Something fairly ripe there was attracting them. What's to keep them from reproducing in more distant wet areas and flying into hives from those locations?

No doubt they are a problem and strong flyers,  but from what I see in my area they don't travel far in mass numbers.  If they did I would have expected to see huge problems in more yards that are close together.   
What I see is once they start in a yard,  they will stay until every hive in that yard is dead, or something stops them such as weather, or a break in the cycle.

Jamie Ellis says they only breed in hives,  I myself tried to breed some in old fruit a year or two ago,  with no luck.  They do strongly resemble what we used to call cantaloupe beetles, which have 2 or 4 yellow dots on them, and in fact I have found a couple of those beetles in dead hives.  The guys in HI also swear they are reproducing in fruit,  but I have never talked to anyone who is sure.  
It sure looks like the only place they breed well is in hives and old comb.

I have been bringing deadouts home and letting the chickens clean them up,  I also find much like museum beetles they do a good job of cleaning up old pollen bound comb.  Seems the slime we see is a honey only issue,  on dry comb they don't make slime.

This year my loss count to beetles from 2 yards,  is 20 hives in one yard,  and 31 in the other,  and then 2 more at home.  once they start,  they are hard to stop.

AS for chickens,  to Bills point about Japanese beetles,  when we moved to this place around 2000,  Jab beetles were destroying everything.  Completely killing grapes and the sassafras trees.  We found free range chickens to be a huge help with them and ticks......  I wish SHB were effected as well.
  

Charles

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html