wax moths

[dbee]

Help!! I'm a new bee keeper and the wax moths are all over one of my hives.

[bassman1977]

If you have a small hive and too much room in the hive, this can happen as your bees will be too spread out to take care of all the unoccupied space.  If this is the case, remove a box or two (not too much that you crowd the girls) and hopefully that'll take care of it.  Find the infested comb and replace. Personally I would cut out the comb, clean up the frame(s), and replace with new foundation.  But if it's not too bad, I think the bees should be able to repair it.  If you do that, freeze the frame for 24 hours first so that you kill the worms and any other unwanted pest.

[Scadsobees]

1. Condense the hive to the smallest possible area possible.  If a comb isn't covered with bees, take it out, get them to the smallest area possible, maybe 1 box.  The bees need to be able to defend their territory.

2. Any combs that you take out, freeze for at least overnight in the deep freeze to kill the larvae and eggs.

3. Protect that and any other comb you may have, either by moth ice crystals (pdb only) or buy something like BT aizawai spores (Certan, some organic pesticides meant to kill bugs such as cabbage loopers or army worms)

4. You could try to create a moth trap, but I don't know nuthin' about that.

5. Make sure that you aren't actually dealing with small hive beetle, the larvae look similar but the SHB will slime up and ruin a hive.

Rick

[Robo]

Do a search of the forum for Certan.   I would highly recommend it. You will eliminate any issues with wax moths in the future.  I have some unoccupied brood chambers that I treated in the Spring and they have sat outside all summer with no signs of waxmoths.   I had a couple of mini nucs that I forgot about, and the moths destroyed them.

[dbee]

Thanks for the help,I'll do that job first thing.If some of the frames have honey on them should I freeze them and give it back to them?Thanks again

[Michael Bush]

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