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NEW ZEALAND BEEKEEPER, MAY 2017
Small hive beetle. Photo: Fiona O’Brien.
Below: Beetle refuge. Photo: Frank Lindsay.
Small hive beetle (SHB) surveillance Now I’ll dive off in a different direction. Small hive beetle is spreading around the world. SHB has been found in the Philippines in 2014. If we get SHB in New Zealand, it will totally affect the way I keep bees. I’ll have to clean all the mess up around my house. I won’t be able to put two or three honey supers on at a time. I’ll have to extract all my honey within four days of removal from the hive unless the council allows me to dump a refrigerated container on the road reserve, which is unlikely. Beekeepers piling on the supers and helicoptering them into the back blocks wouldn’t be able to put on so many supers, as you need to have bees to cover all the frames to protect them against SHB. If you don’t think SHB will get here, then think again. We stayed with beekeepers a few years ago in New South Wales and found beetles in our luggage as we were repacking to come home. Beekeepers have found beetles in their pockets three days after looking at hives. It’s just a matter of time, but we can all do something about finding it early. Hayley Pragnell from MPI’s Bee Pathogen Programme has come up with a nifty idea of putting clear Polygal Twinwall polycarbonate roofing (used in sunrooms) as a refuge for small hive beetle in beehives. She provides a 200 by 200 mm square, but I don’t think it needs to be that big as beekeepers in NSW use only a quarter of this size in their hives. However, the idea is brilliant. Place it on the top bars under the roof and every time you open a hive, check the Polygal to see if anything is in it. Surveillance takes just a few seconds, instead of looking for something running away from the light. I got my Polygal from Brad Hodgson: brad@psp.co.nz
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