SHB blue chux traps

Cheers Freebee. My dad took the photos on my phone. I’ll get out the good camera next time and someone with a steady hand to take the pics.

I think where I went wrong was, inside the nuc the bees had built some comb on top of the frames. I think I should have scraped that off before putting the chux on there. I perhaps pulled the chux apart a little too much allowing the bees to tear it up. Next time I will try just tearing small holes rather than stretching the whole thing so much.

Here are some more pics of the other frames, albeit the same quality.

Thanks for the extra photos. By the way I didn’t mean to suggest that the photos were of poor quality, this is just the effect of trying to expand photos uploaded from phones and uploaded on to a little lap top at the other end - it can be a bit hard to get the full picture sometimes. Still pretty amazing technology that allows us to discuss these concerns from across the world if need be! And your dad’s photos are as good as most we receive :slight_smile: I’ll take a look at these latest ones shortly…

No worries freebee. :+1:

I am worried about Chux inside the hive, especially below the queen excluder. What happens if the queen gets caught? :sob: I think Cedar suggested putting them below the screened bottom board. Just as they catch SHB, they can also trap bees, as you have demonstrated. Any thoughts from @Freebee2 or @Bianca on this? I would hate for @SeanGal to lose his queen near the end of the season… :astonished:

Hi Dawn. I hadn’t though about that. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Perhaps I will open the hive today and replace the chux on top with a new one that is not so pulled apart and also scrape that wax off of the top of the frames. I might remove the side pieces too as they don’t seem to have caught any beetles. I doubt the queen will get stuck as she shouldn’t be working to remove the chux but what would I know lol.

I think the oil in the bottom is more effective than the chux would be as it has caught more beetles. Although perhaps that was beetles coming in through the rear vents which can’t happen now with the fly screen I added.

Cheers

Oh I forgot to mention I have not yet put the honey super on top so no queen excluder fitted yet. I assume that is correct not to put it on there until the honey super is fitted.

Queens can wander all over the frames, especially when they are transiting from one to another to find space to lay. I would not put a Chux inside my hive in any space that the queen could get to. However, this is your hive, so of course you can do what you think is right. :wink:

You are correct that you do not need the queen excluder until you have a super in place. :blush:

Right. The chux method was advised to me from the people that sold me the nuc. The bees seemed to be stuck in the chux with the wax from the top of the frames. I imaging they were pushing off the wax on the top of the frames as they tried to remove the chux and then the wax on their legs was getting stuck in the chux. Thanks for your advice. Its a fun hobby with so much to think about.

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I’d be worried about the fibers from that chux getting all over the place. I’ve been doing a lot of beekeeping with an urban beekeeper from Sydney with over 100 hives throughout the city. She has beetles in practically every hive- but does nothing other than manually kill them if she sees them when when she inspects. No traps, no beetles bases- nothing. the key to beating beetles is to maintain strong colonies. If a colony becomes week it must be strengthened in some way. In her hives beetles are not really an issue- they are kind of like wax moths. They wait and they lurk eeeking out an existence.

However her hives are well maintained and regularly inspected. If a colony loses a queen and become weak she either condenses it down to a smaller box, requeens- or merges it with a stronger colony.

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Just completed a hive inspection and found SHB in the bottom white tray (about 6) :frowning: and just wanting some advise on what other beekeepers do to eradicate them. If using the blue chux can I put this in the bottom tray or others have used oil. Could you please advise what type of oil? Also, I am very concerned to find on the last frame I inspected, a large number of ‘drone’ cells (picture attached). I also have been unable to find my queen (she is marked with a green dot, apparently a new queen - this is what the beekeeper told me where I purchased my nuc). I was wondering if he sold me an under performing queen as there are a lot of empty cells which I thought would have been filled by now. I installed the 5 frame nuc into my hive on 27 December 2020. Any advice would be very welcomed!

IMG_4421|690x460

If the person who sold you your queen followed convention then:

Will (1, 6) White
You (2, 7) Yellow
Raise (3, 8) Red
Good (4, 9) Green
Bees (5, 0) Blue

Did you see any eggs or young larvae?

The solid block of drone comb on an outer frame, in drone sized cells is likely normal, queen-laid, unfertilized eggs.

Hive looks fairly populous, this is your best defense against the SHB.

Any vegetable oil will do.

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Hi KSJ. I’m a newbie myself so hopefully others do chime in.

I obtain free used oil from fish and chip shops (canola oil, rice bran oil or whatever i can find) which I use to make White Oil to use as an insecticide (like eco oil only not made from petroleum products) in my gardens. I add about 500mL of organic liquid soap to about 20L of oil and keep that in a 20L drum (used dishwashing liquid drums also available for free from behind restaurants etc). Bunnings sell $2 taps that screw into these drums so I have white oil on tap. I used this in the bottom of my hive. Maybe the soap isn’t needed but it may help trap insects that land on it as it is a surfactant.

I am going to keep using the oil in the bottom tray and blue chux over the top for now but others may disagree.

Some say you can just ignore the SHB but I don’t want my bees feeding their larvae and wasting time chasing them around the hive, my bees have work to do :wink:. My Northern NSW climate is hot and humid and we have a short mild winter so SHB might be worse here than in Sydney for example.

When I spotted my queen she was making a run for the bottom of the frame as soon as I lifted it. They will hide from you so just because you didn’t find her it doesn’t mean she isn’t in there.

I think the general consensus is don’t panic about SHB but try to minimise their numbers as the methods are cheap and easy.

@chau06 I have attached photos of the beetle excluder I bought that you asked about.

These are available from honeybeehives.com.au for $20 If my memory serves me correctly.

Yes, the person said he marked the queen green (only colour he had), but said she was 6 months old :frowning: Interestingly he hasn’t replied to my messages about local bee keeping either!

The queen should be good for at least two years. Some commercial beekeepers replace their queens each year but that’s probably overkill.

Hi Karen, I noticed that at least one of your frames is foundation less. Question… is the frame with the large amount of drone brood a foundation less frame? I have had limited experience with foundation less but always found them to produce excessive amounts of drone comb.

@TimG Yes all frames are foundationless. The nuc was 5 frames foundationless and the 3 new frames I installed were foundationless, so that last frame (with drone cells) is all new comb the bees have built since 27 December.

That is all ok, you will need to expect a larger population of drones though. I helped my sister inspect her foundationless hive on the weekend (which I must add is doing well filling the super in under 3 weeks) to find the hive possibly 1/4 full of drones. I could only imagine how well they could actually be doing if they weren’t supporting all those blugers.
My sister likes doing it the natural way but did let me pop in a couple of frames with foundation to gain a bit of worker population.

I wonder if hives with foundationless frames and more drone brood within the frames produce less drone brood burr comb outside of the frame margins (that always gets damaged during inspections).

That’s kind of steep for a $.02 piece of plastic…

Does that include the :dark_sunglasses:?

I’m not sure I understand how this stops beetles… at least not any more than an entrance reducer would?