I lost a large cutout to SHB . Again.
I pulled a couple of frames this AM and the darn things were in the comb. I decided to try a new approach to getting rid of them and stuck the comb in a large plastic bag. I took a Propane torch and filled the bag with Propane gas and sealed the bag. About two hours later the beetles were still crawling around just as happy as they could be.
Since Propane is a little hazardous to handle I thought, Why not try carbon monoxide? So I took the bag and started up the van. I pushed all the air out of the bag and stuck it over the tailpipe and filled it up, sealed it and thought "Die you suckers".
It did not work the away I thought it would. BUT IT DID WORK.
Almost immediately the larva came out of the cavities of the comb and started crawling around and the beetles went bananas also. Where I thought there would be 30 or 40 beetle at the most, there were over a 100 and the larva were five times that. What a mess.
Four hours later the beetles started to die. That is not a misprint , 4 hours in 100% carbon monoxide. At six hours the beetles were dead and the larva were starting to die. At eight + hours the last of the larva quit moving.
WHAT I DON'T KNOW is the effect on uncapped brood. Capped brood and honey could be brushed off and then would be ready to return to the hive so the bees could clean them up.
If you have beetles (and everybody does) a large, strong hive can control the beetles but if you only have one colony and it swarms of the queen gets old, the beetles will overrun the hive is a couple of days. So you could take every other frame out of a box, brush off all the bees and put it in a plastic bag (Hefty bags seal tighter than ziplock ones)and gas the whole frame overnight. The next day take out the remaining frames and replace the clean ones.
The carbon monoxide dissipates as soon as you open the bag so nothing goes into the hive. There is no pesticide involved and the bees will clean up any debris that you don't knock off the comb.
It's also cheap. It just takes time for the sucker to die. They are very hard to kill.
If someone tries it, please post the results.
regards
Joe