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Date: | Fri, 19 Aug 2022 21:08:14 -0400 |
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Not sure how many supers you have, but I find freezing the frames is effective for killing both SHB larvae and any unhatched eggs. Afterwards, store them in insect-tight stacks.
You could try taking shrink-wrapped pallets of supers with extracted frames inside to a local freezer plant or smaller meat packing plant with a large freeze locker and see if they would allow you to process them in for at least 48-72 hours, maybe a day or so longer. I think I would be a bit vague about the larvae part of this, maybe just talk about the unhatched eggs....
For smaller numbers - perhaps up to 50 medium supers - I think you might find an old chest freezer (Craig's List kind of thing) effective. Run groups of the frames-only through it. I'd use garbage bags to contain drips. I have an old upright freezer that I use for this purpose. Energy efficiency of the freezer is not important here as you will only be running for a couple of weeks/year. But it does have to get down to 0 degrees F, or lower, to do the job.
If your empty boxes have SHB larvae or lots of wax that might harbor eggs, you could try stacking and solarizing them with plastic sheeting while the frames are getting frozen. Just make sure the larvae can't escape into the soil. You can also freeze supers-and-frames together, but they take up a lot of space in the freezer. I can only get four, 10-frame deeps and a medium in my freezer, but more than twice that many frames if I remove them from the boxes.
Nancy
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