Help! I had been away from my hives for awhile and today when I opened one to see how much honey was waiting for me, I got a terrible surprise. It looks like my hive has been infested with wax moths! There are cocoons in both brood chambers and both honey supers. The moth-caterpillars are all in the cocoons. What can I do? Can I save the colony? Can I even save the hive? Also, what should I do to protect my other two nearby hives? Thank you for your help.
Shake the hive into a new box and feed like crazy. Be careful of the queen you might want to hand pick her and a few nurse bees before you shake. Cut the comb out of the frames. The frames can be rebuilt once they're cleaned up. The might be possible to save some of the honey and feed it back to the bees.
Wax moths are a result of a week hive, either one that has been struggling or one that recently swarmed leaving a lot of uncovered comb.
Cut out a piece of plywood that is the exact vertical measurements of the the hive force the bee as close together as possible and then move the polywood one frame at a time until the box as all frames with drawn comb. At this point you should be able to winter over by continued feeding until the combs are full. Winterizing a hive is essentially forcing them to become honey bound.
Thank you. I was able to find the queen today and put her and the rest of the bees into a new hive. I spent about six hours scraping the caterpillars of the wax moths into a metal bucket to destroy them and trying to save the frames. What a job! I appreciate your advice.