Beekeeping | STOP The Invasion With Oil Traps

what's up i'm david burns i'm on fire today about this video because i asked you if you wanted me to make a video on small hype beetle you guys unanimously said please and that really helps me know how i can add value to the content that i create so that you will gain more knowledge on how to keep healthier bees and make fewer mistakes so today going to talk about small high beetle i started keeping bees before small high beetles came into the u.s they came in to our country to about 1996 and some people speculate they came in probably on a ship or something and you know kind of just took over quite quickly in the united states and some places believe it or not in the u.s have hardly no small high beetle infestation i've talked to beekeepers out west and more arid climates they really don't have beetle small beetle problems but you talk to people in more tropical climates like florida you get further south where it's warmer more humid wow beetles are horrible right so it's hard to believe that beetles have only been in our country for about 25 years small high beetle and many many years ago over a decade i think i had issues with small high beetle and and a lot of hives 70 something hives that i brought back from florida and it was tough to get rid of them i had to use some special sprays on my soil and kill the developing pupae and the soil as they were pupating i had to do a lot of work on putting traps in the hive and that was like like i said i think over a decade ago so i'm well acquainted with the pressure of small hype beetle now here in illinois fortunately beetles are a secondary pest and and that kind of means that they're really not a big of an issue but you do have to stay on top of it why beetles can be bad is because not only can they ruin your honey they just they defecate in it they they just consume they they worm their way right through the honey it ruins it and it it begins to ferment and it actually smells like fermenting oranges and it begins to your honey will begin to leak out of your hive it's nasty all those larvae of small hype beetle will take over your super and your hives very bad stuff and what's really worse is it can actually cause your hive to abscond or completely die out some people think small hypo beetles only attack wheat colonies while they prefer wheat colonies they will get into very strong colonies a hive we're going to look at today is a very strong colony and it has a lot of small high beetles it doesn't take much for small hype beetles to really get a foothold an infestation in your hive actually one adult female can lay about 165 eggs a day and they will actually lay eggs through the cappings of the brood or through the cell walls of the of the brood walls and develop in those cells so let's jump into the hive today and take a look and i want to show you first what the beetles look like and what do you do when you first see them when you open up a hive and then we'll talk about prevention and then we'll talk about when you get them how do you control them so the other day the video that i made actually had uh had to cut out the part where i spent uh maybe 15 minutes just killing small high beetle but i want you to watch over here over here the beads are propolizing an area here and they are capturing the small height beetle under the top cover and on top of the frame you'll see them run when i open this up and flip it over i'm going to break open kind of the beetle gel i'm going to do a little quickly here you ready a lot of propolis it's not as many beetles as i remember now from the other day but you can see there's one right here tip of my habitual there's one right there and you can see the bees try to kill them and there's some down here the bees are trying to get that one there there's one in the corner so these are the beetles and this is the propolis you can see that they're trying to utilize some gel i don't want to kill any beads when i try to kill these small hype beetles the regular hive tool that you see most of the time is better at killing beetles than this hive tool i think you can just smash them look at that barely got that one there's another one there so if you just kind of watch you'll see these beetles sometimes they're up and around the cracks up in here but not so much here i expected to see a lot more in this area here let's pull out a frame and see if we see any beetles that are on the frames right here and then i'll show you how i use the beetle traps it really paid off that i killed so many yesterday or day before when i made the video it seems like they could be on this frame more than most frames let's look for a small high beetle you see any nope not really there's one down in a crevice or there's one right there down in a cell do you see that hiding down in the cell the little black thing bees are looking at the small hypetell so a lot of times what i'll do is take my hive tool and just poke it down in there if i can you see the bees are trying to get it but it's really hard for us to kill them and not kill bees there's another one there down in a cell and again the idea of killing them is that that could be a mama beetle wanting to lay eggs and cause an infestation in your hive i see another one uh if you look up here there's some more beetles that are hiding in these cells here look at that do you see them look at that there they are there so the beetles are in there doing their work that's why we need to trap them all right so let me show you how to trap them let's look at one more frame can we i was trying to make this video earlier today but they were farming the ground next to me so that got loud i couldn't do my filming i had to postpone that well i don't know if there'd be a lot of beetles here on this capped over frame no place to hide sort of right okay well let me show you how i will do some trapping of small hype all right so this is a very familiar trap uh it's just a better beetle blaster trap and i like these a lot i think they're very effective and i take a jar this is actually uh olive oil i just found some in the kitchen and i transferred it over to this little jar i don't like to get any type of oil on my bees whether it's vegetable oil or what you don't want to use motor oil that's not good but what i'll do is i'll i'll just go down here to one of these holes and then i can just squeeze my jar and fill up my beetle trap without spilling much you see and you only want to fill it once you level it off about a quarter of an inch like that much right there that's plenty and now it's important to wipe off the excess oil that may have leaked or dripped a little bit where you place it in there bring a paper towel or something that will kill your bees if you get oil on your bees so be very careful about that and then once you get that where you want it you're going to place it between two frames like this right here and you're gonna allow the bees to chase some of those beetles down in there now there's other traps i want to show you this trap here is very similar only this one is reusable you can continue to open it and then shake out the bad oil or shake out the dead beetles and then you can snap it back together again and it works pretty cool that way a little easier getting your oil in there i think too there's like two different compartments i believe let's try that let's try to fill up this side and now let's try to fill up the other side now don't fill it up just about that much at the bottom but the way this works is it too goes between two frames but those little arms reach out and grab the other frame like that it sits in there quite nicely i'm gonna put one more since i'm here and i have the oil and let's just go i'm seeing most of my beetles over here but let's take a chance and see if we can catch some in the middle here all right now we can check these and see if that helps get some beetles not unusual to have praying mantis walking around the hive looking for things to capitalize and eat um all right so we can see the beetles let's get see we want to look down in this area here show you the beetles there the best way to deal with the beetles when you first open your hive sometimes you expose this beetle trap over here the pro the beetle gel over here and there'll be beetles trapped here and i'll try to kill them now i can't use a j-hook when i'm doing this it works better for me to use the traditional hive tool because i got that extra bend and i can kill beetles like that that's a little beetle there wow like a baby beetle sometimes beetles that aren't fed well or smaller especially in the spring coming out of winter i killed uh six or eight here's one here i'm going to pray a mantis on my shirt i really don't like praying mantis that well because they can a big one can actually bite you i got knocked it down into the hive sorry about that why don't you go play on some leaves there's a beetle if you kind of wait more beetles will show up it's really weird in it sometimes they're hiding underneath some of the propolis you see here around the edges and they know that they can't be detected if they don't move so they wait a while until they just have to move so what i like to do is before i remove a beetle trap to look at it is actually take your hive tool and scrape push down along the top of the beetle trap because oftentimes there are a lot of beetles that will hide underneath this lip and if you just pick it up well the bees have formed another propolis jail around the edge of this beetle trap and underneath of it trapping beetles under there now we'll see if that's true it may not be but um i just want to make sure if there is we're going to kill them and smash them all right so let's go ahead and remove this trap here you got to be careful not to spill the oil and something i've learned too is that when you take off your honey super maybe to inspect it if you take it off the hive then you're going to have to keep the beetle traps like this so they don't spill you don't want to tip it on its edge to the super if you are going to take the super out and tip it up on the edge then you're going to take these beetle traps off so what i'm doing now it's carefully removing the beetle trap by loosening this propolis that they've put around the edge of it once we do that we can work it up and then we'll take a look what do you guess let me hear some guesses you think there'll be some beetles in here this is further away from where the beetles hide out let's just take a look zero zero beetles in this trap let's just put it back in place careful not to smash any bees there's one right there i just pushed one down in the oil let's see what happened do you see me push that one with my finger down into the oil i think it bit the dust well there you go that's how they work that's how they're supposed to work even though i push that beetle in there now i explain about the importance of putting the trap over here because this is where we see most of the beetles that it's kind of like fishing you do want to put the traps where the beetles are right that's what that's what we're trying to do look right here i see something interesting i can see a beetle actually moving underneath this uh trap right here on the edge at the tip of my finger there's a beetle moving hasn't hit the oil i guess yet let's take that one out next and see what it looks like this one here i just need to loosen it up and try to pick it up without spilling the oil again remember if you spill this oil you will kill bees so let's be very careful let's just start taking a look we're getting closer to where the beetles hang out towards this side of the hive oh there's one right there on the outside of it nope lost it darn it fell in the hive well anyway there's another one let me get it down in the oil it looks like they can't fit exactly through there okay so we've caught two in this one we only caught one uh so we caught we caught one and then i forced the other one down in there but these these slits were kind of small i couldn't really force that beetle down in there very easily so let me just put that back in there now the big question is going to be what does the one over here look like that's the one i expect to find more beetles in i'm trying and i kill five or six every time i open the hive up but they just seem to still be gathering and i don't really see a lot of beetles when i get down into the hive like start looking at frames i i see a little bit but not a ton now we didn't look under that last one to see if we caught some beetles did we underneath the when we smashed it so let's see let's kind of loosen that up oh that's cracked i worry sometimes about cutting or cracking of these traps these kind of disposable traps and if i were to do that would it you know drip out and spill it worries me a little bit it doesn't look like we killed any that were trapped underneath here that i can tell we actually killed a lot more with the hive tool than what we got in the traps themselves even though they're in a good position to catch beetles so we'll put these back you know we it was able to these traps were able to catch a few but nothing extremely impressive yet i just want to show you how to push down on the trap in case there's some hiding under there and how you lift them up and look at them being careful not to spill oil first let's talk about preventing small high beetle it's impossible they're going to find their way into your hive but there are some things you do that can really cut down and help and we'll put them in the prevention category first thing like we talked about earlier always keep strong colonies it just comes to reason the more beads that you have protecting the comb every square inch of the inside of their colony they're going to irritate the beetles they're going to run them around run them out it's going to help a lot now if you have a very weak colony it's important to realize small high beetles are able to sniff out some people say from miles away a weak colony and overtake it beetles are also good at looking for colonies that are queenless if there's a missing queen pheromone they seem to capitalize on that because that weak colony is not going to be able to defend the small hype beetles so always keep your colonies strong and always keep them queen right another important thing to do is prevent extra space some people keep throwing supers on and supers on and the bees aren't up there in those top three supers that you've added and so it gives more room for the beetles to lay eggs and take over certain areas where there's not enough bees to police and guard all the comb that you're putting in there keep your colonies big enough to grow into some comb but not so uh roomy that there's extra frames everywhere without bees on it or the beetles will begin to multiply that goes along with stray comb if your bees have built some stray comb on the frames or edges or in between or whatever be careful because the beetles can lay eggs in that stray comb and hide out there so if you can keep the inside of your hive tidy it will help them have more ability to control the beetles now you've always heard me say keep your colonies in as much sun as you can it's just a proven fact studies have shown that beads that are colonies that are in the shade do have more beetle problems so keep them in direct sunlight as much as possible now i know some of you are going to ask me questions oh my gosh should i move them they're in the shade now yikes what do i do you know what i don't know if i would go crazy and you know upset the apple cart that much if there are if your bees are in the shade now they're where they're at okay uh if you're having a big beetle issue and you cannot keep them under control yeah you might want to consider adding that one extra prevention maybe of putting them out in the sun now if you're in a place where your bees are getting sun most of the day but they get a little afternoon shade that's fine some shade in the morning some shade at night i'm talking about don't put them in the middle of the forest where the sun never hits the box another way to help prevent small hay beetle infestation is to consider pollen patties beetles are really attracted to the odor of pollen patties they will lay eggs in the pollen patties so one rule of thumb is if you're going to use pollen patties be sure to only give your colony enough where the bees can protect it if you put two or three big pollen patties in there and there's really not enough bees to guard or be on that uh pollen patty the beetles might get up there hide out and lay eggs i've seen that and it's really gross and of course keep your bottom board cleaned off if you have a solid bottom board b beetles have been known to actually pupate in the debris on the bottom board instead of getting out of the hive pupating in the soil they will pupate in the bottom board so keep that bottom board cleaned off screen bottom boards seem to get the stuff falls through they don't seem to be as bad but solid bottom boards do hold a lot of debris another practical thing is be sure to keep your honey room really clean and if you harvest your honey you need to you need to actually extract it that same day or the next day as quick as you can don't leave supers hanging around beetles are attracted to supers if they're out in the open so try to deal with your honey keep keep your bee yard cleaned up don't cut out some stray comb and throw it out in the yard that can really attract beetles as well these are just common tips now let's talk about controlling small height beetle controlling them once you have an infestation i think the best way to do it for me personally i've really enjoyed using beetle traps now when i first had my initial infestation in my colonies uh over a decade ago i used the west trap it is a like a pan that sits under your screen bottom board and when the beetles are pushed down through it by the beads they hit that oil and essentially suffocate it can be a challenge and labor intense to manage traps below the bottom board either of diatomaceous earth or oil of some sort it's a little tricky they are effective and they do their job now many of you have probably heard of other techniques that have been deployed in the in the more recent years such as a dryer cloth like the swiffer dryer cloth a lot of people are putting those in their hive and i hear mixed reactions to that i hear some people say oh yeah i catch beetles they're little feed and parts get caught in the little tiny strands of the paper of the cloth and they're trapped and they die i've heard other people say i put them in there nothing happened i didn't catch a one so again it might be that you need to put them where you think the beetles are there's a lot more ways that you can trap beetles uh there are some that i really don't um use and that is when you could put chemicals between two pieces of black plastic fold it up throw it on the bottom board and the beetles go down there and hit that toxic chemical and and they die i just don't like having the toxic chemical and the hive period some people use a cassette holder remember the old cassette tapes before we had uh streaming audio we used cassette tapes yeah i know about eight tracks i was around then i'm a vinyl guy too you know but let's just say cassette tapes remember the holders we had for cassette tapes a lot of people will put sort of fermenting apples or apple vinegar in those and the theory is that smell will attract beetles to get in to that cassette holder and be trapped or some people put chemicals in there or oil and they drown there's a lot of things like that again very labor-intensive i want to jump into this video real quick and ask you to give me a thumbs up if you enjoy the content if it's adding value to your beekeeping endeavor i hope it is that's what i'm trying to do i'm working for you to give you good information to help you become and be a better beekeeper so give me a thumbs up click subscribe and click on the bell to be notified each time i make a new video let's jump right back in the video now i realize that some of you don't have them at all and i realize that some of you think that what you saw today was nothing so i've got a friend in the deep south and he is astonished that i only have 20 or 30 beetles he's like wow that's crazy so i understand i'm talking to an audience from one extreme to the other and i think i fit in the middle somewhere but i still think it's important to control beetles this year i actually only have a couple of colonies that actually are showing signs of beetle infestation that doesn't mean i don't see beetles every now and again in some of my colonies but very little in fact that colony we looked at they're only in the top super maybe one or two in the super below that i didn't see anything down in the brood nest area so these beetles are being trapped i think in this propolis beetle trap that we saw that the bees are making and they're trapping them up in that top super that's why i decided to put a beetle trap right there where the beetles are i have a friend that's a specialist on small hike beetles at a university and he told me that trick he said trapping beetles means you have to move the trap every time you open the hive up wherever you see the most beetles that's where your beetle trap needs to go to that's where you need to move it don't leave it in one spot i'll leave some links down below and some of the things i talked about the affiliate links where you can purchase some of the items through amazon and that might help you now one of the things i want to talk about is some people think that once we get into winter winter would kill off all the small high beetle in our hive no that's not true at all small high beetles actually stay with the cluster all winter long and they're roaring to go when it warms up in the spring and get this small hay beetles actually fly and travel with swarms they're hard to get rid of some people have asked me about putting a lot of salt below their colony like they'll just put a lot of gravel put a lot of salt under their colony and their theory is that once the larvae jump out of the small hibito larvae jump out of the hive to pupate in the soil they'll hit the salt and they'll be killed that does work but let me tell you if your infestation level is so bad that you have eggs and larvae in your colony so bad that they're actually jumping out to pupate in the soil you're way behind the eight ball you might as well do it sure to kill the larvae that are jumping out but keep in mind it's better to control the mama beetle from laying the eggs to begin with and that's why i think beetle traps are good as soon as beetles fly into your hive walk around get up there and want to lay some eggs the bees will chase them into these traps between the frame also keep in mind that when you're trying to invent and discover ways to keep beetles from getting into your hive and walking up there remember beetles fly they have wings they can actually land on your bottom board and fly up onto the comb so they're not just walking and walking around in there they're actually able to fly around too i've seen some things where we're hoping that beetles can't maybe cross a real sharp corner but then beetles will just pick up and fly fly around the corner inside the hive so keep all that in mind if you're trying to come up with something they can actually be in a hive that's 12 miles away and be attracted to your hive and fly over to your colony thanks guys for watching the video today i hope it's been helpful beetles are really bad this time of the year late summer into autumn before we have a hard freeze and all warm temperatures are still letting beetles multiply and be a problem so maybe this video has helped you i hope so those of you that are really experiencing some really severe beetle infestation you might have to bring out the big guns there's guard star for the ground again that's a dangerous chemical but it does kill the beetles that are pupating in the soil be very careful and apply that according to the label and you might have to do some uh bring in some bigger guns inside the colony as well but it can be a problem i hope you've appreciated me asking you what kind of videos you want that does give me an idea about what your needs are and what kind of knowledge base you have or don't have to make videos that really help you so thanks for responding when i put those polls out i really do appreciate that as always check out our website at honeybeesonline.com and we appreciate you dropping by we make our living only on beads we don't have any other kind of jobs so when you put your business our way it really does help us it gives us the ability to focus a lot more on helping you by making more videos and creating videos that can inspire you to continue all your beekeeping endeavors so we appreciate any business that you send our way thanks for watching i'll see you next time you

Channel: David Burns

Views: 36,275

Keywords: Beekeeping, beekeeping 101, Beekeeping tips, beekeeping training, honey bees, how to inspect a hive, smoker, keeping a smoker going, smoker fuel, beekeeping classes, beekeeping basics, beekeeping for beginners, how to start beekeeping, why keep bees, save the bees, lighting a smoker, david burns beekeeping, varroa mite, when to start beekeeping, packages of bees, queen bee, where to buy a queen bee, bee suit, beekeeping business, small hive beetles, beetle traps

Id: T0qyCm9cSAI

Length: 30min 45sec (1845 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 06 2021