You might like to get small hive beetle traps in place, because the blighters can ravage your hives quickly, especially if you are not expecting them.
Lone
Well you were right on the money Lone, the SHB hit, and they hit HARD.
Here's the story of my hives:
A friend of a friend was giving away 3 hives (1 double & 2 triples). They had not been opened, let alone maintained, for over 2 years. We loaded the 3 hives onto the back of the ute (no stings) and took them to another friends 10 acre property where we carefully, but not so gracefully unloaded the 3 hives (5 stings to my head) and put them on a hive stand with 1 other hive already there.
After leaving them settle for 2 weeks we extracted the honey.
After another 2 weeks I inspected them, and replaced a brood frame in each with some new foundation to give them something new and straight, rather than the very old very dark brown comb currently in them. I saw a few SHB but both of my friends assured me they weren't of an excessive number and not to worry.
Another 2 weeks later (Friday just gone) I opened them to check again. 2 hives were good and strong with a few SHB running around trying to avoid my hive tool as I attempted to crush as many as I could. The next 2 hives were a different story. As soon as I opened them up I could see that the frames were shiny and slimy and I knew from my lurking and googling over the past few weeks that this was not going to be good. On taking out some frames from the honey super they were devastated with SHB larvae. I shuddered to think what the frames in the brood box were like, and to my dismay they were even worse. It was like the frames were alive with a slimy gooey wriggling mass of grubs. I could not find any bee larvae or eggs, the queen had completely stopped laying, but then there was nowhere clear for her to lay. I cleaned out the brood box as best I could, took every single frame with SHB in it, and replaced it with a frame of drawn comb and some foundation.
The last hive had absconded. The queen that I had found and marked the week before was gone, along with her loyal followers. There was maybe 200 valiant bees remaining, fighting their best against the SHB and larvae. I wrapped all contaminated frames and supers in plastic, then soaked them in detergent and water over night.
A couple of days later thanks to SlickMick, I have transferred the weak hive into a 4 frame Nuc, and thankfully they were looking good with some eggs laid, some nectar and pollen collected, and had started to draw out one of the sheets of foundation.
I was in the process of building some new bottom boards with built in SHB traps, but unfortunately it looks like I was a couple of weeks too late. Needless to say these will be going onto the hives as soon as I have them built!
ML
