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SHB larvae in beetle trap

2K views 9 replies 4 participants last post by  brazosdog02 
#1 ·
I have a freeman beetle trap and one hive that is having a hell of a time with SHB. I'm sitting here watching it now and see no less than 15-20 hovering beetles. I pulled the trap and found a handful of larvae. My other hive doesn't have this beetle problem and its 3' away. Anything else I need to do aside let the hive get stronger?
 
#2 ·
How weak is this hive? I wonder if the beetles could be targeting this hive because they know they will meet little resistance reproducing in there.

I don't know exactly how the freeman trap works, but most traps require that the bees run the beetles into them. If you don't have enough bees to make this happen, then the trap might not be effective.

You might have to bite the bullet and combine your hives. Or, a less drastic idea might be to reduce the hive down to a 5 frame nuc. This way the bees will have less comb to guard. If you take this route, make sure you take the frames of comb that you don't need and freeze them to kill the SHB eggs.
 
#3 ·
Its a package. I suspect the queen is struggling. There are hundreds of beetles in the trap now. Its a giant tray, there is no place for them to hide on the bottom board. Bees either chase them in or they simply fall into it. It IS working, but since there were a few larvae in it, Im guessing they aren't keeping up. I should have a new queen before too much longer though. I have no doubt they are targeting the hive. THe other hive has very few beetles. There are a few in the trap, but rarely do I see one IN the hive.
 
#4 ·
Oh, I see. I read your original post as if you had only larvae in the trap and no beetles.

Sometimes you will see larvae even in a stronger hive. It's just by chance, because the bees dispose of them very quickly. Usually they'll be on the bottom board crawling around. Regardless, it sounds like you've got a little problem going on. How many frames are drawn in this hive? Also, how many of those frames are covered by bees? If there is more comb than bees to defend it, you need to shrink the hive.
 
#5 ·
I had the same issue with SHB when I installed a package during our spring. On inspection weekly I caught at least 10-12 for the first month or so. I put a trap in and found about the same in it each week but gradually found less in the hive and the trap as the season progressed and the colony got stronger with the season and SHB was less bothersome.

My bee package installed was 4-5 pounds into an 8 frame.

I would be more concerned if the SHB population increased or if the hive wasn't growing stronger as the season is progressing.

Is the queen laying and worker population growing? was your other hive installed at the same time?
 
#6 ·
The queen is laying and there is larvae and capped brood, but there are also queen cells being made. It took her 2 weeks to start laying and I suspect they are superseding her. My other hive was installed at the same time and I had eggs in 7 days. It is doing very very well.
 
#9 ·
A naturally produced queen that supersedes may do so much better as long as the workers keep the SHB at bay until then.

I did a split on a hive in Feb after 4 months it was installed as a package, surprisingly the half that was queenless that had to produce their own new queen is now doing much better than the half with the original queen.

I use diatomacious earth in the tray of my traps as they sit under the bottom board. I make it a point to be careful the dust doesn't blow into the hive when I am checking the trays.
 
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