[LT]

We were talking with a gentleman yesterday that said freezing the frames that have been affected with SHB will kill the larva but not the eggs. Is that a fact? He said he emerses his frames w comb in a drum of water to drown them. How is the best way to clean the cells of comb out after freezing them removing all pollen, etc. ? Thanks

 

[mike haney]

any living thing that breathes enough to be killed by drowning will freeze. 24-48 hrs in a DEEP freeze (colder than a refrigerator freezer) will do it. the bees will handle the clean-up. if you wanna help/speed things along, use a garden hose and rinse out combs. i just cut'em out and toss'em-the bees will make more comb.

 

[archiater]

I found out the hard way that a 2-3 day freeze in the freezer kills the larve but not always the eggs. I took my frames out of the freezer but left them in my basement because i didnt have time to put them in a hive. One week later when i went back to them they were crawling with very very small larve again.

 

[rrussell6870]

Ants!!! We simply shake any remaining bees into the air and stand the supers upright on top of ant beds... They remove the slime, pollen, honey, larvae, eggs,.. EVERYTHING except the wax and wood. It takes about 28 hrs on a good fire ant mound to clean a 10 frame deep, while they are there you don't have to worry about moths or fungus of any kind as well. When its completely clean, they will just leave it alone...thats when it is safe to simply pick it up, bump it real good to remove any stowaway ants, and place it back on a hive. The bees will take care of any ants that didn't come out when bumping it...just use good judgement of course. We take ours away from the bee yard and place them in pastures on the ants... this keeps from having a battle between bees trying to rob the left overs and the ants doing there thing.... and of course, I LOVE the idea of letting the beetle larvae get whats coming to them. lol. Good luck!