SHB, I have to be on my toes now.

[David McLeod]

My latest cut out colony needs watching. Brought them in Friday evening, this morning's check found a half a dozen or so live adult beetles herded into the corners of the bottom board and a decent sized mass of small beetle larvae on the bottom board. The bees were really riding herd on the little bastards and had them corraled. I even watched one fly off with one.
I smashed everything in sight and swapped out bottom boards to get the larvae out of the hive. I figured I might have an issue since this cut out had a comb collapse and beetles and a very small amount of larvae were observed in the original location. Of course it didn't help that I did not get the queen and they failed to use the eggs that came with them to make a new mama. Slipped them a frame of eggs from my donor hive.

[asprince]

Check them EVERY day. Most of the cutouts that I loose are a result of SHB.


Good Luck,

Steve

[AllenF]

Beetles can smell a queenless hive and love them to death.

[hardwood]

Keep them as crowded as possible to minimize the area they have to defend. If they are making a new queen and have lots of cells you will have to be careful that they don't issue a virgin swarm. In this case it might make sense to scratch out all but 1-2 cells.

Scott