What You Need to Know About Small Hive Beetles

Small hive beetles can be a major menace to honey bee colonies, but with good management, they can usually be kept under control.

Life Cycle

Adult beetles lay eggs in the hive on brood, pollen, honey, or wax. The beetle larvae feed on brood or hive resources as they grow, until they're big enough to drop to the bottom board and crawl out the entrance to the hive. They crawl on the ground until they find suitable soil, and then they dig down and pupate in the soil. When the beetles mature into adults, they fly (sometimes multiple miles) to smell out a bee colony to invade. Adult beetles move around the hive with their heads tucked down to protect themselves from the worker bees that are chasing them. They mate in the hive, and search for places to hide and lay eggs. Bees often trap beetles in small spaces in the hive, but the beetles can trick the bees into feeding them, which keeps them from starving to death for weeks or months at a time!

The best defense

Hive beetle larvae found in a pollen patty.

There are many things you can do to control small hive beetles, but the best defense is keeping healthy hives, and having a high "bee to comb ratio", with lots of bees for every square inch of comb. That way, the beetles are constantly harassed if they leave their hiding spots. If beetle numbers are high in your area, small, weak, or queenless colonies should be combined with stronger colonies to avoid creating a beetle breeding ground in an overwhelmed hive.The smell of a colony under beetle attack can attract even more adult beetles from the area.

Another way to keep your bees in control of the situation is to reduce the number of hiding places for beetles in your hive. Any groove, gap, or crevice could be used by a beetle to hide out and wait for the bees to let their guard down. Fewer nooks and crannies means the bees can keep the beetles constantly on the run.

Ration your pollen patties

Since beetles grow best on a high-protein diet, it's important not to give bees more protein/pollen substitute than they can eat in just a few days. In northern states, many beekeepers are used to giving a colony an entire pollen patty to nibble on for a while. In the deep south, many beekeepers can’t give much more than a silver-dollar–sized portion of protein supplement or else it will become a wriggle mass of beetle larvae as the pests take over the food. Keep an eye on any fed protein, and remove beetle-infested patties before they have time to mature.

TIP: To maximize bee access to all sides of a pollen patty, consider using a BeeSmart Trivet to hold the patty above the top bars.

Beetle traps

Beetle traps can help reduce the number of adult beetles in the hive. The traps catch more beetles after hive disruptions, like thorough inspections or heavy smoking. This is because the bees keep beetles "locked up" in crevices most of the time, but disruption allows for a beetle jailbreak and more of them will stumble into the traps as the bees try to regain order. Many beekeepers decide to install beetle traps, but don't realize that they can put as many traps into their hive as they'd like. Three or four traps usually catch many more beetles than one trap would, since so many more tempting (but deadly) hiding places are presented for the beetles. Betterbee carries a number of different beetle traps, all of which are effective.

Small hive beetles are one of a few insect pests of honey bee colonies.

Another insect pest that may bother your bees and equipment are wax moths. 

Learn how to keep wax moths under control