shb are tearing me to pieces

duck · July 12, 2012, 12:43:01 AM

in the past couple of months I have lost 8 hives to SHB. I cant stop them, and things are getting out of hand. I have tried the veg oil traps, the veg oil tray underneath, boric acid in the election signs, a ton of bags of diatomaceous earth, and systematically going through each hive and each frame killing all of them by hand. I usually find from 20-40 in each hive, all my colonies are queen right and laying. I just ordered Plutas traps and bait. I dont know what else to do? There doesnt seem to be an end in sight. I have even combined hives to strengthen colonies to fight them off. any ideas?

BeeMaster2 · July 12, 2012, 01:36:39 AM

Try this, I posted this a couple of days ago in another thread.

Rich,

<Another thing you can do is add a screen top board. Take a 3/4" x 2' board and cut and glue it together to be the size of your box or use an old super and cut it into 2" deep sections. Using a table saw, cut a 1/8" slot 3/4" from the top about 10" long in the middle of each side. This is for ventilation and to allow the beetles to get in above the screen. Staple a piece of screen on the bottom of this frame. Then cut 3/4" x 3/4 piece of wood cut to the size of frame and nail it over the top of the screen. Be sure it seal it to keep bugs out below the screen. When the SHB are coming in, I lift the lid every day and kill the beetles that are above the screen. This year there was about a week when every hive had over 100 SHB above each screen every day.
Using SBB, Screen Top Boards and getting as much sun as possible on the hives has seriously reduced my beetle population. My beetle numbers are way down this year.

Screen bottom boards with an oil tray do kill thousands of beetles, I have posted pictures here with a tray the size of the hive almost solid black with hive beetles collected over 30 days. >
Good luck
Jim

duck · July 12, 2012, 08:41:16 AM

so you have a 2" tray 16 1/4" x 19 7/8" with some 1/8" slots in it on top of a screened inner cover? then you use the propane torch to toast beetles when you lift it every day?

BeeMaster2 · July 12, 2012, 09:36:14 AM

Quote from: duck on July 12, 2012, 08:41:16 AM
so you have a 2" tray 16 1/4" x 19 7/8" with some 1/8" slots in it on top of a screened inner cover? then you use the propane torch to toast beetles when you lift it every day?

Sounds good, though I haven't tried the torch yet. :-D
Don't forget the 3/4" spacer underneath the screen.
The bees will propolize the screen but only about 1" of it around the edge.
Right now I am not killing very many SHB. Last year they never stopped coming in. Hopefully I reduced the local population.
I also have spiders that have moved in. I leave them there because the also trap the SHB in there webs.
Jim

duck · July 12, 2012, 01:00:18 PM

hrmm dont get the spacer part, does it go under the screen in contact with the frames? maybe i just dont understand the designand its function.. do you have a picture?

Larry Bees · July 12, 2012, 02:05:18 PM

Are your hives in the full sunlight all day?

If not, move them.

Larry

BeeMaster2 · July 12, 2012, 03:11:29 PM

Quote from: duck on July 12, 2012, 01:00:18 PM
hrmm dont get the spacer part, does it go under the screen in contact with the frames? maybe i just dont understand the designand its function.. do you have a picture?

The spacer raises the screen above the frames. It is just around the edge. You could use an old super and on a table saw, cut a 3/4" section, all the way around. Nail on top of the screen.
You will have 2" of super with 1/8" slots near the top edge, screen and 3/4" piece of super nailed together.
This makes it easy to look in the hive without disturbing it and kill a lot of SHB.
Jim

duck · July 12, 2012, 08:23:38 PM

Quote from: Larry Bees on July 12, 2012, 02:05:18 PM
Are your hives in the full sunlight all day?

If not, move them.

Larry

yes except for all this rain.. its ridiculous.

Sawdust: ok so the screen is sandwhiched 3/4" above the frames.. what size screen? I have a ton of #8. I suppose the plan is to let the beetles pass through from the inside of the hive into the tray? or do they fly up from the outside, go into the slots, then cant get through small window screen and then you can kill them?

Diogenes · July 12, 2012, 09:45:17 PM

One thing that "might" help is to cover the ground under the hive stands with the 6 mil black plastic. With a little sweetner for the pupating beetles of course. That under-the-plastic sweetner is sodium tetraborate or your common laundry borax. Unfortunately, it is water soluble, so you'll have to renew it every year. On the other hand, borax is death to insects. I have no ant problems. No ants. Just don't raise a cloud of the borax dust when sprinkling it. Borax (aka sodium tetraborate) IS death to all insects. (Including honey bees)

I keep a light cover of wood chips over the plastic to keep it down. (I get those for free) Not sure if the 3 or 4 little black beetles I saw in May (Under a SBB) were hive beetles or not. (don't know if they are this far north yet) Haven't seen any beetles since though. I should have photographed them before sliding them into the smoker (lit of course).

BeeMaster2 · July 13, 2012, 12:26:47 AM

Quote from: duck on July 12, 2012, 08:23:38 PM
Quote from: Larry Bees on July 12, 2012, 02:05:18 PM
Are your hives in the full sunlight all day?

If not, move them.

Larry

yes except for all this rain.. its ridiculous.

Sawdust: OK so the screen is sandwhiched 3/4" above the frames.. what size screen? I have a ton of #8. I suppose the plan is to let the beetles pass through from the inside of the hive into the tray? or do they fly up from the outside, go into the slots, then cant get through small window screen and then you can kill them?

Use window screen, if you use #8 the SHB will go right through it into the hive. Remember, this goes on top of the top super. The smell of the hive comes up through the 1/8" slots that you cut. The SHB go in this slot and get trapped on top of the screen. I use this with a screen bottom board and an oil tray.
Jim

duck · July 13, 2012, 01:40:50 AM

gotcha!

asprince · July 13, 2012, 08:25:03 AM

For extreme cases like yours.

http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,1974.0.html

Good Luck,

Steve

loumaro · July 13, 2012, 03:49:52 PM

Has anyone tried "Beetle Jail" see beetle jail.com . It looks real interesting to me
looks like it should work. Any comments?

Intheswamp · August 19, 2012, 02:18:55 AM

duck, how are you doing with the beetles? Make any headway with them?

loumaro, I use the Beetle Jail Jrs in my hives. They catch beetles. So far I haven't had an extremely high population of beetles but I know it's only a matter of time before their numbers increase. I'm in the process now of putting together some oil trays to go beneath the screen bottom boards. I think that the beetles will require me to hit them from several different angles.

Ed

bayouboy · August 19, 2012, 01:05:51 PM

Jim,can you post a pic?
Mike

VolunteerK9 · August 19, 2012, 10:22:00 PM

People may think I'm crazy, but since Ive been using Roundup under/around my hives (two years now) SHB have been minimal.

duck · August 19, 2012, 10:40:37 PM

ive been using the traps/bait, diatomaceous earth under the hives, and killing by going through hive with hive tool. I also started using the screened top with the slots cut into the inner cover where the beetle enters but cant get into the hive. I lift the covers and kill them.

Intheswamp · August 20, 2012, 12:32:52 AM

Quote from: VolunteerK9 on August 19, 2012, 10:22:00 PM
People may think I'm crazy, but since Ive been using Roundup under/around my hives (two years now) SHB have been minimal.

You're crazy, man!

Just kiddin'. :angel: :-D That is an interesting observation about the Roundup. My mentor uses it around his hives but has heavy beetle loads in some of his hives. It's odd...one hive will have a bunch of them and then the next hive beside that one will only have a few. His hives are in partial shade (the trees were small when he first started these hives and beetles weren't really an issue then). Are your hives in full sun? I've been thinking of using roundup around my hives...it makes sense to me that barren, sun baked ground would create an unappealing area for beetles.

Ed

Intheswamp · August 20, 2012, 12:44:21 AM

How do you go about cutting the slots in the shims? Do you simply use a circular saw to plunge cut a slot? Or are you cutting into the top edge creating vertical slots coming down from the top a short distance?

Thinking about the beetles entering via the slots got me thinking. If the slots (I'm not sure where or how the slots are cut) could be covered with a cone made from the window screen with the exit going into a tupperware dish with oil inside this would do the killing for you and few fly-away escapees. Several cones could exit into the dish from different sides of the shim. Might be more trouble than it's worth, but a thought. :)

Ed

duck · August 20, 2012, 01:59:25 AM

I made my inner covers to be 1 3/8 tall. then shims he was recommending might not be able to have a slot cut into it because of depth of cut versus thickness of material. To cut the slots, I set the fence on the table saw at 4" and the blade height at 3/4" I then rip it long ways, then the other way, then another and another. heh then there are 8 slots when im done.