I’ve been browsing through a number of the posts on this forum for the past couple of months whilst I have been waiting for my Bees to arrive and now they are here I thought it was time to say hello. I am a first time bee keeper so have been absorbing as much bee keeping material as I could over the past few months in preparation for today - my first time to open up a hive to see how they are going.
Many thanks to @JeffH who established a split for me and gave me a 101 introduction to bee keeping.
The posts on this forum have been very helpful in getting my hive established and building on my limited practical knowledge of bee keeping. Things have gone very smoothly to date with the introduction of the hive on the weekend. The bees have been very active and the hive itself seems to be well established - and surprisingly quiet when I was handling them.
I realigned the frames and removed some excess comb that was being built on top of the frames - all frames seemed to be covered in bees so I will leave them until the weekend to check how their building is going - all being well I will get to put the flow super on this summer.
@jeffh, I meant to say thanks for the useful lesson on SHB in your observation hive. I took out the bottom board and six small SHB (relatively small compared to the ones I saw in the observation hive) were running around. I finished them off and will keep a watch on the board over the next few weeks to see if I find any more mature beetles.
Hi Paul, you’re most welcome. I don’t use any traps whatsoever. The trick is to make sure there is sufficient workers protecting the brood & pollen. Also make sure you don’t leave any bees wedged between frames & frames & the sides of the hive because they lay eggs in dead & trapped, dying bees. The bees will quickly get rid of loose dead bees, so you don’t have to worry about those.
The beetle wont lay eggs in comb that is empty of brood or pollen.
Anyway good luck with it Paul, I’ll ttyl, bye
PS, Oh yeah, by the way. All the beetles you find are mature, regardless of the size. The large beetles got a good long feed during the larvae stage, hence large beetles. The small beetles didn’t get a good prolonged feed, or it was cut short during the larvae stage, so therefore they don’t develop into big beetles. House flies do the same thing. It’s a good strategy to keep the species going. However, from studies conducted in Texas. U.S., apparently the beetles under a certain size cannot reproduce.