Thank you for this annotation, Rodderick
For us Brits with no SHB yet it’s helpful to see some affected comb. All our bee inspectors do is show us squirming slime-outs!
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Thanks for all the advice folks. It is very much appreciated. This afternoon, I went through my hive one frame at a time from the back to the front’ I saw a few hive beetles scurrying away and I did my best to pick them off the frames. Some of them dropped away as I came close but I squished plenty. What I did notice was that many of the beetles migrated towards the front of the hive as I checked each frame. When I lifted our the front frame, it must have had 50 beetles scurrying around. I couldn’t possible squish them all. There were very few bees on this front frame. It was mainly partly drawn foundation with some nectar.
Tomorrow I might put the front frame in a plastic bag and freeze it if I can get the bees off easily and gently.
I didn’t really know what “sunken caps” looked like so I didn’t do the matchstick thing. That will happen next inspection. Thanks to Rodderick for labeling my pic. Now I know what to look for.
My bees had cleaned out quite a bit more brood and chewed out the cells down to the centre. Perhaps this is what the experts call "hygenic behaviour?
Thanks again for everyone’s help. It’s fantastic having your support.
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Today was a magic Byron day, warm and sunny. The bees brought in loads of pollen in the morning and carted out dead larvae and dead bees. The hive is on an elevated bank and I watched one bee flying off with one of her dead sisters. She took off and flew downwards at an angle of about 30º. I presume she dropped he sister about 5metres away. My eyes aren’t good enough to see.
I scrounged the toolbox in our motorhome for some needle nosed pliers and used them to squish beetles. They are much more deadly than tweezers.
About 5 this afternoon I did another hive inspection, squishing every beetle I could find. I was planning to do the matchstick thing with some sunken brood caps but the bees seem to have chewed them out. I guess that’s good. I noticed some smaller bees with bright, shiny, new looking wings and imagined they might be newly hatched workers. I saw very few hive beetles and squished most of them with the needle nosed pliers. I was ready to bag the front frame and freeze the infesting beetles but there were none. I guess that’s good.
As I’ve already noted on another thread, I accurately counted 81 dead hive beetles in my 3 beetle traps. I reloaded the traps with fresh canola oil, to about 1/3 full.
I’ve inspected my girls every day for three days and I think it’s time I left them alone for a while. I plan to check them in a week to see how their numbers are ( building hopefully).
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Good going @sciencemaster - vigilance will pay off
Hi Bob, keep up the good work. You shouldn’t have any newly hatched bees at this stage. I don’t know what’s happening to those bees your looking at. When I mentioned cutting out the affected comb, I meant cut the section of comb out of the frame. It’s not the beetle you need to freeze, it’s the beetle eggs & tiny beetle larvae. Keep checking the combs for further damage & grub activity. It’s the grub activity that will eventually drive the bees out of your hive. All the stuff I mentioned in an earlier post is all the things I had to do myself a couple of years ago to get on top of it & it worked. I wouldn’t leave it for a week. I would be checking every day. Good luck with that, cheers.
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For any novice who might be interested
Having delved into my latest book on bee biology I now discover that virgin queens do have some choice in a very roundabout way.
Mating occurs in the air in defined areas called drone congregation areas (DCAs) There may be quite a few of these areas around apiaries and often contain between 10,000 to 16000 drones chancing their luck. Drones can fly only for an hour or so and because their chances of mating are so slim they preferentially fly to the nearest. Queens ready to mate do not need to be in the air for long as mating occurs very quickly and a queen can get mated ten times in five minutes. They therefore fly to DCAs further away, minimising mating with their own brothers.
Absolutely fascinating stuff.
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Thanks rodderick, I was going to ask for the same 
Sounds like the bees are doing the right thing, and getting rid of the bad stuff.
Good to see the progress of your hive I’m glad to see the forum is working as it should - to help the newbee’s out
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I needed to visit my dear old 91 year old Dad so I’ve been away for a while. First job this afternoon was to check my chooks still had plenty of water and feed which they did. Then it was to the beehive for an inspection. There were plenty of bees and not much more damaged comb if any. Saw plenty of capped brood and lots of empty cells. Today is the 19th day since Queen Flo was released from her plastic prison so I’m hoping at least some of those empty cells indicate newly emerged worker bees.
I actually happened to see Queen Flo. She had a little white dot painted on her back so perhaps I may be able to spot her more easily from now on. Most of my time was spent chasing down SHB and squishing them with the needle nosed pliers.
I emptied the 3 AJs beetle eaters again. This time there were 85 trapped beetles. It’s more than last time but over a much longer period of time. I replaced the traps and the oil and added an Apithor beetle trap the the bottom of the hive. I’m not at all comfortable using chemical control but I really do have a serious problem with these pests. Always important to follow the instructions when using chemical controls so here they are. https://www.apithor.com.au/images/pdf/ApithorLabel.pdf
G’day Bob, that’s great news that you have kept on top of the beetle problem. You should see the first bees hatching 21 days after the first egg was laid. Those empty cells maybe a result of the bees discarding dead brood, possibly damaged by shb. They ARE destructive little creatures. You must have a good worker population there to have been able to keep ahead of the beetle. I have to give some credit to the traps also. I’m looking forward to further updates, cheers:)
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@sciencemaster it can be a worry with something like that going on - vigilance pays off. you may not see the fruits of you labours until 1 or 2 cycles of SHB have run through - don’t forget they have a 21 day advance on you.
Keeping on top of the now will pay off later.Keep on Keeping on as they say!
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Another check of the hive today and very few beetles to be found. I still squished as many as I could catch.
What I did see were pupal cases in the brood so I’m hoping that means I have new worker bees hatching. I’m seeing plenty of capped brood but none of it appears to have the sunken problem people alerted me to earlier. It’s amazing how easy it is for me to distinguish capped brood from capped honey after Just a few weeks. Still early days for me yet and plenty of things to learn.
I think learning to inspect honeycomb is a bit like learning to read. I can pick out a few of the words in the honeycomb but I’m not yet a fluent honeycomb reader.
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@sciencemaster[quote=“sciencemaster, post:79, topic:3807”]
I think learning to inspect honeycomb is a bit like learning to read. I can pick out a few of the words in the honeycomb but I’m not yet a fluent honeycomb reader.
[/quote]
What a wonderful analogy! Some words we need a Dictionary or Thesaurus for as well
And often the answers are colloquial!
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Thank you Valli.
I did get something wrong a few days ago and I most definitely should have known better. I had been feeding the girls with a litre of syrup every other day but they had gone “off” the last few feedings. Whereas previously they had been slurping up their one litre ration in half a day, their appetites seemed to have really plummeted. They were taking more than twice as long.
I wondered why.
I had made them up another ration of syrup but this time I made it at double strength. I bought 6kg of white sugar as per instructions and dissolved it in 3 litres of hot water. Easy peasy.
Before feeding, I was diluting half a litre of the syrup with half a litre of water.
Wrong! I was diluting it too much.
When I first dissolved the 6kg of sugar in 3 litres of water, I ended up with about 7 litres of lovely thick syrup. The sugar had dissolved really easily and I was very pleased with myself. That’s when I made the mistake.
I made a 2:1 syrup with 6kg of sugar and 3litres of water. For a 1:1 syrup I need 6kg of sugar and 6litres of water. In other words I need another 3litres of water.
I have 7 litres of syrup at 2:1 and I need to add 3litres of water. Conveniently it just happens to add up to 10litres. To make a liter of 1:1 syrup I need 700mL of 2:1 syrup and 300mL of water.
Today the girls went crazy over their sugar party. I didn’t put the timer on it but I reckon they polished their ration off in 3 hours. This afternoon, half a dozen bees were buzzing the inside of the feeder bottle.
@sciencemaster In times of Comb build up, Spring and Brood kick start it’s 1:1, Going into winter 2:1
Actually this is where the confusion is:
USA 1 pint = 16oz and 1:1 is equal
UK and Australia 1 pint = 20oz and 1:1 is NOT equal
But some Brits just don’t get it and still do pint:pound
I do = 1Kg:1Lt
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Sorry This is the same Stubsy “I don’t feed my bees I just let them get on with it!”
Bad weather makes us all bee feeders I forgive you Stubsy! LOL
Dexter is right about measuring feed. Plastic container add sugar mark level and add hot water to level. Not rocket science. I think far too much is made of different concentrations of sugar at different times of year and for different purposes. Flower nectar sugar levels vary widely and the bees cope with it all. I might add though that giving bees a very weak sugar solution in late winter and early spring can be helpful when bees can’t readily access water and they need to dilute crystallised winter stores