a couple of gm_charlie snips followed >by my comments///
Without a doubt,  the TOP honey producers in a infected yard are the main targets.  Especially late season.  Let me eloborate,  late season production here means the bees need to be fadeing down  and not building up, which skews the population dynamics  and leaves more room for beetles.  The wonderful catach 22.

>I have NO doubt controlling space within the hive is very important. And this basic management rule does not vary here if I am running full blown hives or baby nucs. Having just the right amount of bees inside the box is important if you proactively want to control the small hive beetle.  As someone has pointed out (I think) starting baby nucs out with foundation, a feeder and a soup can of bees is superior to starting a queen cell off with comb.

Towards that I would like to address ET,s comment about come to TX,  I suspect (correct if I am wrong please)  that  correlation not being causation is the reality I would be shown.   Hives in full sun without problems,  but unless they are next to hives with shade,  its not the picture.

> yes I suspect you are right. basically several variable are working together and not one is 'the silver bullet'.  It is hard to accurately define the intensity of the sun here in the Southwest to anyone who has not worked outside here or just how tough the soil gets when it gets very dry.  And of course the combination of dry soil and intense sunshine really means the ambient soil temperature grows steadily and even mad dogs do not go out into the midday sun... but beekeepers still do.  In some years we may have 100+ temperature in excess of one month.  In really hot years like 2011 I have had hives where the wax inside collapsed and melted and all the honey literal runs out the front door... flow hive of a fashion. 

as far as hive temps are concerned,  its a non starter,  beetles love hot hives and travel at night so its a moot point.

> I am not so certain I would agree with this and your 'moot point' may well be the differential in day time and night time temperature.  Can not say I do this myself but some novice beekeepers here have painted their tops (langs and top bar hives) black and they seem to at least think this limits the shb problem.

>ps I have been counting hives and later summer nucs just to get an idea of where my numbers are and to a large degree most of the shb problems are for me are associated with rotting wood wares (most typically tops and or bottoms) < to these I simply change out the rotted part and place on one or two swiffer dusters (cut in half).

Gene in central Texas....

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