How much damage will carpet beetles do to stored combs and how quickly? Will refreezing them kill any larva/eggs?
I have about 20-25 deep frames from mid-winter deadouts. Back in early February I cleaned out the dead bees and stacked them away into the shop loft. At that time I figured they were in safe "cold storage" until mid April or so.
But we have had the same bizarre weather that much of the country has had and spring is now here a good 4+ weeks early. Yesterday I went up to sort through them for empty brood comb and capped stores, when I opened one box there were about a half dozen carpet beetles under the lid. The combs all look fine with no larva obvious yet.
the empty frames will be very useful in a few weeks...hopefully they will help reduce my swarming issues this year, but can I just leave them be until then or will they be a mess shortly without action?
I had been planning to feed the capped frames into the 3 remaining hives, but they proved to be still well stocked and I could only get rid of 5 frames among the bunch. So I need a plan for storing those...perhaps until next fall. No point harvesting them for use as they are all/mostly syrup from fall feeding. I was even toying with using a friends extractor to spin them out just to have more empty drawn comb to work with...but it seems a waste.
What the heck is a carpet beetle?
Extreme cold or heat will usually kill most things. Even if a freezer doesn't kill Zone 4/5 eggs it will sure retard their growth! If you're worried about it, I would freeze them and then store them in a cool area. Cool temps tend to slow down larvae.
Unless carpet beetles try to raise brood in the combs, they may be innocuous. I would doubt the adults would do much damage, it's the larvae that would be a real concern.
If it were me, I probably wouldn't fool with freezing the combs. Too much work, and I'm lazy. I would just take a peek at the combs once a week or so and see if there are any bugs after it. Could be wax moths too, who knows. Bug larvae don't instantly grow from a speck to a big worm overnight, so I feel you would have time to detect a problem before they did significant damage. If you do see a problem at that point, the freezer will definitely kill larvae whereas the eggs might be more immune.
This reply is probably not even worth 2 cents since I don't even know what the heck a carpet beetle is!
I didn't know their name until yesterday when I looked them up, but I have seen them for years everywhere I live. I bet you would recognize one. About 1/4-3/8" long. they look like little black pills sometimes with a brown band. The larva will eat almost anything organic...even old wool carpet backing. They sometimes get into spice drawers or pantries...hence the other name: larder.
In the wild they are the ones who eat up the hair/feathers and dried tissue on carcass.
i looked up carpet beetles & from the photos that i saw they could easily be mistaken for small hive beetles. freeze those frames for 48 hours & check them again before you put them in the hive.