Invasion!

My hives have all been free of disease and pests until now. Last Saturday I found Small Hive Beetles in the hive at my in-laws house. Such a drag. But at least I only saw 4 or 5. The problem with the Small Hive Beetle is that its larva stage are little worms that will eat their way through the brood comb leaving a mess of the place and causing any honey in it to ferment. They are from Africa, I think, so there are no natural predators here. The most you can do is try to keep them at bay so they don't kill the hive.

So to do that I found trap plans on various web sites that use thin CD cases with a soy powder bait. There are a few varieties if you Google for them, some say to use roach poison and some say to use boric acid powder to kill the beetles. Yeah, I'm not going to put any kind of poison in my hives. And I have a ton of Megabee in the freezer still so I am using it for bait and tried coating the CD case with vegetable oil to try and trap them. Hopefully that works well or well enough. Since there were only a few beetles hopefully I have time to experiment a bit before they take over. I did squish one with my hive tool so I'm already down one! Wish me luck.