Wax moth are rampant this year

[Erichalfbee]

Thankyou.

Always worth looking in the stickies
There is some useful stuff there

 

[Ely]

I've never seemed to have any bother with wax moth on wet honey frames.

 

[drdrday]

It seems like a good year for wax moth here as well. I had one brood box that I'd left on top of a stack of wet supers (that were waiting to be sprayed with Dipel!). It contained three odd brood frames, mainly honey stores. They were distorted, weirdly drawn frames that I'd taken out of a hive, and just popped there for the time being. Today they were absolutely riddled with wax moth. I'm very glad I always put a correx sheet between each box in the stack, and it looks like I'll be spraying them all this weekend rather than next now!
Found a couple of larvae in one of the nucs too.

 

[Bodiam Bees]

After treatment, usually with sulphur, mine get stacked in the shed. Boards top and bottom and ratchet straps. No signs of damage when opened in spring.
@ ericbeaumont , and I thought the old WBC boxes I inherited were bad. That really is a good lesson in what they can do

Thanks for the reply. Will smoke and ratchet them up good and tight.

 

[pargyle]

I've only ever seen waxmoth infestations when they have been obvious ... when webs, tracks and the larvae are really noticeable ... and by then it's probably too late.

I've just found a super frame, drawn this year but totally unused by the bees where two cells had almost what I would call a tiny cap of what looked like clear mucus ... I probed it a bit and inside was a tiny grub .... I assume that this was an embrionic wax moth grub. I should have photographed it but instinct cut in and it was squished without thinking. I've never seen anything like it before ...

So, you experts out there ... would a tiny wax moth grub have excreted this sort of skin on the top of the cell before growing and doing what they normally do or is it the adult wax moth, having laid and egg(s) have deposited this 'cap' to protect the eggs ... ?

Needless to say that frame did not go back in the box and I think I will be hitting the boxes with sulphur to start with and then Dipel in a week or so to be sure.

 

[Michael Palmer]

I store hundreds of boxes with brood comb, in my shed. Xantari works well in stopping wax moth larvae...both Lesser and Greater wax moths. Cheap. Spray is administered from the bottom. Set brood box on end and spray each comb as you spread the combs like the pages of a book. No more wax moth issues.

 

[holmbee]

I store hundreds of boxes with brood comb, in my shed. Xantari works well in stopping wax moth larvae...both Lesser and Greater wax moths. Cheap. Spray is administered from the bottom. Set brood box on end and spray each comb as you spread the combs like the pages of a book. No more wax moth issues.

I am planning the same treatment this year. Never used Xen Tari before but some videos about in on you tube, mainly from the States where it appears from one of them it is approved for treatment.

 

[Hachi]

Just found two of the little miscreants cocooned in my blow torch I use to light my smoker. Sat in the lounge fiddling to clear the blockage and proceeded to expel a fast qty of air from the lungs down the gas pipe where the flame comes out for the two pupae and cocoons zip past Mrs H's eyes and land on the carpet wriggling. The silence is deafening and it looks like I'm in the dog house again!!!

 

[Ely]

I store hundreds of boxes with brood comb, in my shed. Xantari works well in stopping wax moth larvae...both Lesser and Greater wax moths. Cheap. Spray is administered from the bottom. Set brood box on end and spray each comb as you spread the combs like the pages of a book. No more wax moth issues.

This is interesting. Will a single application last for the whole winter?

 

[Michael Palmer]

Yes

 

[JamezF]

This is interesting. Will a single application last for the whole winter?

I guess the larvae will hatch as soon as conditions are suitable, in which case one application might well deal with them all. When similar treatments are used on, say, brassicas during the summer, the advice is I believe to treat at regular intervals because butterflies are regularly laying more eggs and the spray will get washed off over time.

James

 

[Hachi]

Luckily James, for the beek the kit is kept under cover and not subject to rain or watering by the farmer and so I'm concluding, the sprayed solution in effect lays dormant until ingested by the wax moth.

From the Provender Nurseries website:

When a caterpillar eats the treated leaves [read parts of the hive], it ingests the “Cry” proteins from XenTari. The protein crystals are solubilized in the gut of the caterpillar and gut cells are irreparably damaged. Once this damage occurs, Bta spores enter through the gut wall and germinate rapidly in the body cavity causing blood poisoning. The larvae then die in 1-3 days.

 

[pargyle]

Just found two of the little miscreants cocooned in my blow torch I use to light my smoker. Sat in the lounge fiddling to clear the blockage and proceeded to expel a fast qty of air from the lungs down the gas pipe where the flame comes out for the two pupae and cocoons zip past Mrs H's eyes and land on the carpet wriggling. The silence is deafening and it looks like I'm in the dog house again!!!

There's a revolving door on my doghouse and I never seem to get out of it !

 

[pargyle]

Luckily James, for the beek the kit is kept under cover and not subject to rain or watering by the farmer and so I'm concluding, the sprayed solution in effect lays dormant until ingested by the wax moth.

From the Provender Nurseries website:

When a caterpillar eats the treated leaves [read parts of the hive], it ingests the “Cry” proteins from XenTari. The protein crystals are solubilized in the gut of the caterpillar and gut cells are irreparably damaged. Once this damage occurs, Bta spores enter through the gut wall and germinate rapidly in the body cavity causing blood poisoning. The larvae then die in 1-3 days.

I've been using Dipel for some years now ... it does not stop the eggs producing larvae but they die within a very short time ... I've seen mummified remains of larvae occasionally on stored frames so it seems to work. Xemtari is very similar to Dipel ...

 

[Nannysbees]

We did a varroa count yesterday, and on one of the boards we put in was a live grub!!!!! So obviously there is a problem in one of the hives, first treatment of apiguard coming to an end so eager to get in and see what's going on when we put in the second tray.

 

[Hachi]

We did a varroa count yesterday, and on one of the boards we put in was a live grub!!!!! So obviously there is a problem in one of the hives, first treatment of apiguard coming to an end so eager to get in and see what's going on when we put in the second tray.

Don't forget the wax moth and the bee in a natural colony is a symbiotic relationship, living in the bottom of the hollow in the tree. We only get excited because of the damage they do to our comb.

 

[Hachi]

There's a revolving door on my doghouse and I never seem to get out of it !

The reason Mrs H is "sensitive" is we built an extension with a loft, where I store a lot of bee kit eg extractor, settling tank, wax melter etc.

Well, I'd melted some wax, cleaned out the SS cyl as best I could and returned it to the loft directly above Mrs H's WFH location. Unappreciated by me was how little a bloody wax moth needs to lay hundreds of eggs!!! Well, lay it did and after the prescribed incubation period, the maggot shaped critters started to crawl thro the sunken lights dropping into the room below and as luck would have it, landing on Mrs H's keyboard whilst she was tapping away. Both in her locale and the adjoining utility!!!

I recall one rather large wriggler abseiling down its silk like thread not inches from her nose on its way south which, turned out to be a particularly bad day for me.

This went on for several weeks in parallel with my decline in life expectancy. Every morning before work could start she would inspect the room like a possessed Sgt Maj with me in tow collecting the critters for disposal. At one point it did seem to be relentless as the daily numbers did not subside for quite a while.

To rekindle these fond memories [remember, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger] by whizzing two more past her feet and then for her to stare in disbelief as they started to wriggle on the lounge carpet, likely triggered a traumatic event and flashbacks etc.

Think I've found the revolving door too now.....

 

[holmbee]

I cannot believe how fast they develop on the comb. You remove the larvae you can see and when you return two days later to fix the problem there are cocoons with six or more disgusting grey larvae inside. Serious action under way!

 

[hemo]

A quick look through some stored wet supers treated with Xentari 2.5 weeks ago and two dead WM larvae found on the board below the super.

 

[JamezF]

I've found a very small number of wax moth larvae as I've been extracting this weekend. Relatively recently hatched I think, as they were all quite small. There's been no brood in my supers, but there is the occasional cell of pollen (I really do mean occasional -- the worst probably had no more than a couple of dozen cells filled). I've put those with the most pollen in straight into the freezer after extraction in case that's what has attraced them, but I'm feeling a bit twitchy about the rest now. I've never had problems with wax moth in extracted supers before, so I'm going to have to keep a close eye on things. Rain is forecast every day so hopefully there'll be the opportunity to open up the stacked supers without attracting bees and wasps.

I've been doing a bit of reading online and come across a claim that the eggs need a moist atmosphere to hatch. I've no idea if that's true or not, but assuming it is then I guess inside a hive when the bees are ripening honey there's definitely going to be a moist atmosphere so it's great for them. I wonder if storing supers wet helps in that respect because if they're sealed up then the remaining honey will absorb some of the moisture from the air inside.

James