Roof Top Hives With Small Hive Beetles

Take care when installing and removing you do not want to spill oil in the hive.

Roof top hives with small hive beetles. The beetles were collected from a weak honey bee colony in charleston county. Fill the 2 larger compartments about 1 3 1 2 full of mineral oil vegetable oil or beetle oil. The beetles will be drawn to the shortening and honey and killed by the wintergreen oil. To use it in a hive you should combine it with some honey and vegetable shortening and then dab a small amount on the frames and corners of your beehive boxes.

Nitidulidae sap beetles. Small hive beetles or aethina tumida first arrive into a hive as adults. Since a summer beehive is loaded with moisture from both bee respiration and drying nectar the hive can quickly become a damp mold infested environment that is not healthy for bees or good for making honey. A ventilated gabled roof is one of my favorite pieces of beekeeping equipment.

The bees are literally out of your hair when they are placed on the roof. Warm air holds moisture and the warmer the air the more moisture it can hold. There are 3 compartments and 2 of them have a small slit in the top. Treat all the beehives in your apiary with this preparation of wintergreen oil for best results.

Because of this it is generally thought that small hive beetles are an issue in less than strong hives. The small hive beetle has also been discovered in florida and georgia in may and june 1998 respectively. Otherwise the colony would have stopped that adult female from flying in in the first place. In july 1998 small hive beetles were first identified in south carolina.

The wintergreen oil kills the small hive beetles and makes them leave the beehive. Both of these pests live in the soil so it makes sense that you d see less of them in a rooftop apiary. The stressed hive is concerned with other things happening within the hive and this is the perfect distraction for the beetle to take up residence. Another advantage of rooftop hives is that they seem less plagued by ants and hive beetles.

This video shows me breaking open a test hive which was using swiffer sheets to control small hive beetles. As bees chase the adult beetles the beetles hopefully scurry inside the slit. An adult female flies into the hive and begins to lay eggs. Studies have shown that the small hive beetle can smell a distressed hive up to 6 miles away so when you open the top of the hive and those pheromones get out the beetles are coming.