maggots from "cutout"

[terri lynn]

I just got a washtub that had bees and honeycomb in it for some people. It had maggots! :eek::cry: I didn't know what to do because I didn't want to go back on my word and they were afraid of them - the tub was under the water faucet - and I didn't want my home bee yard infested with maggots! I'm pretty sure it was SHB, which I've never had a problem with. I've been reading threads on this but haven't seen my question answered. Right now they are still in the bed of the truck in the washtub with plywood on bottom and screen covering the hole on the top. I don't want to put them near my healthy bees. I can put them at the other end of my land (4 acres) but I heard they can fly 2 miles, so that's still not far enough. Or will it be too late anyway? I discovered I am out of bottom boards, so making a trip to get some on Thursday if at all possible.

My thought was if I destroy the comb (not on frames anyway) and put in new foundation on frames in a new hive and treat, will that keep them from spreading? Any other ideas on what to do? I want to address this quickly as I've had nice heathly hives up to now and REALLY don't want that to change.

Thanks for any advice

[chad]

be careful,I brought home a cut out full of maggots,now I have lost 2 hives and a big problem with shb.Wish I would of done something different.

[ScadsOBees]

My thought was if I destroy the comb (not on frames anyway) and put in new foundation on frames in a new hive and treat, will that keep them from spreading?

Yes, plus with the stress of cutting and moving the SHB can get a better foothold. destroy (freeze, melt if you want to) any comb where the maggots are too numerous, maybe keep a few frames of healthy brood, and get all of the bees in a new hive. Even if all you get are the bees and the queen they should be able to start over fine (if you can keep them from absconding, thus the frame or two of healthy brood).

As far as SHB, you probably already have a small presence in the other hives already (I do in mine, and I'm way up here in the frozen north!)

Not sure what you mean by treating (SHB trapping? Mites? Foulbrood?), but right after installing the new hive is a good time for that.

Rick

[SlickMick]

If you want to save the comb, get a tub and put some water and washing up detergent into it. Rinse the comb over the tub with a hose and then freeze it for a couple of days. This will kill larva eggs and beetle and save the comb that you can then use how you want to.

The detergent breaks down the surface tension of the water and prevents the larva and beetle from sitting on top and/or taking air down with them. They should drown this way.

The problem that I see that you have is that the larva are quite mobile and able to climb so I would be worried that they are attempting to leave your truck and into the ground where they pupate. They are also able to pupate out of the ground I understand so sealing them may not be a solution also.

I would also be worried about the liklihood of eggs being in the brood comb and unless you want the brood I would freeze that also. I think that is what I would do. If you shake the bees into a box with some existing and/or previously frozen comb and brood and stores from another hive then you should be able to save the hive.

But you need to do something with the comb and maggots asap as you will find the maggots pupating into adult SHB

Hope it goes well.. keep us informed as to how you go

Mick

[terri lynn]

Ick, my skin is crawling and I feel like there are crawling maggots and jumping beetles everywhere! I thought it would be safe by leaving them in the truck until I could move them. Kinda hard to figure where to move a hive of diseased bees. The only good places I know are too close to my other bees.

Chad-I'm really scared now. Did you do anything to treat yours or did you know they were there?

By treating them, I meant putting on a beetle trap, but also getting some of the treatment for the ground that is supposed to break their life cycle. I want to be a zealous as possible, so I think I won't try to save any of the comb. It's not on frames, so I'd cycle it out anyway. If there is some with NO trace of SHB, I might, but my main concern is it not spreading. I wish I had never gotten this hive. But I want to be responsible, so I can't just go dump it in the wild and let them continue on, or they will spread to even more bees. That's good to know how to treat the honeycomb with washing it though. Even if I don't do it this time, I might have a need in the future.

thanks and I'll let you know how it progresses. I just hope they haven't already spread to my bees (overnight). Anyone know how quickly they spread?

[terri lynn]

Ok, now I've thought up more questions. First of all, what would you have done had you seen the maggots when getting the bees? Do they contaminate equipment as well? For instance if I hive them up, say the hive didn't make it, if I moved the equipment to another hive, would SHB follow? Or is that only with foulbrood? Lastly, do swarms ever carry SHB with them? I can't see how they would, but obviously I'm not well versed on diseases.

[ScadsOBees]

SHB fly for miles, they are very mobile, they will enter any hive that they can. SHB may follow swarms. You probably already had some of the adult beetles in your existing hives, and if you didn't before, you do now.

BUT THAT ISN'T A BIG DEAL!!!!

I have them in my hives all year round, and haven't had much problem with them at all. Sure, your climate does make it a little tougher for you with SHB.

Don't worry. -> What you don't want now is all those larvae in that hive crawling out and pupating in your soil. So either do a cutout now, disposing of the bad comb, or move them away, at least until you can get rid of the comb.

SHB maggots can't go from hive to hive, but the beetle can.

In a normal healthy hive, SHB isn't typically a problem, about as bad as moths. The cutout hive you have there suffered some kind of stress to allow the beetles to take over.

If you got all of the bees off of the bad comb, into a new hive box, the adult SHB beetles will undoubtedly follow, but you would kill all the maggots left behind. If there is a really high level of beetles in your hives, then you need to get some beetle traps, there are lots of kinds of those around reletively inexpensivley. And if you crowd the bees on the amount of comb that they can easily defend, they can keep the beetles from reproducing.

Don't bother trying to reuse the comb if this is a cutout. Just burn it or bag it and dispose of it, there probably isn't too much that is worth saving.

[Gene Weitzel]

If you have any fire ants on your place, put the infested comb on the ant mounds. They do a great job of cleaning it up, beetle larvae and all. If there is any brood comb that is not infested with larvae you can strap it into frames with rubber bands and put it in the hive with the bees. Don't try to give them back any combs of honey or pollen because with the stress they are under they won't be able to keep the SHB out of it. You will undoubtedly need to feed this hive in order for it to survive, and it still may not.

[SlickMick]

Terri, the hive you have collected is worth saving, even if it is only the bees. Disposing of affected camb safely will be important. I would be prepared to try and save brood by cutting out empty cells or honey cells around the brood and then tying it into frames. The honey cells are more likely to have larva burrowing through it but you could save it by freezing it.

As you will now see, it is the maggot that causes the damage to the comb and honey not the beetle. The beetle is responsible for the numbers of maggots you have in your hive as a mature beetle lays a few hundred eggs a time, so half the problem is in preventing the beetle from laying and the other half is preventing the pupation of any larva into adult beetle.

The first half of the problem can be managed (not cured) by controlling the amount of space that the beetle has to hide in away from the bees. This means that the bees need to cover all the space available to them. If there are vacant frames then you will have beetle laying in the comb and then the problem starts.

At the moment I am using a home-made base board traps and AJ's Beetle eater in both nucs and full hives. Both work pretty well. I have a couple of AJ's in the top of every box and I use vegetable oil in both types of trap. If you have a hive that is highly defensive towards the beetle, you will find them harassing the beetle and the beetle attempts to hide in the trap. The base board trap will give you the heads up by occasionally producing a larva. My experience with this is not that the larva have taken over as inspection after finding a maggot in the oil shows no evidence of other maggot activity.

Vigilence is important. I check the traps every few days and when I do a full hive inspection I place all boxes aligned on the upturned lid one by one. The shb does not like light and will gravitate to the bottom of the stack to hide from the light where they can be despatched with the hive tool when you rebuild the hive. You will also find them on the baseboard by the time you get to that. A 3" nail can be used to deal with individuals in the comb or on frames as you do your inspection. Just monitor how aggressive your bees are to the shb. If you find them to tolerate the shb without any reaction, requeen with a more vigorous and proactive strain.

If you have the hives in the sun this will help.

Some beeks use lime under the hives to deal with the maggot should they get to the soil.

Dont leave stickies lying around the place and I would not put them on the hives for the bees to clean up as the bees will depopulate their comb to clean up all the honey leaving exposed comb. I am moving over to crush and strain extraction for this reason as I have lost 2 hives by returning stickies to the hive.. a week later the hives were dead and a real mess to clean up.

If you have plastic frames go back to wood ones as the endbars of the plastic are filled with little crevasses for the shb to hide in. Either that or fill the endbars with something.

Fortunately the shb does not impregnate itself into equipment so your gear is reuseable.

As mentioned previously the shb flies long distances and you will probably find them with a swarm but in manageable numbers.

As a consolation there are shb in all sorts of places around the world and they are being managed so all is not lost. In strong hives they are usually manageable but occasionally get the upper hand. A strong hive is important but they do require monitoring on a regular basis

Hope this helps

Mick

[terri lynn]

I can't thank all of you enough. I have learned SO much from you. And feel more relieved...think I was starting to get really stressed over it. When I first got my starter hives I saw 3 or 4 SHB in one of them, but they got rid of them. Since then, I've noticed no sign. I have looked more into it and am now sure it was SHB. In addition to the maggots (which rules out the disease like foulbrood, nosema, etc, right?), it had a funny smell and I read SHB kinda ferments the honey and that's the smell it had. When I went out to deal with it this morning, they were already being robbed. There was a hole I didn't notice. I did notice however, there were very few bees still in this hive to start with, so I'm wondering if they had absconded when the SHB had gotten too strong, being directly on the ground, and maybe the bees I brought home were robber bees. There were maybe 50 bees, a number of which died on the way home. I'm the kind that does everything I can to avoid killing even 1 bee, so it wasn't pleasant for me that the hive didn't survive. :( I took the whole thing to the edge of my acreage which is furthest from the others, put the infected old comb into a (double layered) gabage bag, and left the few newer combs on the little table. Some larvae squirming around. I'm hoping the racoons have a feast tonight. I have 1 that had quadruplets that visits me regularly, and if the maggots weren't so gross, I might have left them closer so they could find it easily. I saw no actual beetles, but it was really completely overrun with larvae (the maggots). Some of the beetles may have hitched a ride on the robber bees? I would have thought they would have stayed and feasted on the rest of the comb. Or could it have been a more recent infestation and most were still in the larvae stage?

I did learn a lot about how to handle future cutouts differently.

Scadsofbees- you really put it in perspective for me..which I needed, after hearing of the dreads of them.

Gene- I do have fire ants (lucky me!) and maybe they'll help with what the racoons miss!
That's good to find one good use for them.

Mick- What's a stickie? Is that the frame after extraction? Can you let the bees rob it out to clean (as in an area other than putting back in a hive)? And what do you do as far as putting empty supers in for making honey? You've given me more info on killing and preventing than my books! Do you make house calls? :)

Thanks again to all of you that have helped on this thread. I certainly have a lot more info to know how to handle anything of this nature in the future and practices I can instigate now. I'll print and put in one of my books, since ya'll have given me much more info than any of them. Thank you, thank you thank you! :applause:

[ScadsOBees]

Stickie...I'd guess a frame just extracted, so still wet, or sticky. Attractive to beetles, moths, ants, and robber bees.

[SlickMick]

IMick- What's a stickie? Is that the frame after extraction? Can you let the bees rob it out to clean (as in an area other than putting back in a hive)? And what do you do as far as putting empty supers in for making honey? You've given me more info on killing and preventing than my books! Do you make house calls? :)


Terri, I dont usually make house calls but in your case I will make an exception only the price of airfares (Brisbane Aus to USA :eek:) might be too steep :lpf:

Glad to know that things are settling down for you. Do stay in touch and let us all know how you got on. The garbage bag with all the goo in it would be ideal for cooking up the whole lot.

Stickies are what we call the extracted frame and comb. I usually place mine near the house and introduce the girls to them.. a day later they are ready for reuse. I generally reintroduce them a few frames at a time depending on how many bees are working them. On big honey flows I would expect that you might be able to simply put a box of them back on the hive.

Management is the key to living with these blighters

Mick

[earthchild]

After reading this story about SHB, I had terrible nightmares last night that my bees were infested!!! It was disgusting.

[terri lynn]

Terri, I dont usually make house calls but in your case I will make an exception only the price of airfares (Brisbane Aus to USA might be too steep :lpf: Management is the key to living with these blighters

Mick

Yep, I had seen you were an Aussie. ;) I worked for an airline (AA) until January, so I could have accomodated you, but now, I can't fly free either..after 20+ years, you'd think I'd earned it. :cry:

I'm feeling better about managing these and other pests thanks to you and the others on this post. You'll know how I'm getting on....I'm always asking questions! Sign of intelligence! :D

And earthchild, you're right...it is worthy of nightmares. Better eat before you deal with them, as well, 'cause you won't want to afterwards! But these seemed to be an advanced case and of course had no management at all. I seemed to have been called at the end stages of the hive when SHB was out of control from what I could see. With all of the tips here, I'm confident now that it won't come to that point in any of my hives, with diligence.

Even learned what a stickie was!

[snarky]

I believe that the beetles are attracted to the fermenting smell - they sort of pile on when a hive gets in trouble.

You might want to put the bag of maggot infested comb and put it in a trap - draw all the beetles from miles around.

Just a thought

[Gene Weitzel]

I believe that the beetles are attracted to the fermenting smell - they sort of pile on when a hive gets in trouble.

You might want to put the bag of maggot infested comb and put it in a trap - draw all the beetles from miles around.

Just a thought

Or not, since she does not seem to have that many beetles now, why provide a stimulus to bring more into her local.

[SlickMick]

After reading this story about SHB, I had terrible nightmares last night that my bees were infested!!! It was disgusting.

They are disgusting especially when they get away from you. The essential thing is to make sure that you manage them and control their numbers.

Every maggot that pupates is another beetle alive in the environment.

But the important thing is to accept that they are in the environment and that you are able to deal with them and successfully remain a beekeeper and enjoy your bees.

Mick

[terri lynn]

Too late to worry about using them for bait anyway, I destroyed them pretty promptly. I just got the Gardstar with my shipment, so about to drench under hives. I read the bottle info and it's toxic to bees, so is it better to do it in the day when they're coming or going and not as many are around, or evening, when they aren't out and about, but are right above it? :scratch:

Snarky, they may be attracted to the fermented smell, and they apparently produce it. From what I read it's cause by their eliminating. :pinch:

Does anyone know if they attach to bees (like mites) or just do all of the flying on their own? I was wondering if the robbing bees picked up any hitchhikers. I'm thinking if not, it might not be quite as big a problem since there didn't seem to be many adult beetles.

[SlickMick]

Terri, I dont think that they attach to bees but I am guessing. I do believe that they will fly with swarms. I have caught swarms with shb included but if they followed the swarm or came after it I can't say.

Mick

[Ben Brewcat]

Wait, a bucket of comb? I only scanned the thread but are you sure they aren't just wax moth larvae?

[DebCP]

Does anyone know if they attach to bees (like mites) or just do all of the flying on their own?

Terry,

I have a nifty CD that I received from the University of Florida (it's an early release I guess). On it, they said they believe the SHB have some type of yeast on them that alerts the SHB to the presence of honey...so these yeasts are what guide the SHBs to the hives. The video didn't say anything about the adults hitchhiking, it sounds like the beetles do just fine finding hives on their own.

I think I have discussed this with you in the past, but the video recommended chemical controls only as a last resort (both can be harmful to the bees). I had ordered the beneficial nematodes, but realize that now is when I really need them in the ground since my hive is constantly under attack. I found one larvae in a frame today and now I am freaked out...it was little thank goodness and I didn't see any more after much searching, but it was just horrifying.

Deb

[terri lynn]

Deb-
Is there a way to order the cd? I'm all for learning as much as possible. I think Mick and others here could teach a class or make a video themselves.

BTW, everyone, I did get lucky (or reacted correctly thanks to all of you) and have not noticed any in my other hives I keep at this location. :applause:

I will certainly be more careful next time!

[DebCP]

The cd was an early release so it's not available yet. And yes, I agree that some of our members could write a book on this stuff...not me...though I could probably write a short comic book. ;)