Two of my new hives had their covers blown off by a bad storm. I check them yesterday to find one hive w/o a queen and hundreds of little maggots everywhere. What do I do and what are those little maggots?
Help
Two of my new hives had their covers blown off by a bad storm. I check them yesterday to find one hive w/o a queen and hundreds of little maggots everywhere. What do I do and what are those little maggots?
Put the cover back on. Order a new queen or let them raise their own. The maggots are the bee larvae.
I'm guessing the maggots are SHB larva, and if you don't do something about them, you won't have a hive for very long.
Is SHB that plentiful in number from a hive that just suffered a top being blown off?
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
I think Al. & MS. are SHB's favorite breeding grounds.
I did put the cover back on, the maggots are everywhere, not on the combs. Shouldn't the nurse bees be working if the maggots were brood?
help help
You're not giving a lot of information here. Such as :
Where are the bees ?
How many survived ?
You know there is no queen because...
Did the hive fill with water ?
Did you see brood prior to the storms ?
How long was the top off ?
How is the traffic in and out ?
How does this compare to traffic before the storm ?
The hive was a new package, been hived about two weeks, no it did not fill with water had a screened bottom, the queen was marked and I could not find her. There are about half the bees that were there before the storm. The top was off over night. I had not checked the brood before the storm. I had the top off feeding the bees, but had not pulled any of the frames up. They had been working making wax, -been busy. Now they are not doing anything.
Brood does not leave the cells in the comb. They are SHB larva. The hive is likely lost. Shake the bees out 10 feet in front of the other hive and kill the maggots. The bees will join the other hive. Freeze or otherwise destroy the maggots.
Those are almost surely SHB larvae. I had a small nuc abscond a couple days ago before my beetle trap could get here. I live in MS like you and SHB are everywhere here.
I would do as iddee suggested. When they go, they go QUICK. Mine was overrun in about one week. An open top like that gives them easy access and they target your weakest hives. Keep your hives strong so they can fend them off and/or get a West SHB beetle trap which fits on the bottom board.
You can freeze your frames overnight and thaw them. You can then distribute them amongst your other hives and they should clean them out.
Also keep in mind that once their targetted hive is gone they will move on to your next weakest hive so stay alert.
Last edited by Dr.Wax; 06-16-2008 at 05:34 PM. Reason: beecause
Yikes! If SHB can take over a new package that quick I'm glad I haven't had to deal with them. Here is a link to a picture of a larvae I found on line
http://everest.ento.vt.edu/~fell/api...tle/index.html
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks