I tend to be perhaps too scientific in whatever I get involved with so naturally I looked at a days' deposit on a sticky board (actually a piece of 5" wide masking tape) under a stereo microscope. No mites- that was a primary concern. One dead larvae. Two tiny snails 0.050" long. The thing of concern is the high presence of what appear to be light brown rice grains made up of three segments, kind of like three balls stuck together. The three segments total about 0.024" long by 0.008" diameter (0.610mm x .203mm). One of these things was made up of 10 segments. They are not alive and at x450 show nothing but transparency.
Does anyone know what I'm looking at? Bee poop? Poop from something nasty? Or should I just ignore it and put my microscope away?
Dan-
Being a new beek I hadn't even considered something so simple; here's hoping you are correct! Put me in front of a microscope and I'll see all sorts of things of no importance.
I think my identification, wax moth droppings, is correct. Definitely not pollen pellets. I just posted another thread in the Bee Forum entitled "Pollen Pellet at 30X" (a man with a stereoscope has a different perspective on the world)
you don't see any wax moths crawling around? My guess is you get some first instars hatching dropping some frass and probably getting removed before you even notice them.
Just did a full inspection- no damage seen but perhaps 50 half inch light brown larvae squirming around eating the pollen patty that was on top of the frames. Clearly I got rid of the patty and today I'll place a new patty on top of a piece of screen and in a top feeder. Since these larvae like confined spaces I'm removing that environment with the screen. Daily inspections will follow.
Can I assume that these are not wax moths but just some other relatively harmless moth? Would it be worth a small effort to build some sort of moth trap with an ultraviolet LED to attract these moths at night?
If you have small larvae crawling around on a protein patty, I would bet they are actually small hive beetle (SHB) larvae. There are lots of pictures online to show the difference between SHB and wax moth larvae. Basically, the SHB will have spines along the dorsum and will have 6 "feet" at one end of the larva. They use these to kind of pull themselves along to move.
Control can go from don't worry be happy to lots of traps and chemicals. In the north with the harsh winter, they tend not to be the problem they are in the South where the ground does not freeze.
Almost certainly wax moth frass from your description. I did a post several years ago with photos on my blog with what I thought perhaps were droppings from roaches but the segmented ones are likely the moths.
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