PLB said:



Hmm. Have you ever seen a Small Hive Beetle? I sincerely doubt they will be imported in shipments of individual queen bees, as anyone would see them. They could come in via banks, packages, etc. On the other hand, we have had them here in NY state for at least 15 years and I haven't seen any serious problems for the bees. Storing of honey in combs has become much more difficult.



Answer: In Canada we import 1000's of queens from Hawaii, California and Australia. We regulated the importation and placed conditions on how the queens prepared for shipping to Canada from areas infested with the SHB. This was a response to:

        1. finding small hive beetles in queen shipping boxes hiding in between cracks.

        2. Finding SHB in queen cages due to some suppliers use certain system to deliver workers into the cage without hand picking

        3. finding eggs and first instar larvae of the SHB under the wax paper placed on Candy.



I personally worked with the queen suppliers and my provincial apiculturists colleagues to set conditions to reduce the risk of brining the SHB with queens. These conditions included the following:

        - All materials used for shipping queens must be stored in Beetle proof storage room

        - Queen cages prepared with Candy must be stored in a refrigerator till use in the field.

        - Workers must be handpicked  and not more than 5 workers. This low number of worker allows us in Canada to check for SHB in cages or developing stages under the wax paper.

        - Caged queens must not be stored in queen banks before shipping.

        - Any packing and handling shipping boxes must be done in controlled areas where is no access to beetle.



Once the above conditions applied, we have checked 1000's of queens at the entry point, we did not find any beetles or developing stages. My staff and I checked over 100,000 imported queens for SHB  one year  We still do a random  check every year of imported queens.  We really appreciate the good job our queen suppliers did. They followed the protocol and it is working great.



We also added one thing if a beekeeper likes to add one more step to ensure no mistakes. The beekeeper can collect attendant worker from imported queen cages in a closed odd room. Then kill these workers. Individual queens can be placed in new queen cages for introduction.





I hope this helps.



Medhat Nasr

Edmonton Alberta Canada





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