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Wax moth eggs hatching in honey?

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13K views 15 replies 9 participants last post by  jim lyon  
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#1 ·
I did crush and strain on a partial capped frame of honey. I left a little bit of the strained honey out in an open bowl in my kitchen for the last several days. Today I found a single live wax moth larvae floating in the honey. I strained the honey with a 600 micron nylon filter.

Did an egg make it through the filter and hatch in the honey? I hope not as I gave out a couple small bottles of honey from this bowl.
 
#6 ·
I have no idea what happened but I will assure you that wax moth larvae don't hatch out of strained honey nor could they even survive if placed there, not even shb larvae can do that.
 
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#8 ·
No, and I was quite worried about that when we first started dealing with shb. We have an in floor sump in our extracting room and an open top honey tank that accumulates a pretty good "head" of wax. I have never had either wax moth or shb larvae get started in either place. Shb larvae are tough, no doubt. They may be able to survive a while in liquid honey, if placed there, but they sure won't do any damage. They seem to need comb, particularly brood comb to survive.
 
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T
#10 ·
Honey that is dry enough will not be a substrate for anything to grow. It does not have enough moisture available. For things like wax moth or shb larvae the honey will pull moisture out of them, acting like a dessicant. If left uncovered it will actually pull moisture from the air.

Tom
 
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#11 ·
I appreciate all the good input. This is a real mystery. The honey was in a large pyrex mixing bowl. The ones with the steep sides, sitting on a freestanding kitchen island that is open underneath with a marble top. Nothing else was on that table and as I said it sat there for 5 days. In those days I even took a few tastes from it. Not very good honey though. Fall GR honey, very dark with a strong and somewhat sour taste. The comb I took it from showed no signs of wax moths or any pests. None of the comb did for that matter. It all looked good.

The only thing is that a month or two ago I had an infestation of moths in my garage. Small brown moths. Maybe wax moths. However, I do not store any honey bee related gear or equipment in the garage. Never have. Took me a week or more of spraying Ortho Home Defense (in the garage only) to finally get rid of them. But… 2 weeks ago I started finding a few of these same larvae crawling up my garage walls. Last week I grabbed the loose roll of tar paper I had for wrapping my hives. When I unrolled it there were a lot of these larvae with cocoons between the loose layers.

Since I got that tar paper out of the garage I have not seen anymore larvae. It’s also become cold. The garage is a little ways from the kitchen on different levels. Maybe a larvae or egg hitched a ride on something up into the kitchen and then found its way into that honey bowl. I am leaving that bowl out for a few more days to see if any more appear in it.
 
O
#14 ·
sorry to give you bad news but i come from the tropics in australia where hive beetle can destroy 50 percent of your hives in a year if preventive measures are not done. if honey is extracted and cappings go through a mono pump then spun in a spinner out through another mono into a settling tank .because min temperature are around 28 c eggs will survive and hatch in the fine wax skim floating on the honey . if honey is not skimmed it is not hard to fill a 20 litre bucket of grubs . another problem is extracted combs if left and not frozen will burst out in million of grubs and slime ruining them in less than a week . until beetle numbers get to a strength to start to be able to take out the weaker hives ,yes they do fly out in groups and return on dusk and pick the weaker hives they are not a great worry . we started much the same as you until numbers get to a threshold and bang . your varroa treatment and cold climates may save you hopefully otherwise its the calm before the storm. there are strains of bees that do show beetle resistance though .
 
#16 · (Edited)
Interesting, though it's important to note that this account is from the tropics. In our northern climate we handle honey in our extracting room in much the same manner and have yet to see any shb larvae in our tanks despite the fact that they were not skimmed a single time during our 3 month extracting period. We do use excluders so rarely have much pollen or brood and the resulting eggs and larvae show up inthe extracting room but we still won't hold boxes of honey for longer than 4 or 5 days as a precaution.
Ozbee: Are you quite certain the larvae that shows up in your holding tank are surviving the spinner and pumps or could it be adult shb laying eggs in the wax capped honey tank.
 
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M
#15 ·
Frank, by the sound of your description of the tar paper I think they are Indian meal moths (pantry moths) in your garage. They sometimes come in bags of grain, birdseed,etc. I could see one crawling around and getting into the honey by accident. I'm just guessing, but look them up, not really big problem.
 
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