Whether has been so hot and humid here. I can see more hive bettles that I would like to in the windows of the flow frames - has anyone else in the area seen an increase in SHB in local area?
I’m not in Lake Macquarie, I’m in Sydney with pretty similar weather. Yes I’ve seen an increase in SHB but I think that’s just to be expected with the humidity in mid -late summer. This is my second season and it was the same last summer - I was trapping lots in my bottom board oil trap but they pretty much disappeared over winter only to return again summer.
I saw your other post asking for help managing them. Its sounds like you are doing the right things. I also have a silver bullet in the brood box but find more success with a home made oil trap I made from a baking tray modified to fit snugly underneath the mesh bottom.
I’ll let someone else with more experience give you some better assistance with tips for managing SHB.
I know it is so frustrating to watch from the end panel and see a bee chase a SHB into the Flow frame cell but not be able to drag it out - make you want to reach in there yourself and squish it for the bee!
Thanks Oatkir! I also used Cedar’s upside down fleece table cloth on the corflute board - in 24 hours it caught 35 beetles and some larvae. Is there anything that can be used to treat the soil around the hive safely to kill incubating larvae?
Wow, that’s a lot of beetles in 24hrs!
I tried the fleece table cloth at the start but I found that if I didn’t check it everyday the bees would start trying to bring the fleece fibres up into the hive through the screen and the board would get very hard to remove. That’s why I went with the oil trap as I can leave it for a week or so without any issues.
I have a concrete slab under my hive so no soil to treat and it would be hard to find something that killed the larvae but not the bees. I’ve heard people have some success with chickens pecking about the soil below the hive…