OK...brief update....
Hit the vendor hall for a quick pass before the convention kicked off this morning and had a brief conversation with the folks at the Beetle Baffle table.
The concept is pretty straight forward. The beetles either can't, or have extreme difficulty, crawling past the angled down section of aluminum. As to the "can't they just fly" argument...The answer was simply, much like bees, they fly outside of the hive, but not inside, because of the restricted space....Which sounds plausible to me.
The concept being that the bees will quickly adapt and learn to chase all the SHB down to the bottom of the hive instead of up to the top where they usually corral them.
I guess my biggest reservation would be price point...$16.00 for four small strips of aluminum, strikes me as a little high...But maybe I'm just cheap, although I prefer frugal! :laugh: