New beekeeper here. I got my first hive and had the bees for just 2 weeks. Ive been anxiously anticipating my first check of them ive been seeing their activity from the outside daily. I was starting to worry as the last 2 days activity has been right down. Today I did my first inspection and it was an absolute horror show 
Maggots absolutely everywhere!!! Thousands. All through the nucs, bottom pest tray was soooo full of them….i enlisted held from the fam, we thought most the bees left as there were very few present in the frames of maggots I was pulling out but low and behold we found the queen in a corner, isolated it in a peg cage I had with a few bees while I cleaned up the horror best we could…also saw and killed about 6 small hive beetles…so I assume the maggots are theirs or maybe fly maggots?
We cut out the infested combs and threw them out, I cried… put boiling water on the maggot piles, scraped off the frames and cleaned the pest tray which had like a kilo of maggots… we found at least 2000 bees in the bottom grill so not all is lost. Ive now put 5 of the 10 cleaned frames in the freezer and the other 5 although scraped and cleaned are just as is in the brood box.Released the queen back in, I also ordered a new brood box for spare parts. I ordered diatomaceous earth to put in the bottom pest tray is that good or should I put veggie oil instead? Also got some beetle traps to put in on top of frames.
What should my next steps be? How did this happen and what can i do to prevent this in future? I hope I don’t need to burn the hive?
I don’t know what to do next and am completely devastated at the wastage of all the once beautiful comb they were working so hard…about 100 dead bees in total
Hi Oly, I’m so sorry to hear that you have a Small Hive Beetle problem already. Have you been in contact with your Nuc supplier to let them know?
It sounds like you are doing a good job of managing the situation.
I would suggest taking everything away except for the centre brood frames. The bees will cope better if they only have a small area to look after. Just make sure to add frames back in once they have started to recover in numbers.
Make sure that you don’t have the Flow Super on the hive. If it has been on the hive, remove it and put the Flow Frames in a freezer for a few days to kill any eggs the beetles have laid. This also gives the bees less area to manage and less space for the Hive beetle to escape to.
At Flow Hive HQ we just use veggie oil in the pest tray, but you can use diatomaceous earth.
We have some more information on how to manage Small Hive Beetle on our website here: Small Hive Beetle - Flow Hive AU
- Bija
Hi Oly, welcome to the forum. Sadly the maggots are hive beetle maggots. The way to save the remaining colony & queen would be to put them into another brood box with frames that have not been slimed on, and has no beetle odor at all. Beetle slime is a bee repellent. If you can acquire a frame of brood in all stages for the colony to continue on with, that would be good.
Where is the hills area? This is a worldwide forum. Country, state & town would be good in your profile.
I am so sorry that has happened, I also would have cried. I do hope you and your bees recover quickly
Linda