Under Managed Bee Yard (Part 2) Wax Moths

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Please watch: "
Caging A Queen Bee
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[kylepittman]

Thanks for showing all the waxmoth and damage. For some weird reason I love watching all the worms and cocoon.

[MS-yxdr]

If you had some chickens or guinea fowls, they wouldn't mind cleaning those moth boxes, for a free great moth dinner. Great video

[kylepittman]

You need chickens to help you clean up waxmoth, it is fun to watch.

[MrGSF]

(right at the end of the video) That's where chickens come in handy. Good experiment.

[superbee]

sorry for your lost, reason i burn them cause they ate the wood up as well and was rotten, wax moths slime rots wood fast. Yep bleach will clean it, need to soak in bleach and water 24 hours . I caught a wax moth problem early in a hive this year, the larvae just started to hatch in the comb, way i could tell, was holding the frame up into the sun light and see the larvae in the comb Cheer Buddy

[HMaktoum]

Hi Jason
I had the same problen to my sigle hive i year ago and found that the reason of the moths invasion is because weak colony or abandond hive.
to avoid such happen, is to regularly visit the hive and look fore weak colonies, they may be queenless or population growth is down.

[rickdewitt]

Jason. Couldn't I just bag the whole mess and drop it in my chest freezer for a few days a before I Clean it up?

[suzylarry]

well thats one hell of a way to learn ...but now we know.

[thomasr.miller]

THANKS for your demo on how NOT TO KEEP  BEES.   Is  very informative. Have a good 2016 season..

[beehippie]

Jason, I have had some bad experience with those MOTHS... I put baggies of moth balls under the box. one baggy of moth balls are good for 3ft on each side... try it! last about a month...

[jrmcgeary]

all the work cleaning, plus having to soak in bleach, etc... for a $0.90 frame... I'd think I'd still just dispose of them.

[Digger]

Jason did those bees die out or just abscond due to the moth infestation? I imagine you don't really know for sure since you weren't keeping tabs on them. Folks should be careful what lesson they take away from this experience. There could be a lot of reasons why the lost colonies didn't make a go of it, natural selection isn't a bad thing...I know Michael Bush preaches some methodology like this and I don't completely disagree with it. The only thing is that as you know, sometimes a good queen just has a small issue that lets bee numbers plummet and in many cases a very little bit of help from a wise bee keeper can bring them back out of it pretty easily.

As an example, this summer a made a lot of splits and raised some of my own queens. A few of the new queens didn't return from their mating flights and a couple just disappeared. I bought some queens in a rush and placed them in the splits. The queens were accepted very well but numbers were dropping off and as a result the queens laid very little to start with. In a last ditch effort to save the splits, I added brood and bees from other hives that could spare the resources. Every one of those queens began laying immediately and built up super strong. A couple had wax moths starting in them when I added the brood frame and bees and the new bees cleaned them out immediately. Before long those hives were busting at the seams with new brood and bees (four frame nucs).

Moral of the story is that those queens were just suppressed by low worker numbers, when I boosted that I saved them from moths and they took every advantage of the prime and went gang busters. Had I not been paying attention to them they would have been a memory rather than very valuable hives. So while I agree there's something to be said for natural beekeeping and natural selection, circumstances can also just be a bit too much for any bee to overcome without help but that doesn't mean that those are necessarily better off being lost. I spent years being lazy as hell with the few hives I was keeping. I got along okay, always had bees but they didn't thrive. This year I went all out and really worked at it and now in retrospect I really screwed the pooch over those years. I'm still lazy but I try to look for easier more efficient ways to maximize my effort rather than a hands off approach.

Great pair of videos, thanks brother!

[mattcollins]

Jason, do you think that your stronger colonies robbed out those weaker ones? if so, population and entrance size would most likely be result, not genetics of the stronger hives queens. just something to think about, what was each population when you put them there. it takes a lot longer for a very weak colony to get going, as you know. and a strong one will multiply very quickly. One other thing, When I caught some dead outs and wax moth invasion, I threw them in a garbage bag and froze them for a couple days. then back in a strong one.