I found this on the outside near the flow caps and there is evidence of more. I have oil in my tray and there is a plentiful supply of hive beetles carcasses and casings.
Hiya Jacqui, welcome to the forum.
Keep the colony strong.
I live out west 50km from Coonabarabran. We don’t have cockroaches in the house. Maybe too dry. Have never seen one in horse feed or dog food. If it is a cockroach does it hurt the bees?
Australian native cockroaches tend to stay outdoors by relative comparison to their German counterparts that tend to frequent indoors. Just because you haven’t seen them indoors doesn’t mean they aren’t around your house somewhere…
Keep your hive strong and you should be fine.
We get those in unused hives by the thousands. The chickens love them!
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Ready to quit. Hive only a month old. Bees doing their best but being overcome by these small hive beetles. Used the swiffer sheets to no avail. Opened bottom board today and it was full of shb larvae. Cleaned it and trying mineral oil there now. Not a newbie to bee keeping. Kept bees in the 1980s and there were no shb to deal with then.
Flowhive was an expensive experience. I enjoyed putting it together but I would never do it again. I doubt that I will get one drop of consumable honey. It’s a great idea and I’m sure that many people will do better. However it is a continuing source of disappointment for me. Every time I open the hive, I see something I don’t like. I have spent a ridiculous amount of time watching YouTube videos about the flowhive and these problems. When the bees are dead or gone, I will clean up the brood box and try to sell what I have left. If something isn’t done about these pests, I wonder how long flowhives will continue selling.
SHB can be a big problem and especially so in a new colony that is low on bee numbers. As the colony becomes stronger they can better manage the SHB numbers. They are found in any type of hive in an area they are found so they are not a Flow Hive problem.
I use ‘beetle blaster’ traps with one each side of the brood between the 1st and 2nd frames in and there are other effective traps available. I add traps if I see more than a dozen SHB during an inspection, I would love to not see them but accept that as wishful thinking. A bee keeper friend not far away doesn’t use traps and it is nothing to see 50 to 100 SHB in any of his hives, but he still has good harvest amounts of honey.
Cheers