damaged stored honey supers?

[Queen Bee]

Until this yr. I have used moth crystals, but after talking and reading about so many people storing the clean, dryed honey supers in a bright place with air blowing throught them, I decided it would be better than the chemicals.

after a wonderful honey season, with strong bees, I harvested my honey, bottled it and let the bees clean the frames out. For many reason, I had not checked on the supers for about two weeks and when I looked at them many were destoryed!  It had black droppings all over the bottom side of the wooden ware (they were sitting on the sides, facing a bright window that gets lots of sunshine and I had a heavy duty fan blowing air through them ) the comb has been "chewed" up some have waxmoth damage (casings with larava) but most are just gone--eatten away. What happened to my supers.. Thanks debbie

PS there is NO wax moth 'webbing",  NO slick slim.....NO odor amd MO other bugs/ worms in site..

[Michael Bush]

Wax moths can destroy a lot of comb in a short amount of time.  I never take them off the hives until the first hard freeze.  That way the bees can protect them from the moths and the moths that are flying around laying eggs have died from the cold and its very likely that a hard freeze will happen again soon and kill all the eggs in the combs.

If you want protection without moth balls, and without waiting for a hard freeze or if you don't have that kind of weather, use Certan or Bt.  You can buy the kind specifically for wax moths from www.beeworks.com or you can go to the garden store and buy the ones they have there for cabbage worms or whatever.

You spray the comb with the Certan and it will kill any larvae before they do any damage.

Here's where you get it:
http://www.beeworks.com/usacatalog/items/item134.htm

Here's info about it:
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/PDFs/Wax_Moth_pm.pdf#search='wax%20moths%20certan'
http://www.beeworks.com/waxmoth.htm
http://apis.ifas.ufl.edu/apis_2001/apjan_2001.htm
http://www.vita-europe.com/downloads/newsmite200504.pdf#search='wax%20moths%20certan'
http://www.ag.uiuc.edu/~vista/html_pubs/BEEKEEP/CHAPT6/CHAPT6.TXT