Let's quickly inspect the hives! Although we pulled honey in early July, things aren't quite done. We're planning on pulling honey again in October. This will be the fall honey crop, and we've not done this before. Fall honey is primarily made from goldenrod. Goldenrod is a notorious weed around here that is not welcomed. It causes many people to have severe allergy problems.
Goldenrod honey is good for allergies. The odd thing about goldenrod honey is... it stinks. Think the smell of sweaty gym socks. In the fall you can smell it simply by walking around the hives. When we had the colony inside our column by the side door, people would walk up to the door and say, "What's that smell?!" The benefits are it's supposed to be really good for you. We'll likely keep most of this for personal use unless someone shows an interest in it.
The hives are really active right now. The bees are all outside the entrance and are pretty aggressive.
What I'm checking for today is hive beetles. I'm not going to use smoke because I'm just planning on opening the telescoping top to look in the very top of the hive. Since I didn't use smoke, the bees start coming out of the top with an attitude. They aren't liking my intrusion into their home, but I want to check out any hive beetle activity. Hive beetle infestations can cause some real problems, especially if you have a weak hive.
Three weeks ago, Tricia and I put some hive beetle traps in the top, and we want to see if we've caught any. When I say hive beetle traps, it's not really anything fancy. You simply lay a Swiffer sheet up on top. The bees run the hive beetles up and out of the frames of eggs, brood, honey, and pollen and bees actively corral them and keep them up top. What happens next is that the hive beetles step onto the Swiffer sheets and the little barbs on their legs catch on the Swiffer sheets, and they cannot get out!
The first two hives did not have any hive beetles caught on the Swiffer sheet, but the third and fourth hive did. In the center left of the photo below (and the bottom middle of the photo above), you can see three hive beetles that have met their demise.
So the trap appears to be working. But what about the hives that had no hive beetles on the Swiffer sheets? Well, it could mean a couple of things: the trap isn't working (which is unlikely as it was catching beetles in the second and third hive), or it could mean that there is not much of a hive beetle infestation in those hives.
There is another means (or two) of combatting them that I'm going to try. The first is to put up a temporary fence around the hives and put some chickens in to scratch around and eat the beetles and larvae that are out on the ground. The beetles go into the ground and pupate and the larvae come out of the ground before entering the hives. If you put something on the ground to block their entrance into the ground, it helps. I plan on putting a roll of thick black plastic matting under the hives to accomplish this. As a side benefit, it makes it a little easier to mow and weed eat around the hives. I'll try to do this when the weather gets a little cooler.
The Beetles. They aren't quite as popular with beekeepers and the band.
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