# Hive beetles question.



## Vahomesteaders (Jun 4, 2014)

My wife and I have been keeping bees for years. Had a few problems here and there with mites and one loss. But today I seen something I have never seen. 4 days ago I checked the hives and all was well. Doing great and working right along. Well today my son said dad all the bees are dead. I went down and sure enough the ground was littered with dead bees. I quickly went into the hive. There were less than 20 bees and the Queen. She looked healthy. But then I seen hundreds of hive beetle larva everywhere. But only 2 little hive beetles. Then I noticed two large red and black beetles under all the bees on the bottom board. Now I've seen hive beetles before. But never seen them kill and entire hive in mere days. Any ideas?


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## Avalon Acres (Dec 1, 2006)

Some questions:
Did you go into the hive 4 days ago?
If so, were there comb cappings on the bottom of the hive? Comb cappings (crumbs) now?
Has the hive been treated for varroa mites in the past?
Any honey left in hive?
My experience has been that hives become weak in my area
(Alabama) late summer due to a combination of varroa mites, dearth (lack of flow) slows brood production, hive numbers fall, and robbing commences. A strong hive can typically manage small hive beetles (shb). Robbing is not always noticeable, especially if the attacked hive is weak. Robbers may come and go at will with little or no resistance. Dead bees as described indicate that hive was likely robbed. Once robbed, small hive beetles flourish and flood the hive with larvea quickly.
You will need to freeze frames at this point to kill shb.


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## TxGypsy (Nov 23, 2006)

Sounds like chemical exposure. Generally that is the culprit when you have a pile of dead bees.

The hive beetles are noticeable because there are suddenly no bees to keep them in check. The bees in a hive are constantly battling beetles and removing their larvae. It doesn't take many days for the beetles to get the upper hand.


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## Vahomesteaders (Jun 4, 2014)

Around here we typically treat for varroa mites in September. And there was no sign of them. 4 days ago they were capping off the super. The box was full of brood. They were as active as ever. I didn't check the bottom of the box as this hive has a screen board bottom. It is also a first year hive I just bought this spring. I don't know what chemicals it could be. I have about 900 acres around our farm that consist of only cattle and hay production. No chemicals are used. I had a neighbor down the road come over who has been keeping bees for 20 plus years. He said he had never seen anything like it.


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## greg273 (Aug 5, 2003)

Well I can sympathize with you, had the same thing happen this spring. Caught and hived a swarm, it was doing great and looking good this spring, until it wasn't.... noticed less activity at the hive entrace, opened and it up and there was only about a hundred bees, thousands of dead ones, cappings everywhere, and thousands of wriggling larvae in a soupy mess on the bottom board. Yuck what a mess. I also noticed the remaining bees were infested with varroa mites, so its a good thing the hive died out, really.... Luckily they didn't spread the mites to the other hives...
More adventures in beekeeping. I am just grateful to have harvested anything this year, last year was light and lost half my hives over the winter. First time in years thats happened!


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## TxGypsy (Nov 23, 2006)

I have some of my worst issues with chemical exposure in cattle areas. Seems like everyone is spraying with herbicides now. They are either spraying the whole pasture with a boom sprayer or they are spraying the fence lines.


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## greg273 (Aug 5, 2003)

My philosophy with hive beetles is to not open the hives as much. Seems the bees do a pretty good job of corraling them in the corners of the inner cover and top cover if I don't keep breaking the propolis seal. I noticed more SHB in the hive last year when I was opening them up more.
Apart from adding extra supers a time or two, I really only opened the hives twice this season, once in the spring to see how they wintered, and once to harvest, and the hive beetle numbers were way down compared to last year.


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## Vahomesteaders (Jun 4, 2014)

greg273 said:


> My philosophy with hive beetles is to not open the hives as much. Seems the bees do a pretty good job of corraling them in the corners of the inner cover and top cover if I don't keep breaking the propolis seal. I noticed more SHB in the hive last year when I was opening them up more.
> Apart from adding extra supers a time or two, I really only opened the hives twice this season, once in the spring to see how they wintered, and once to harvest, and the hive beetle numbers were way down compared to last year.


I take the same approach. Only a handful of times is the hive opened each year. And that's if I notice a problem. This time I noticed thousands of dead bees around the hive. Oddly enough I found a large hornets nest growing on the fence line of our property while bush hogging. I took the loader bucket to pick it off the fence. Nothing came out. So I checked it out. It was full of dead hornets. So not only did my bees die, but wild hornets nests died off too. Something is definitely off here.


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

I think some one is spraying some thing.

 Al


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