[snispel]

I inspected a hive today. The bees looked really good. I replaced a box in order to repair the one there, thus pulling the box off of the bottom board. Everything in this hive is pretty clean, however on the bottom board we’re about 30 beetles. I killed most of them. There was only about 1 T of crud on the bottom board. I scraped it all up and found 2 varroa mites. And a few beetles to keep for identification. The comb all looked good. The bees looked healthy. The beetles were shy of .25 inches....maybe 3/16”.

 

[AR1]

Looks like it. Hate those buggers. Last year had a bunch, none yet this year. Several times I actually pulled all the frames, killed all the beetles and put the frames in a new hive box. It seemed to help, as I never found any SHB brood in any frames and no larvae escaping the hive. They like the dirty corners of the hive to lay in, so I think keeping the bottom board clean helps.

 

[snispel]

Well. Awesome. That's basically what I did. That gives me hope. I'm currently building a bottom board that is meant to prevent them from entering. But, what I'd like to do is find a way to mix the mite, beetle and anti-robbing features to the bottom board. Someday, I'll figure out something.

 

[Titus142]

Where are you located? I know SHB is a big problem in the south. I had a few in one of my hives and on the local forums people kept saying "don't worry it is not a problem here". I put a few traps in and caught a dozen or so. Turns out there was a lot of buildup on the bottom board and that is where they were coming from. Cleaning that seemed to fix the problem but I still find one from time to time.

 

[snispel]

I'm near Lincoln, Nebraska.

 

[Tigger19687]

I have not seen any here , yet.
But I do know that those light brown 'wood' ****roaches like to be on the wax that I scraped off and flung on the ground in front of the hive the other day. Not sure what they want with it though