Practical experience dealing with hive beetles

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Do they wear little tinfoil helmets as well?

 

[Fusion_power]

They passed the tinfoil stage aeons ago and are up to the age of iron with bits of iron embedded in their brains. They use the iron as protection from stray rf signals beamed at them by aliens from space and as a directional navigation system. If you would like, they can equip you with similar protections. All it takes is embedding a few lumps of iron in your brain. I may be getting ahead of myself, have you perhaps already been equipped with this protection? I've heard of people with rocks in their skull before and did not necessarily realize it was for protection against aliens and for directional navigation.

 

[Teemore]

The comments about this "shell" seem to echoe observations by Jamie Ellis and Dave Tarpy amongst others. It would appear that if you can minimise the distrubance to bees from colony inspections, the bees are better able to deal with SHB. I imagine that by disturbing the shell you refer to, you give the beetles a chance to access the brood directly.

 

[Fusion_power]

Bumped into this video earlier today which shows the method bees use to chase beetles out of the hive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_CdCaK7ZPMWNXhJMjNqWVc4ZUk/view

 

[SDM]

When the advice on avoiding beetles is to not leave honey supers about, ignoring the disease and robbing aspect of what you do, why do you leave them out for the bees to clean ?

Also the " protective shell" you mentioned doesn't sound like any sort of hygenic behaviour, much more like an aggression response. I know you have had some africanised bees in the past. Is it your africanised colonies that display this trait ?

 

[Fusion_power]

why do you leave them out for the bees to clean

I don't have problems with brood diseases in my bees, probably because they are hygienic. If I had even a small possibility of spreading disease, I would use a different method to clean out the combs.

Beetles do not appear to be attracted to empty boxes, even if they have honey in them. They invade live colonies.

I see the "shell" behavior in most of my colonies but stronger in some than others. This is in bees that do not have direct African ancestry. I was in Mexico just over a year ago and had the opportunity to observe some highly Africanized bees. They take the "shell" behavior to an extreme clinging tightly around the brood. I do not know if this is a major behavior involved in resistance to beetles, but it looks interesting enough to say what I see and find out if others see something similar.

Do you question that Buckfast bees are "Africanized"? After all, they have significant amounts of Saharensis in their background.

Africanized bees have distinctive traits that are missing in my bees. I expect that some of these traits will be needed in the bees we keep to pollinate flowers and produce honey. Are you prepared to accept that breeding can ameliorate the undesirable behaviors such as stinging and swarming excessively?

 

[SDM]

Significant amounts of saharensis in Buckfast ? Significant in what way ?

It seems you alone are unaware of the attraction of shb to wax Cappings,, pollen and honey Given how you keep.telling us of the hygenic qualities of your bees, you should perhaps get your personal apiary hygene in order if you wish to control the beetles.
I'm sure you do see shell behaviour in most of your colonies, after all you've said elsewhere that you bought strains known to be africanised for their hygenic qualities and how you have attained total isolation for mating and that you flooded your local area with africanised swarms a few years ago. You are introducing Buckfast because your bees are still displaying some of those traits ie. Brood breaks, poor honey production. How are you now saying they're not africanised ?

 

[SDM]

I'm sure breeding could reduce aggression and swarming tendancy, but doing it at the same time as keeping desirable traits with multiple locci such as hygenic behaviour is likely to be an exercise in futility.

 

[Finman]

I'm sure breeding could reduce aggression.

Agression is easy to avoid. Get a calm start, keep spare queens in nucs, then kill all quees which show agression.

Swarming habit is difficult to avoid among mongrels.
.

 

[SDM]

Agression is easy to avoid. Get a calm start, keep spare queens in nucs, then kill all quees which show agression.

Swarming habit is difficult to avoid among mongrels.
.

I always thought nucs were less likely to display obvious aggression and that problems only really show up once the population builds.

 

[Finman]

I always thought nucs were less likely to display obvious aggression and that problems only really show up once the population builds.

Agression can be seen in a new nuc when workers are one week old.
When I take inner cover off, and new bees salute me stings up, it is end of that queen.
.
Next spring I see the rest.