[today’s run: 5.75 miles]
We had been noticing that one of our bee hives did not have bees coming and going out the front door. That is a problem.
Yesterday I finally go into the thing, and all of the wax-comb was turned into muddy stuff. There were no bees, it was all white grubs/worms. Those are wax-moth larva. The wax moth finds a bee hive and tries to get inside. Once in, it lays eggs. The larva hatch out and they eat the wax and grow.
One of the tasks of a beekeeper is to keep the physical size of the beehive small enough for the number of bees to manage the space, keep various intruders out. If the space is too big the bees can’t defend it. If the space is too small, the bees will leave in a swarm, going to find a better home.
This particular hive swarmed earlier this spring, that was our poor management. We thought we had them managed after that, but it looks like maybe they didn’t get a new queen going, so the population dropped as those bees aged out and they left the whole thing to the wax-moths.
Now I have to clean up the mess, try to save what parts I can, and just go on with the hives we have. The worms will actually eat into the wooden parts of the hive so they are kind of difficult to remove. You can freeze them or cook them. I’m going to try leaving the hive parts out in the sun for a few days and see if that will do it.
So you won’t find any empty bee hives out in a tree somewhere. It’s not because the bears eat the honey, it is because these worms eat everything.