As a beekeeper in my third season, I can proudly say that I haven’t lost a hive yet! I’m not worrying about jinxing myself either because I know I eventually will. We all will. Sometimes, there’s just nothing we can do. But for me, I don’t go down without a fight. Despite regular inspections, things can just come out of nowhere… such is the case of small hive beetle for me. 

The other day, I went through seven hives. Now, I normally see a couple beetles here and there in almost all these hives. I assured myself early on that since I saw one beetle, more will be coming! So it just made sense that where there is one… there will be more!

So, I took immediate action. First, here’s a link I put up in the SIBA site a while back that tells more about SHB and includes pictures and links to some great information. I have had two beetle blaster traps in each hive (one on top of each medium super) for most of the season. I see a beetle in these traps here and there, but at last inspection, they have ramped up. One hive in particular had an alarming number of beetles crawling around. I didn’t see any honey or comb damage yet, but there were about 10 beetles on one frame!

The best you can do to combat hive beetle (SHB) is keep the populations knocked down, by using a multi-pronged approach (a variety of methods) before it’s too late.

Here’s some points to keep in mind

• Let’s cover the basics that are well-known. A strong hive is simply the best way to combat not only SHB, but a variety of hive ailments, such as Varroa and the diseases associated with it. Hives in full sun are also likely to have less SHB then those in shade or part-shade.
• As Sean Burgess mentioned at September meeting, spraying the area around your hives with a solution of water and salt (about a handful of salt per 2 gallons of water) helps kill off SHB larva that go into the soil to pupate and emerge the next season. Spray in the fall and again in the spring. It obviously helps as a weed control too.
• Another good point that Sean brought up was limit your hive inspections in the fall. As hard as that may be for some of us, hopefully, we’ve been keeping an eye on things up until now to feel good about delaying the next inspection. The idea is, bees will chase SHB up into the top supers and propolize them in to areas and trap them. When we go in and crack the covers and frames apart, we release these beetles to cause more trouble. I often see them scurrying when I take off the top cover.
• Beetles like the dark… and they are scurrying to the dark places when you take off the cover. When I inspect frames, I look closely down into the cells around the sides of the frames and in the corners. They like the dark comb too! I flip it over and look in the slot under the bottom bars (if you have that type of frame) – They are in there, you can crush them with your hive tool in an easy swipe across the bottom. Look also around the frame rests on either side of the hive. That is a common place for them to hide… especially in the older “raised-L” type rests. Bees will to try to glue and trap them in to those spaces.
• Then, there are a variety of ways to trap them and again, a few variations of traps may help knock them down more effectively and I’ll list some of them below.

Of course, if you have many hives, cheap methods are preferred. The beetle blasters are nice but often get a little messy and you also have to space the frames so that they fit down between the top bars. The bees propolize around it and glue it in to place. First thing I do when I open my hive is take my hive tool and run it across the top of this trap to crush any beetles that may be hiding below it… then I remove it to conduct my inspection.

The next cheap alternative for me was the CD jewel case traps to add in addition to the beetle blasters. I made up a bunch of them. Find the directions here on making SHB traps from CD cases. Here is a video for making SHB traps from CD cases too. The effectiveness shown to me by others, including Guy Ross of Alabama who sent me the picture above of his traps was compelling enough to give it a try. I myself am using a mixture of honey, pollen and boric acid… making sure the mixture is thick and doughy enough so that it will not run out of the case. If the bees get at this, it will kill them so be careful… and be careful handling boric acid (a roach/rat killer) or any other hazardous material to kill SHB. I also read that Borax, (sodium tetraborate decahydrate) works well in place of boric acid, and can be bought as a laundry booster cheaper than boric acid. It used to be used as a gelling agent in foods before it got outlawed because of toxic effects at high doses. That said, it’s pretty non-toxic to humans, naturally occurring, and lethal to any insect that eats it. Just don’t let your bees get any of it or you’ll kill them too. I’ll report back on this blog how I do soon.

Of course, there is the Freeman trap that is an oil pan under a screen bottom board that rates quite highly! These are of course more expensive and if you need to get them for many hives, it adds up. Here’s a video that covers the Freeman SHB trap.

My final thoughts… I’m putting this out there as the approach I am taking to battle SHB this fall. It may change next season. I’m also not declaring this as the defacto method either. The boric acid is the first-ever “chemical” that I’ll knowingly be putting in to my hives. After a lot of thought, I decided that if I can keep the boric acid contained in the CD case, there should be no ill-affects to the hive. After reading further, I’ve found no cases where the boric acid turns to gas to contaminate the hive either. Last, I surely would love to hear your comments, corrections and suggestions to this body of information as we’re all on the same team when it comes to defending the bees. Good luck this season and death to SHB!

October 12, 2012 Update: Update on my CD Case success. I have to say, I’m not impressed. After 2 weeks, not a single beetle in my trap. I know they are in there because my oil traps (beetle blasters) are working. They have a lot in them, so, I’ll stick with the beetle blasters that have been working.

A reminder that I used these cases on my inner covers under the telescoping cover. I also have to admit… I used arrowroot powder to thicken up the poison mixture so there was less chance of anything coming out of the CD case. A big concern of mine was somehow a beetle making it out of the trap and tracking poison all over the hive. There was no indication of that, but I would have to think there would be one in my trap. I wonder if the arrowroot powder could have reduced the potency of the poison? It was probably a mistake to add it and instead I should have used the honey more sparingly in the honey-pollen mixture. I placed the CD cases on top of the inner cover (because I couldn’t bring myself to putting the poison-filled cases down into my supers. I have seen many beetles on my top covers… so I know they are up there. Regardless of what I could have done wrong, the CD cases are out. I have too much success with the beetle blasters and can rest a whole lot better knowing there is no poison in my hives. There are too many safer avenues that can be taken to battle SHB. Just my opinions 🙂

August 2013, Update: I’ve since moved from the beetle blasters… to the beetle jails. I like how they cling across the top of one frame and can be removed with a frame… vs. pulling out the blaster and having ti put it back in. I found myself always forgetting to put them back in and then having to open the hive again to insert it. The jails can also be cleaned out and reused easier. They are $1 more, so you can decide. I find it’s worth it.

So what’s your flavor when it comes to your beekeeping logs? That is, how do you manage your beekeeping records? Do you even keep logs? The point of this post is to delve in to a couple methods of record-keeping and prepare you for the topic of our March 15th bee meeting next week. We invite all of you to come and share your methods of record-keeping.

Obviously, the way we keep records as beekeepers will vary from one beekeeper to another and it comes down to the individual. First, one has to be compelled to keep logs. Many new beekeepers take logs at the beginning with good intentions, but then let things fade away as they get distracted by the many other amazing phenomenons of the hive. I put myself in that category. It’s just too fun to go through the hive to see what I can see and then glide right over the little things.

I started off using a pen and inspection sheet that can be printed off from just about anywhere. I was pretty diligent for a while but after collecting a sheet for each inspection, I moved to a notebook where I would just note changes, observations or other notes about the hive. Did I see eggs, the queen, swarm cells? I logged capacities and whether or not I knew it was the same queen I saw last time. It’s also important to note brood patterns to help determine if your queen is fizzling out. If she is, your bees may likely supercede her. Or, would you want to manually intervene?

In the spring of 2011, I found Beetight, a nice service that allows you to try before you buy. In fact, you can sign up for a free account and run up to 6 hives. This is what I did for all of 2011. You just launch the web browser on your smart-phone and hit www.beetight.com. Log in to your account and you can view your apiaries, hives, review inspections, etc. all for free. It did everything that I did previously using pen and paper. You can also get on your regular desktop computer and log in to that account to see and do extra things.

This year, however, I purchased the pro account. It costs $15 a year and it gives you the app that actually runs on your iPhone or Android. It’s pretty cool… I have to say. I use the Android version and here’s what I can do.

• Track up to 1000 hives. (of course I’ll never have this many, but for a commercial operator?)
• Print and scan a unique QR code for each hive. Scanning one quickly brings up that hives data.
• Add and review hive inspections instantly.
• Hive inspections consist of tapping check boxes for queen seen, eggs seen, etc. It lets me add notes and lots of other data. I can customize the options I use for hive inspections. I also have a speech to text app on my phone that let’s me speak my notes and it translates them to text. It does a really good job… so, less typing and more talking.
• It also uses my phones GPS to auto-populate the weather and temperature for that day. Using the free version, it had a space to manually enter in the weather and temperature, but I like this as it is more accurate than my previous guesses.
• Since I’m a pretty tactile person, I take a lot of pictures. I can snap a pic and associate it with a hive along with my notes.
• All the data is instantly uploaded to my Beetight account on the web so I can log in, and review the data with a few enhanced functions… like exporting excel sheets and printing hive inspections if I wanted to.

These are just some of the main functions that I, as a tech-head, find easy and convenient. This app has encouraged me to be more diligent in my record keeping by letting me take pictures and make notes about them in the hives. It also makes it really easy to do anywhere and access from anywhere I am.

There is also another completely free app that was shown to me by Tyson Hermes (a recent member of the club) called www.hivetracks.com. It’s free and helps you track multiple hives and multiple bee yards. Tyson set up an account and is trying it out. Hit him up at a meeting to ask him more details about it.

In the end, it all comes down to what works for you. My dad would cringe about my merging technology with beekeeping, saying something like “you get out in the bee yard to get away from your daily routine” and he’s probably right. However, my feeling is that whatever it takes to keep you minding your records is a good thing. You will thank yourself later when you have accumulated enough notes and data that tell you what may have went wrong… or right! How old is that queen in hive 4? Does hive 5 need a new honey super? I say if you are going to do something, do it intentionally. This method of record-keeping fits right with me. 

I wish everyone the best success in 2012 and we hope to see you at the next SIBA meeting!

As a second-year beekeeper, I wanted to share a little information about what I’ll be doing with my bees as spring approaches. I installed two packages of bees in the spring of 2010 and, despite a rocky start (bees attempting to abscond,) I consider my first year a huge success. Finding the local bee club and being able to bounce questions off my club friends any time I needed help was invaluable. I have not found a lot of information on the net specifically about the new beekeeper coming into his/her second year of beekeeping, so I thought I’d put together my intentions based on what I’ve learned thus far. Please keep in mind, this is an account of what I will be doing and by no means is this the definitive guide.

First, I obviously need to be sure my bees made it through the winter. I put a candy board on my hives in the fall and I feel it was a good thing to do. I’ve checked my bees recently and they are still alive. Assuming my bees make it through the winter, the next thing I’ll be thinking about is building up a maximum number of foragers by early spring. I’ve chosen May 1 as the day I want the maximum number of worker bees of foraging age getting the best Spring has to offer. So, I’ll work backwards to understand what I need to do and when I need to do it.

If worker bees take roughly 21 days to emerge from their cell and then another 21 days until their first foraging flight, I will want the queen laying at her maximum 40-42 days before May 1. That puts me around late March to get her started. I’ve already encased pollen patties in the sugar near the top of my candy board in the fall, but of course I’ll be checking it as spring approaches to see if the bees are in to it. If they aren’t, that’s the first manipulation I’ll do. We need to stimulate the queen about a week to 10 days earlier than our 42 days of brood-rearing so that she is closer to laying at her maximum for this brood-rearing period. So, roughly March 15th is when I will ensure the hive has pollen and sugar-water to ensure we have the most formidable foraging population by May 1. Between March 1st and Mother’s Day, the weather in Indiana always has to be played by ear. We are challenged with variable temperature fluctuations that can make or break a hive.

By having a strong population of foragers to gather water, nectar and pollen, we help promote a healthy colony, naturally. Bolstering the bees general health starts by acknowledging the basics. I was pleased to see my bees out on Feb. 12 and 13 doing cleansing flights. 

So, having pollen patties and a 1:1 sugar water feeding regimen going by March 15th is my goal. Cindy’s advice below describes another component to our goal–that is, finding the right time to get the syrup in place of the candy. It shouldn’t happen too early, but if we want our max foraging force, it’s essential that we stimulate hive productivity by a simulated nectar flow.

“The advantage of a syrup feeding w/ thin syrup is that it simulates a honey-flow and encourages both brood and wax production. Again, not something you want to do too early. As long as there are moisture/temperature concerns, you will want to keep the candy on, as I really think that sugar does a lot to help absorb the excess moisture.”

I plan to  keep my candy boards on through March and into April… removing them when the threat of moisture (and cold snaps) ease. I envision first placing bags of sugar water (with pin holes poked on top) in the sugar board where the bees have eaten a void in the candy (I’m certain one hive will have such void). When temperatures begin to warm up above 65 degrees F, I will lift out brood frames and inspect for eggs and sealed brood. As long as we see some temperatures that permit taking a look, I’ll watch for swarm cells and confirm the rate of production is going the way that is intended. I hope to find a decent brood pattern and frames of capped and uncapped brood.

It’s important that we do not rotate the hive bodies too early. During the winter the cluster of bees gradually move up towards the top hive eating stored honey (and also into my candy board that I put on top) So, by the time Spring hits, the cluster is found in the upper hive body, leaving the bottom body empty of bees and honey. The colony will naturally expand in the upper hive bodies and begin to use up the space. The congestion could stimulate the colony to swarm at the next opportunity. So, I will reverse the hive bodies at at to-be-determined time to position the nesting area on the bottom, giving the colony room to expand upwards again. I will take Jim’s advice as to when and how I’ll rotate hive bodies.

“We usually wait until it is warm enough to move each frame. Brood goes to the bottom middle, honey on the sides, empty comb over the brood. We also clean the bottom boards while we are doing this. If you bring an empty box and a clean bottom board with you, this will go pretty quick.”

It would be great to get a nice day in February to take a peek inside to see if we can find eggs and check the general health of the queen (by finding some good frames of brood and noting the pattern.) However, we will not want to be lifting frames out of the hive until we have a day with temperatures at or above 65 degrees F.

In early March, I’ll begin the syrup-feeding regimen mentioned above as long as temperatures allow. Ensuring the hive has a good supply of sugar-water and pollen is essential. They will need the pollen at the right time to begin the brood-rearing cycle we are planning between March and May 1.

Of course, nothing goes like the text books say… so I’ll update with notes and changes if I have any over the next couple of months. Here’s to a successful 2011 season with your bees.