I did a Ferrell Bee removal last week to discover that the conditions were unfortunately too gone to save. 1 of the things bee hives can get is small hive beetles. These beetles originally are from Aftica and ended up in Florida I think in the 80's. The beetles have spread to the southern states of the US.
It's a bee keepers nightmare. My nightmare was seeing the fly's on the outside of the Nuc Box bee hive I had the bees in. Only to discover that the frames of bee comb I had transfered over had 50 to 75 percent small hive beetle larvae. The larvae eats comb, nectar, honey and pollen and craps as it goes ruining everything and making it a huge slime goo mess. This leaves a putrid odor too. The bees won't go on the comb that is infested. My Ferrell Bees were on the inside walls of the Nuc Box
I ended up removing the frames to a temporary box. Got my torch out and got as many bees as I could to fly away. I torched the inside of the box. This killed any larvae of the beetles and the adult beetles. I then took the frames and walked quite a ways distance from the bee yard. Not many bees were on the frames. The bees flew off and I wrapped the bee frames and placed them in the freezer. I froze them up until trash day today Thursday. I don't even want to clean these frames up. I can build more easily and have lots of wood to do this. 4 frames is about $.50 if I had to guess. Commercially bought frames are about $4.50 Ea with shipping to your door. You can see why most bee keepers just make frames. Your only talking glue and nails if you have free wood.
So I doubt I will ever bring back a Ferrell colony to the bee yard again with out quarantine procedure of 3 months. It's a pain to have something happen to me like this. Hopefully the other 2 bee hives don't get Hive beetles, but it's inevitable I think.
Thanks for sharing your painful experience. It's a cheap lesson for the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your painful experience. It's a cheap lesson for the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteGood to know. Thanks for sharing.
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