Summer pests explained: Live beekeeping Q&A with Dr. Jason Graham
We run a live Q&A every month, where a Primal Bee expert takes your beekeeping questions in real time. This month's session was summer pests, with Dr. Jason Graham, who first got into beekeeping at the University of Delaware, earned his master's and PhD in bees at the University of Florida, and has since worked with nonprofits and with endangered bee species. He has kept bees for about 20 years, across top bar hives, wooden hives, and now Primal Bee.
Here's the full session:
Know the pest before you reach for a fix
Every question in this session came back to the same starting point, which is knowing what you're actually looking at. Most of the pests that show up in a summer hive announce themselves differently.
Varroa mites are the big one in the US. They ride from hive to hive on adult bees as phoretic mites, and they do most of their reproducing inside capped brood cells. There are many ways to manage them. The part that doesn't change is monitoring the levels and keeping the population as low as you can.
Tracheal mites are usually less of a problem. Confirming them takes a microscope and a dissection of the bee's breathing tubes, but there's a visible tell worth knowing: a K shape to the wings when the bees are resting or sitting in the hive.
Tropilaelaps mites are not in the US yet. They're in Asia, and there are watch programs guarding against them. If you suspect you're looking at one, your local extension office is the call to make.
Small hive beetles are geographic. They pupate in the ground and prefer sandy soil, so they're a heavier burden in some regions than others. You can trap them in the hive, work on them in the soil, and lay ground cloth to make the ground under the hive harder to use. A hive tool works too. Our site preparation and hive placement guide covers the ground barrier and stand height, and the pest defense guide covers the rest.
Wax moths turn up in every kind of hive and chew through wood and EPS alike. They mostly go after weak colonies, and undefended ones. Any frame with wax, honey, or brood on it is a target even with no adult bees present, which is when they make the worst mess. If larvae have already tunneled into EPS surfaces, see troubleshooting your colony for the repair steps.
Ants are usually scavengers rather than invaders. Wasps and yellow-legged hornets are a growing threat in southern states. Skunks, raccoons, mice, and rats will live under a hive, scratch at it, or chew their way in given enough time. Bears are their own category, covered in our pest defense guide.
The ladder that decides what you do next
Jason's whole approach runs on integrated pest management, and it's worth understanding before any specific fix makes sense.
You start with the least dangerous method available and work upward, moving from cultural practices to mechanical ones, then biological, with chemical treatments last. Resistance is what makes the order matter. Use the same chemical over and over and the pest builds tolerance to it, which is far harder to do against a cultural, mechanical, or biological practice.
The second half of IPM is knowing when to act at all. There's a level of ants you can look at and decide is fine. The line to watch is the economic injury level, the point where the pest starts taking real resources or doing real damage, costing you time and money.
"Cutting it off before the pest population is doing major damage to your hive."
Monitoring is what makes that possible, catching the curve early enough that the cheap interventions still work.
Small hive beetle or wax moth? Use your nose
One of the first questions from our LinkedIn and Facebook posts: if you open a hive and find a mess, how do you tell which pest made it?
Wax moth larvae spin cocoons, so the first thing you'll find is silky webbing with bits of frass mixed into it. They also tunnel through comb, so look for a caterpillar's path chewed through brood comb or through the pollen stores. They tend to leave honey alone, though they'll still wreck the frame.
Small hive beetle larvae are grub-like rather than caterpillar-like, without the extra prolegs at the end of the abdomen, and they don't spin webbing. You'll usually smell them before you see them:
"Because of this yeast that ferments in the honey the beetles carry, it gives off a smell kind of like a bakery. It's going to smell like bread being baked."
Open a hive, catch that bready, yeasty note, and you have a beetle problem starting. Left alone, they slime out the honey, which is your economic injury level arriving. If you can see larvae, it's time to act, and pulling the affected frame away from the rest before they spread is a reasonable first move.
Both pests get worse in a weak or thinly populated colony, and both love abandoned equipment. Keeping stored gear sealed and tidy is preventative work that costs nothing.
If you've had a real outbreak, freezing frames kills the eggs. The eggs are microscopic, so freezing is the only way to be confident you got all of them.
How many mites is too many?
A beekeeper working toward treatment-free asked whether treating at around 50 mites in a 24-hour drop is too high a threshold.
Jason's answer on the live was about 30 over a three-day drop, and fifty in a single day is likely a high population.
Our published guidance frames the same job with two tools doing two different things. The tray gives you the trend: insert it clean and lightly oiled in the evening, pull it exactly 24 hours later, and average three consecutive counts, since natural drop swings day to day. A wash gives you the actual infestation level: collect about 300 bees from a frame of open brood, keep the queen off that frame, agitate in 70% isopropyl for the most accurate count or powdered sugar to keep the bees alive, then divide by 300 and multiply by 100. A widely used alarm line is about 3 mites per 100 bees during the brood season, with a stricter line in late summer, when mites do disproportionate damage to the long-lived winter bees.
Either way, treat on the trend rather than a single snapshot. A varroa population can roughly double across one brood cycle, so acting just under your line beats reacting once you're over it. The screen bottom board guide covers oiling and inserting the tray. If you're unsure what you're looking at, some apps will count mites from a photo, or send us the photo and Jason will read it.
Hitting the threshold doesn't mean going straight to oxalic acid. Following the ladder, Jason's first move is removing drone brood, since mites reproduce faster in drone cells. On wax and wire foundation you can cut those sections out; on plastic, a hive tool, paint scraper, or putty knife works. Nothing goes into the hive, and you're only removing drones the colony doesn't need right then.
One caveat specific to this hive: drone-comb removal does less here than it does in a Langstroth, because the nest runs a lower ratio of drone cells to worker cells, so cutting drone brood removes fewer mites and moves the overall population less. Treat it as support alongside a treatment rather than mite control on its own.
Check again in a week or two. If the count drops, it's working. If it holds or climbs, move up. Before harsher chemistry, Jason would reach for stinging nettle, which has shown promise in smoker fuel or as an alcohol spray, and feed-based products that interfere with the mite's ability to reproduce.
Our varroa management guide has the full protocol on thresholds, timing, and treatment, tested across a lot of regions.
Treating in a sealed hive: start small
Two questions landed on oxalic acid, and the answers matter for anyone treating in an insulated hive.
Start with the directions on your vaporizer, since manufacturers test for their specific device and chemical. Worth knowing that oxalic sublimation itself isn't weather-dependent the way formic acid is, so it carries a wide seasonal application window. Clustering is also less of a factor in a Primal Bee hive, because the environment inside stays more comfortable.
Where you can, go in through the feeder hole. Oxalic acid vapor is heavy and falls, so entering at the top carries it down through the whole hive and you'll see it come out the entrance. From the bottom you're fighting the bees' own fanning, and it may never reach the top of the frames where most of the brood sits.
Keep the hive in its sealed working configuration while you treat, tray fully in, and plug the feeder hole afterward to hold the vapor in. Even dispersion depends on the seal, so don't open extra vents.
Two safety points that aren't optional. Use a temperature-controlled device with a bent nozzle insulated in high-temperature silicone, because a hot tip against EPS melts the hive body and EPS will burn. And wear an acid-rated respirator, gloves, and goggles, since sublimated oxalic is hazardous to lungs and eyes. The mite treatment compatibility guide covers what to combine and what to avoid.
That sealed environment also changes the dosing math:
"The concentration inside of the Primal Bee hive is going to be much greater than in a Langstroth hive because there's not as much dissipation."
A tighter hive holds treatment in rather than letting it seep out, which helps it work and makes overdosing easier than you'd expect. The rule that follows is to reduce a dose here, never raise it, and never carry a wooden-hive quantity across unchanged. Our published protocol is 2 to 3 grams per sublimation with a temperature-controlled device, five applications 5 to 7 days apart to span a full brood cycle of roughly 25 to 30 days, because the vapor can't reach mites under capped brood. More isn't safer, and a gram or two already kills hundreds of mites in a pass.
Do you pull honey supers before treating?
It depends entirely on the treatment, and the label is the authority. Some treatments are unsafe with honey on the hive and can contaminate what you harvest.
Safety isn't the only reason. With a feed-based mite treatment, the product needs to reach the cells the bees are actually using, not the ones headed for your extractor. Treating with only nest frames in place puts it where it belongs. Check the mite treatment compatibility guide before you treat with supers on.
Ants: what actually works
Two questions came in from beekeepers who had tried the popular fixes and still had ants.
Cinnamon hasn't worked in Jason's hives. The ants ignore it, or it blows away. Petroleum jelly dries out and collects dust until it stops being sticky.
Tanglefoot is what he reaches for instead, and he has a reason to trust it:
"I've used it to protect populations of endangered Hawaiian yellow-faced bees in conservation research studies. That's how confident I am working with Tanglefoot."
It's genuinely sticky, so wear gloves and apply it with a popsicle stick or a disposable brush. It's made from carnauba wax and tree resins, it isn't toxic, and it isn't especially attractive to bees. A couple of sweeps around the legs of the hive stand is enough, and it holds for a couple of months, longer than petroleum jelly. Sandy, dusty, or pollen-heavy sites will need more frequent reapplication.
Ants will route around it if you let them. Tall grass or a branch touching the hive gives them a bridge straight over the barrier, so keep the grass trimmed and the branches clear.
Beyond that, and alongside the bee-safe ant methods documented in our pest defense guide, the toolkit includes ant moats under an elevated hive stand (fill them with oil or soapy water, something that won't attract bees), diatomaceous earth around the base of the stand rather than inside the hive, mylar tape over seams that ants dislike crossing, and wood filler to close gaps in sidewalls. Terro-type baits, which the ants carry back to their own queen, are the last resort near bees.
Before you reach for any of them, watch the trail. If ants are running between the top cover and the nest box, you may have squished a few bees on your last inspection and they're after the protein. If they're at the feeder, you spilled syrup. If they're on the varroa tray, there's debris to clean, which the screen bottom board guide walks through. Follow the trail the other direction and it takes you to the nest, where prevention actually works.
Feeders, syrup, and keeping ants uninterested
A beekeeper named Eddie asked about larger feeder options to fill the empty space in the feeder super, since ants had been a problem.
Whatever you use, avoid anything that leaks or leaves syrup anywhere in that super, since a tight fit works best. Jason prefers quart-sized mason jars and doesn't see ant problems with them, as long as he inverts the feeder away from the hive and lets it finish dripping before it goes in. Our feeding systems guide covers the setup.
We're working on another feeder solution, but it's early in the pipeline. In the meantime, beekeepers in The Hive Mind have tried several designs, including a square feeder that fits the super with a sponge or funnel bringing syrup down to the bees.
The mountain camp method, dry sugar on newspaper over the frames, isn't one we'd recommend in a Primal Bee hive or honestly in a Langstroth. It attracts ants, crumbles through the hive, and creates new attraction points.
Fondant and protein patties both need care. Jason gives a colony a sample about the size of a Post-it note rather than the full sheet, just to see whether they'll take it. Anything they won't eat sits there as an attractant for ants, small hive beetles, and wax moths, and he has seen all three show up in uneaten patties. Feed small, confirm it's being used, and remove leftovers. Seasonal hive care covers feeding through a dearth, which is when most of this comes up.
Wasps and hornets: reduce the entrance first
Someone asked whether there's anything you can add to sugar water that repels wasps without repelling or harming your bees.
Nothing like that exists, and the reason comes down to family. Bees, wasps, and ants all sit in the same group, Hymenoptera, close enough to be cousins. Their protein sources differ, but they all want the same sugars. Anything that turns a wasp away from syrup will turn your bees away too, and wasp or hornet sprays harm bees outright.
Which leaves the hive itself. Keep entrance reducers in so the colony can defend a smaller opening, using the settings in our entrance reducer guide. Our pest defense guide notes that the reducer restricts the main entry to roughly eight bees at a time, which gives guard bees a clear advantage. Clear dead bees from the front of the hive, since that's the first thing yellow-legged hornets come for before they start taking live bees and eventually scouting the hive itself. Have wasp nests removed safely when you can find them.
Be careful with bait traps. They can pull more wasps and hornets into your area, and once those are around, they'll look for other resources nearby, like your hives. Bees also end up in some traps.
On robbing screens, a beekeeper who had built several styles asked whether any design actually holds up, since yellow jackets kept finding the edges. Jason hasn't yet seen yellow jackets bypass Primal Bee entrance reducers, and hasn't had a report of it, so if that's happening to you, tell us. The BeeSmart robbing screen is the one that fits a Primal Bee hive with slight modification, pinned and aligned just above the entrances, possibly with a filler where the entrance reducer holders sit. We're looking at a robbing screen designed specifically for the hive if the need grows.
Reducers do most of the work for most people. A robbing screen is worth buying if you're in a high wasp-density area and watching them get past the reducer. They tend to run in the range of $10 to $20.
A note on your entrance reducers: the current version is hard plastic with six holes. Earlier customers may have received a softer EPS version with four holes, which was more fragile. If you can break it, you have the old one. Email us and we'll send replacements. A redesign with a small ledge, to make it easier to pull out and put in, is in progress. In the meantime, a piece of wire or a twist tie through the holes makes adjusting it easier than rubber bands, which break down over time.
When the beetle traps aren't working
A beekeeper had tried beetle jails with apple cider vinegar and diatomaceous earth under the hive and felt like nothing was landing. Was that a sign of something else going wrong in the colony?
Start with a mechanical check. Apple cider vinegar attracts beetles into the trap, but mineral oil is what kills them, so vinegar on its own gets you the attraction without the kill.
It's also worth setting expectations, because beetle jails aren't fully effective. Beetles find other places to hide, and bees have a hard time controlling them, often propolizing them into prisons of their own making.
At the University of Florida, where every hive had beetles, the approach was accumulation rather than a single solution: crush them with a hive tool on sight, shake larvae onto fire ant mounds, run apple cider vinegar traps with mineral oil, use diatomaceous earth more often, and lay ground cloth so they can't reach the soil directly beneath the hive. That last one only pushes them further out. Beetles can travel miles after pupating to get back to a hive.
That accumulation is the honest answer, and it's the same one running through the whole session. Keep the colony strong, stay ahead of the population, and pay attention to which of your colonies are handling it better so you can replicate what's working there.
A related question asked about GrubEx under the hive. Jason hasn't used that product. He has worked with a nematode drench in testing at the University of Florida, where live nematodes added to the soil ate pupating beetle larvae. It looked helpful, though it needed frequent reapplication, and soil moisture made a large difference. He's checking with colleagues and looking for research before recommending anything on GrubEx specifically.
Storing frames without inviting pests
A beekeeper whose weak hive got robbed out and then hit by wax moths asked about storing frames over winter, and whether a garage is risky compared to a proper unheated shed.
This is also a honey harvest question, since supers filling up is what creates the storage problem in the first place. See when to harvest honey for readiness and timing, and storing and processing honey for what happens after. When a super's eight frames are all honey-bound, Jason pulls at least four and stores them.
His container of choice is a black Sterilite storage bin with a clear lid and a rubber gasket, which seals dust-proof and waterproof and holds 10 to 12 frames. You can find them at Home Depot or Walmart. He likes the clear lid most, since you can check for wax moths without opening the bin.
On temperature, his garage swings from about 40°F at the coldest to 80 or 90°F at the warmest and the honey has been fine. Honey tolerates the upper 90s anyway, since that's what it experiences inside a capped frame in a hive. He aims for something in the 50 to 80°F range, and has stored honey in these bins for over a year without trouble.
Our hive maintenance, cleaning, and equipment storage guide covers the wider storage picture. Whatever you store them in, make sure the frames are clean first. Sealing wax moths into a bin with your comb creates the problem you were trying to avoid.
Chest freezers are the other route, and they're good for killing wax moths. Freezing changes the honey slightly and you'll want to thaw frames before returning them to a hive. If you're bagging frames, double-bag them in the thickest landscape-type drawstring bags you can find, one bag, then handle-side down into a second. Wax moths can chew through plastic, but they don't seem to get through two layers.
Do follower boards invite pests?
A beekeeper had heard that follower boards, and dead space generally, are what invite pests in the first place, since the colony can't patrol the empty area. Is that the root cause?
Not in a Primal Bee hive. Concentrating a growing colony on one side of the nest box and opening it up as they expand hasn't produced pest problems in the empty space.
The pressure comes from elsewhere, and 20 years across top bar and wooden hives points at what. Older hives break down over time, seams come apart, and you end up with multiple access points a colony can't defend. Very old comb builds pressure year after year. Debris on the bottom board gives small hive beetles a place to hide in the pile of wax shavings and dead bees.
If anything, the fit works in your favor here. The lid has a bevel on the inside, like going up one step on a staircase, which seats onto the nest box without leaving a direct path in. A pest has to go in, then up, then over, instead of straight through a gap.
Keep the screen bottom board and the varroa tray clean, and you've addressed more pest pressure than any follower board arrangement will.
Bears, skunks, and whether one fence covers both
A beekeeper kept hearing contradictory advice: some say a low wire near the ground handles bears and skunks together, others say you need separate setups.
Realistically, you need different measures for different animals. An electric fence is for the larger mammals, bears and possibly raccoons. Skunks, mice, and rats can burrow under it without much trouble, so a smaller mesh screen is the better tool for the things living underneath the hive.
UF/IFAS publishes a step-by-step fact sheet on building bear fences for your apiary, which walks through wire spacing, height, and grounding, alongside their broader guide to bears and beekeeping.
With bears, the order matters more than the hardware. Fence the apiary before one ever tastes honey there. After that, the fence is just an obstacle to be solved, and they'll work at ungrounding a wire or dropping a branch on the line to get back in. We've had a couple of Primal Bee hives involved in bear attacks, and the damage was more minimal than what we've seen in wooden hives, but nothing here is bear-proof.
Two pro tips from the Q&A
Pro tip: feed your beetle larvae to something useful. A beekeeper asked whether the old story about fire ants eating small hive beetle larvae is real. It is. In Florida, brushing beetles and shaking larvae onto a fire ant mound was a working disposal method. Chickens will take both beetle and wax moth larvae too, and it's high protein for them. Mark where the mounds are in your apiary so you can find them when you need them, and so you don't walk a super full of bees straight through one. Fire ants up your legs is worse than a bee sting. One related bit of housekeeping: keep rotten fruit away from the apiary, since beetles will reproduce on fallen peaches, oranges, and apples.
Pro tip: test a patty with a Post-it. Before you commit a full sheet of fondant or protein patty to a colony, give them a piece about the size of a Post-it note and see whether they take it. Uneaten patty is an attractant, and wax moths, small hive beetles, and ants all find it. If they eat the sample, give them more. If they don't, you've lost nothing and avoided feeding the pests instead of the bees.
The pattern underneath all of it
Nearly every answer in this session pointed the same direction. Traps, sprays, screens, and baits are the visible part of pest management, and the smallest part of it.
What holds up across a season is a strong colony, a hive without gaps a pest can exploit, clean equipment, and a monitoring habit that catches a population while it's still cheap to knock down.
Your job is to watch what your hives are telling you, use the mildest tool that works, and escalate only when the numbers say you have to.
Have a topic you want covered on the next live? Primal Bee runs these monthly, plus office hours twice a week. Drop your question in the group.
You can also reach Jason directly at jason@primalbee.com.
