Some exciting news and research on the control of SHB. A good presentation. I actually started getting excited watching this. Easy to sit through presentation.
Hi Al, I thought you were going to talk about the new one that I recently heard about. Would you believe that it involves putting peppermint lollies in the hive. Apparently peppermint lollies drive them out of the hive. The only downside is that bees eat them, so therefore they need to be replaced. I think they last a little while. I guess to overcome that, we could put them inside a small cage, so that bees can’t eat them.
Have you heard of this strategy?
I have heard of it Jeff. I was excited that this treatment actuality knocks of the beetles in various stages, including in the ground. Also, the bees seem to tolerate very high doses of the treatment to no affect. But it’s in the early stages of investigations and development so the peppermint story would be another good control.
On another note, my knee replacement is ever so slowly getting better. I can see a glimmer of light, which I’m hoping is the one at the end of the tunnel.
Hi Al, I just finished watching the video. It’s all very interesting. I’m sticking to my strategy of doing nothing, which is working well. However it does entail keeping beetles in mind with everything I do, to make sure they can’t lay any eggs.
Hopefully you’ll be back on your feet before long. Are your hives filling up? It’s been a bit hectic for me over the past few weeks. I’ve caught up, so I can relax for a few days. Depending on what the weather does, it’s shaping up to get hectic again by the end of next week.
I got called out to a swarm of a 150 bees yesterday at a service station, north bound on the Bruce highway. The bloke paid me $80 to take them away. I didn’t even lock them in the box for the trip home, because there was no queen. Wilma reckons, & I agree that a beekeeper with bees on board must have stopped for some reason during the night. Bees from the hives must have been attracted to the lights, resulting in them being left behind. So consequently they grouped up on a red bollard that workers were using.
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I agree re the little swarm. I’m always rescuing bees out if my kitchen at night because they were attracted to the lights. Occasionally I find one very tired girl in the morning on her last legs. So I put a drop of honey on my finger and out comes the long tongue. Before too long she’s off back home.
With the beetles I think it’s a good indication of the strength of the hive by the number of beetles running free, or propolised under something. I do use the silver bullet traps which seem to work well, but might investigate further the peppermint lollies. At least I might put them in my car.
If I find a hive with a lot of beetles I could experiment.
I haven’t checked my hive for 4 weeks now post op. But I was flat out beforehand to limit the chance of problems. I’ll be checking my backyard hives in about two weeks to see how there’re going. At this stage I might find that’ll be two weeks too long for a check by what I’ve been hearing. Don’t think I could physically do anything before that.
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