Hi all,

Believe you me, if you let anyone travel thru the area, small hive beetles 
will escape from the hives and populate the whole area. In North Alabama, 
USA, one beekeeper brought small hive beetles to our area. These are, IMHO, 
as bad as or worse than mites. If a hive looses a queen, it will start to 
dwindle in numbers. They are just waiting there in the hives, just like 
vultures, until they get weak and boom, they start laying eggs like crazy. 
Next thing there are little larvae everywhere and they produce a slime that 
the bees will not crawl on. This moves the bees left to a smaller area day 
by day. It is a sad mess. Slime will run all down thru the hive. This time 
frame is just about a couple of weeks.

I have had this happen to me a few times. Most of the times, you cannot 
salvage anything but the wooden ware. I just freeze all the mess and throw 
away everything except the hive bodies.

Lionel 

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