Small Hive Beetle in MA?

[Ann]

I've seen small brown beetles in our hives - and now when we were extracting we found three of the little buggers running around in the supers. This is a (bad, sorry) picture of one. (http://www.annzoid.com/images/Bees/small_beetle.jpg) Do we have small hive beetle, or are these some other kind of pest?

[ October 08, 2006, 08:14 PM: Message edited by: Ann ]

[mobees]

Hi Ann

It might be a hive "cockroach". Hive beetles are Black with martian like antenae. Do a search on google there are many good pictures. I have only heard of 2 hives that were slimed in Ipswich, MA. In other areas you would be lucky to see 1 or 2. They winter in hives and trick the bees to feed them.

A strong hive is very unlikely to have a problem, around where you are. They likely hitch a ride on packages/nucs and migratory beekeepers from the south.

[BjornBee]

That is not a SHB.

If the beetle you see are one every so often when opening the top, its no big deal. If the beetles are running throughout the hive, even in small numbers, it indicates to me at least, a hive that will have serious problems with SHB once they are in the area.

[Maine_Beekeeper]

Ann - I've seen SHB first hand and what you're showing here isn't it (although I don't know what that beetle is...)
A local hobby beekeeper got my number through a friend and called me because her hive seemed "in trouble" but she hadn't been into it since early summer.
It was awful - total deadout - there were only about 100 bees left in a full deep plus a shallow super. The super was about 3/4 full of honey and the deep was totally empty. There were WAY more SHB than bees and the few remaining bees were focused on a very small area of comb in the corner of the deep. Depressing. It must have been queenless for months.
I'd never seen SHB (except pictures) before and hadn't heard of it in this area - I suggested she call the state Apiarist. She told me later that he advised her that SHB had been found in Maine for quite some time.
A learning experience for me.

[kenpkr]

Here's a good closeup of an adult and larvae of SHB.

SHB pics (http://www.bugwood.org/factsheets/shb.html)

[tecumseh]

coool site kempkr.

[gingerbee]

Small hive beetles are a pest I have. I first found a only a few of them, and then, about a month later, squished over 50 of them in an upper super.

They can be treated by chemicals in the hive and also by using a ground drench. I prefer organic methods and am trying pure lye mixed in water, poured, in the evening, on the ground around the hive. It should kill the larvae and disrupt their reproductive cycle. The larvae crawl outside the hive and into the ground to mature.
I should see a difference in the number of adult beetles in the hive several weeks.

[jb skiatook]

I have beetles in my hives. I live in Oklahoma and on 10/21/06 we had a state beekeepers meeting. The beetle was a topic that a keeper from both Texas and Arkansas discussed. The Arkansas speaker discussed using nematodes to control the larvae in the soil with good success. He says it is cheaper than chemicals, but you need to buy for your soil temp and that you need to shop for price and shipping.
The Texas speaker was a commercial honey and queen producer and had many hundred beetles in some hives. He learned to control the beetle using cooking oil and moth trap fluid. He used a tray with a top that the beetle could go through, but the bee could not. This was placed between the hive bottom and the first hive body. He purchased his from a bee supplier. This also works under a screened bottom board. Other traps were plastic petri dishes or plastic sandwich boxes with small holes burned or drilled in the side that contained the cooking oil or boric acid.
I have used both the cooking oil and boric acid and have controlled the beetle well, but have not used the petri dish under to top cover to trap them there. Next year I will use the nematodes, but for now I will try the lye water for the soil. What I do not know is what the beetle will do in the cold weather. I think it will not reproduce in the soil.

[Wee3Bees Apiary]

The SHB larvae can very easily pupate in the hive while never leaving to burrow in the ground. They can/will make cocoons (they look more like tunnels) in the hive to pupate.

The control methods inside the hive are the best choice. Use the ground drench, though, it can't hurt (but it definitely might not help).

[Michael Bush]

>The SHB larvae can very easily pupate in the hive while never leaving to burrow in the ground.

We are begining to get reports from beekeepers of this. Have the scientists noticed it yet?

[Aspera]

You better write the NIH and tell them to channel those HIV and mental health funds into SHB research.

[BjornBee]

MB, I have been saying this for going on two years. So we must be about another two or three years for the researchers. ;)

Talk of ground drench and nematodes will quickly end as word gets out. The focus now is dealing with the problem after the fact. (Traps, etc.) And eventually breeding and genetics will once again come to the forefront.

It is very easy to see that hive strength has little to do with where beetles are established. I have seen some booming hives with wall to wall bees have good numbers of beetles. And other lesser populated hives right next doort keep them out altogether.

Is it genetics or some other trigger mechanism that beetles are in one hive and not another? Smell, pheromones???

Knowing that some bees will feed the beetles after they assimulate into the hive and take on the smell of the bees, and that other hives readily allow access to the comb without a fight, treating/trapping may be the only option for some.

I focus on the hives next to those booming ones with SHB running around, the ones with no beetles present.

Some hives deal with them and no treatment is needed. Eventually this will be the focus, being breeding, etc. But for now, a researcher need to make a name for himself, and someone needs to sell a gadget or two and make a buck......

[snarky]

I found a beetle similar to the SHB in the pictures but it had red/orange markings on its back. it is narrower than the SHB I have found previously. Is there another type of hive beetle out there?

I would post pictures but I don't know how to get them in here

G
(atlanta)

[BMogardo]

I'm on Cape Cod and I have friend who lost two hives last winter. Since he was selling his house he left them for the summer. I recently checked them and found them both to be full of beess and full of hive beetle. These hives are about 4 or 5 miles from some cranberry bogs. What are the chances that the SHB came from some migratory hives brought in to pollinate the bog? Or what else could be the source of this infestation.

[mobees]

When you say they lost them last winter did you mean the were raising larvae diring the winter months and pupating in the hive and overran it while the bees clusted or was it already overrun during the fall and began its cycle in the spring. The reason I ask
is I have seen beetle crawling inside a hive on honey frames while all the bees are clusted on the otherside. I makes me wonder.

[BMogardo]

I checked the hives in April andd they were both dead outs. Nothing ws alive in the hives. I checked again in October and found bees and beetles. I found them on the outside frames (7,8,9,) on my first visit and on the inner cover on the next visit.

[Panhandle Bee man]

BMogardo, chances are real great the shb came from the polinators, shb fly up to 20 miles.

Bjorn, pheromones/smalls do play a big role in attracting shb. One thing you may notice is that the big boomer hives are loaded with pollen, and the weak ones aren't. I had a yard full of boomer hives (25) this summer where the hives were mostly pollen bound, had several supers of honey on top of the brood nests, and lost every hive to shb within a matter of 2 weeks, and the yard nearby which had all nucs/late splits all had low shb counts, and little to no pollen stored in them. I am not sure that the track you are going down is the right one. IMO AM Scutella is the result of natural selection against shb, and I think we would all agree that some of those traits are not what we would want in our bees.

Michael, I have heard those stories about shb pupating inside the hive also, have yet to see though. However I couldn't see how that would have much impact on shb populations, is the shear numbers of shb, when a hive sucombs to shb, tens of thousands of larva leave the hive to pupate, and most hives couldn't hold that many pupae, or even enough pupae to make any significant difference.

Next year I plan on placing a couple of West traps on pollen laden hives and drenching the ground around the hives with a nematode.

[Brent Bean]

I’ve had SHB in many of my hives for the past four years, they don’t seem to be a problem here in MI. I have not noticed any damage by them, I would classify them a minor nuisance. I think it has to do with cold weather, they can’t reproduce when the ground temperatures are below 50 degrees and reproduction rates drop when it gets below 70 degree ground temperatures. This is what I contribute to their population not getting out of hand. In southern locations their reproduction time frame is much longer or year round.
I have got my first SHB from package bee out of Texas, but I have found them in feral hives 20 miles from any of my yards, so I would assume that they exist throughout South West Michigan, and I have not herd any talk about damage suffered from other beekeepers in our area.

[Jeffzhear]

I have never heard of nematodes, until reading this thread. Is there a specific type of nematode that one would drench the ground with? How would you purchase this nematode(s)? Would appreciate being able to read more about this? Regards, Jeff