can shut down a colony in a matter of days.
 
I'm seeing far higher populations of beetles this year than ever in the past. The greatest damage they do is eating eggs before they hatch. This can shut down a colony in a matter of days.

These various pests also play an important part in weeding out useless beekeepers.
 
These various pests also play an important part in weeding out useless beekeepers.

That is true. Varroa cleaned out do-nothing-beekeepers from Finland 25 years ago. And varroa has become more and more difficult to treat even among serious beekeepers.

Our climate does not give much mercy to fault makers. Usually varroa reduce colony size so that it does not meet next summer
.

.
 
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These various pests also play an important part in weeding out useless beekeepers.
and useless bee genetics! Vulnerable colonies don't last long.

It is no longer a matter of "if" you will get asian hornets, just when.

It is no longer a matter of "if" you will get hive beetles, just when.

What will you do?
 
I purchased 8 Buckfast queens from Fergusons in Canada that were delivered about a month ago. If you guessed these colonies are having the most problems with hive beetles, you are spot on. First because I disrupted the bees normal hive environment. Second because Buckfast don't express much of the behavior that suppresses hive beetles. I'm going to have problems getting them through next year so I can produce enough daughters for selection.

What am I doing for now? I am taking 2 or 3 frames of brood with adhering bees from a strong colony that expresses good beetle resistance and adding them to a colony that is having problems. I just went through a colony and shook all the bees... and beetles... off the frames in one of the Buckfast colonies and killed all the beetles, then gave them 2 frames of brood from a resistant colony. This is an extraordinary measure and not one that I normally would take. I need the Buckfast queens alive next spring to raise queens.
 
It is no longer a matter of "if" you will get asian hornets, just when.

It is no longer a matter of "if" you will get hive beetles, just when.

What will you do?

Beekeepers have enough those Harmageddon Visions. The sky is falling down however and mankind will die then in 4 years.
 
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I was looking at a colony of bees earlier this morning and noticed something that I had not previously spotted. Bees that are resistant to hive beetles form a shell around the brood. The only way I know to describe this is to say that it is like a cluster forming in winter, but this is a tight shell over the brood. Colonies that do not form this shell are easily overwhelmed by beetles. Colonies that are disrupted and do not rapidly re-form the shell are likewise overwhelmed. There may be beetles in the hive, but they won't go inside the shell of bees as long as it is tightly formed. I've seen this behavior in africanized bees but did not realize what it was for. Field bees collect outside this shell and may have beetles among them, but inside the shell, there are normally no beetles.
 

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