How about a little background FRiend for those of us who aren’t as up to date on this.. pest?
“How about a little background FRiend for those of us who aren’t as up to date on this.. pest?”
Small Hive Beetles are a pest that affects beehives. They are from Africa and came on the scene relatively recently. No one knows how they got here.
Sounds oddly familiar, no?
They can and do overwhelm a weak beehive. They breed in honeycomb, creating lots of lovely maggots. They also eat stored pollen and bee eggs and larvae and defecate all over. If they get out of control, they’ll slime out a hive either killing it or causing the bees to leave and take up residence elsewhere. Either way, the beekeeper is left with a ruined hive.
They operate a lot like leftists when it comes down to it.
They apparently come from sub-Sahara Africa where there are no winters. They appear to overwinter here in east central Illinois by hiding in empty cells kept warm by the winter bee cluster either as adults or possibly in the larva stage hidden in the wax. According to some of the literature, the pupa stage is outside of the hive in the soil where they should be subject to destruction by freezing. After first being established in the South, I suspect they have spread by traveling with package bees.
If the hive is strong enough, the bees tend to chase the beetles out enough to prevent significant damage. However, if the hive is weak, the larva will ruin the comb and make it impossible for the colony to survive.