Thanks for posting this link Marty, I use DE for silver bullets in the hive and I havent been fussed over where the DE comes from, now I know that pool grade is mostly silica I’ll keep away from it.
I have some limited experience with these plastic hives and personally I don’t like them. Condensation builds up inside the hive and remains there causing mould build up over winter. So much so that I am regularly cleaning out slugs. In the summer they get hot as the insulation properties are not that great. I have one plastic hive left and will be changing it over to timber as soon as the winter temps are on the rise.
There is a hive that has excellent insulative properties and becoming very popular here. Paradise High Density Polystyrene. Developed for the extreme cold in Finland, they have another benefit in insulating against extreme heat. http://www.internationalhoney.com/#!polystyrene-supers/ftct7
A trap that fits in between the frames, 1 in the brood box and another in the super. Bees corral the SHB into the holes where DE awaits.There are a couple of different types and they can really help keep the numbers of SHB down.
like the matel looking one, do you have a link for it? I have a few that I have put oil in. Like the idea of the DE. with the DE, would the beetles be able to leave the trap with DE on them and take it to the honey? if so would it harm the honey?
the comments by some of the beekeepers I know is that SHB will be mostly at the top if you have a screen bottom board becouse the top is where it is darkes. I thought about trying to find a top that would let light in.
Of course bees don’t like the light inside the hive all that much either! We opened a hive this weekend, and before we lifted the top, the noise was “ommmmmm” - sort of a quiet Gregorian chant. Even though we applied some smoke, after the inner cover came off, it was “BBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!” - more like a heavy metal clash!
However, we came with calming blankets. Actually tea towels. Once we placed them across the top of the hive, all was peaceful, bees stayed on the frames, and I only got “bumped” once - no stings, and no visible attempts at stinging.
OK, sorry, I am off-topic, but I just wanted to say that bees can find light challenging too, especially nurse bees and the queen.
Just checked on eBay and found a whole lot of different ones available in the U.S. I think they are called Beetle Blasters over there.
The beetles can leave the trap with DE over them, but it doesn’t seem to affect the bees or the honey. It takes about a day or two for the beetles to die from dehydration.
Tea Towels are the British name for cloths you use to dry dishes after washing them. Traditionally they are a fine weave cotton, with no loops - a bit like cotton chambray fabric or fine weave canvas. The lack of fuzz and loops is important, because bees can get trapped in uneven cloth and panic, but they happily sit on top of canvas.
When David and I used to work difficult, angry bees in the UK, we often took 2 tea towels with us. Each one is about 2 feet by 3 feet in size, and you just drape them over the top of the hive in line with the frames, leaving a space only big enough to examine the frame you need to inspect. The towels stop guard bees from flying up at you from all over the hive, but they also keep the hive temperature and lighting more even, which is kinder to the bees.
When you are done with inspecting one frame, you can easily move the towels across to the next frame without exposing the whole hive to bright sunshine. It can make an enormous difference to the demeanor of the bees, and to the speed with which they recover after an inspection, so the tea towels are now a standard part of our beekeeping tool kit!
WOW!! I saw someone post a YouTube video using towels in the winter time to help keep the heat in, but never thought about using it all the time. Additionally I was thinking a towel, was a towel and not thinking about the smoothness or the loops. Again and again it’s proven that experience comes from real practice. I’ve got the statement on several forums other websites, I read it somewhere and had to requote it
Good judgment comes from experience experience comes from bad judgment.
I believe we can take this to BeeKeeping to
Good beekeeping comes from experience and experience comes from bad beekeeping
So let me repeat and be corrected, used 2 towels with no loops, smooth, when opening up the hive anytime of the year.
This should help keep bee’s calmer
The question I’ve got which frame should I remove 1st if I plan on removing all the frames and using the towel method. Does it matter? Also is there a convenience method is well. Should I remove the middle frame and use both towels or have one towel draped over the entire frame except one in and pull that frame out and then slowly slide the one towel across and add the other towel.
Yes I know I ask really detailed questions that probably don’t have a direct answer and I’m never surprised when they do.
There is a similar one used in flight training - “A superior pilot is one who uses their superior judgment to avoid getting into a situation which would require their superior skills…”
Exactly right. That is what I like to do. Not many people do it, but it works well for me.
I don’t think it matters, but I do it this way. I lay the first tea towel over 7 frames, leaving the frame by the wall exposed. I lift out and inspect that frame. If the queen isn’t on it (she rarely is in my hives), I set it on the frame rest on that side of the hive, and cover the frame rest and the first gap with the tea towel. I then gently roll the first towel back to expose the next frame in, moving the second tea towel to just expose the frame I want to inspect next.
I will try to take some photos with a spare box and empty frames later, so you can see what I mean.
Sounds like a great way to control the SHB. Good luck. I’m up to 21. I’m amazed the bees are moving them out through the meshed bottom board onto the cor-flute.
The shiny stuff is some of the fermented honey(which is no good). Actually, there is an air bubble under the surface from the fermentation which helps to create the shiny appearance.
Oh Larry, how awful!! I had no idea how fast that could happen So sorry! I’d be interested to hear what you’ll do at this point, if you care to post. Good luck & hope your hive recovers!
Thanks @Larry_MI for posting this, a lot of people wouldn’t, but it really helps to be able to see what happens/to look for. Certainly lots of the little b_ _ _ _ _s & a shame to lose all that beautiful looking honey. Was it just this frame? Or were they in your Flow frames too?
I ended up loosing the whole hive. Any chamber that honey in it ended up with the larvae. A few days later, the queen deserted.
I moved the hive to a sunnier location and made sure I didn’t have any humus material below the hive. I believe I talked with eight to nine apiaries and got pretty much the same advice for location and soil conditions - 1) sunny location-you can always vent to help keep the girls cooler in the summer time. 2) the soil should be of sand or gravel. The SHB needs a cool, damp humus soil to develop in. This was my big mistake. I had my hive down closer to the swamp and the soil was perfect for the metamorphosis of the larvae. A couple of apiaries suggested that I sterilize the soil by digging a trench around the hive about a foot away. The trench was to be a shovel wide and a shovel deep. Wait until dark and then saturate the ground with a malathion solution in the trench and than add the dirt. I figured at this point I would need to start over again so I just moved to a new location. I have gravel for our location here in Michigan so the new location was much better.
However, I added about a foot of ‘sharp’ sand about a foot and a half out from the hive location and I also added some DE to the mix. If the buggers should ever return and they do make it out of the hive to complete their transition, I would hope to heck that they slice there little bodies up in the process.
One of the people I spoke with was the vp of SEMBA. This is where I bought my new nuke from. SEMBA - South East Michigan Bee Association. I am keeping the hive real tight right now and I added a top feeder seeing how the nectar flow is very little right now. Lot’s of pollen right now and the addition of the feeder will also help in getting the girls to build more cells thus creating a stronger hive.
I also think that I added the Flow box too soon. This drew the attention away from the brood box and the girls protecting the two honey frames that were in the brood box. Before I add the flow frame next year, I will have two supers full of the bees before I look to draw off any honey.
My intentions originally were just have great pollinization for next year for my fruit trees. I have three apple, five cherry and a five on one pear-four grafts on the original bartlet. Some times the weather will be too cool while the blossoms are out to get a good set of the flowers and having them near by would help with this.
OBTW - my Flow hive didn’t have one larvae. I extracted what was left in there but half of the cells were not capped and I assume they had not been reduced. The honey was a little thinner than what I was expecting. I heated the honey on a hot plate until it got to one hundred farenheight and then I had a fan blow across the surface to help in the water reduction. Everything seemed to have turned out okay, I haven’t died yet from consuming it - yet . However, I will not use this honey in any way to feed the girls. I read somewhere about a chemical change when heating the honey beyond a certain temp that is toxic to the them.
We opened a hive this weekend, and before we lifted the top, the noise was “ommmmmm” - sort of a quiet Gregorian chant. Even though we applied some smoke, after the inner cover came off, it was “BBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!” - more like a heavy metal clash! 
So sorry! I’d be interested to hear what you’ll do at this point, if you care to post. Good luck & hope your hive recovers!
. However, I will not use this honey in any way to feed the girls. I read somewhere about a chemical change when heating the honey beyond a certain temp that is toxic to the them.
